#669 - "Easy as A-B-C"

An excellent puzzle written by one of the innovators of the meta crossword format. It comes out every Friday at noon and increases in difficulty throughout the month. Available for modest subscription (worth every cent) here: www.xwordcontest.com
User avatar
TMart
Posts: 816
Joined: Thu Apr 11, 2019 7:13 am
Location: Malvern, PA

#81

Post by TMart »

KayW wrote: Tue Mar 30, 2021 4:25 pm
Oh and earlier in the weekend, BABEL popped into mind as a WAG. It's a historic place, and sort of supported by GEELONG GREETING/HAINAN HI.
BABEL was my Hail Mary - I found consecutive letters (DEF, NOP and STU) in clues for grid words that started with B, E and L. Tried my best to get it to work, but it didn’t happen.
stmv
Posts: 296
Joined: Sun Apr 05, 2020 5:12 pm

#82

Post by stmv »

A rabbit hole I haven't seen mentioned: I was trying to make sense of the longer entries, and after a while I fixated on STENCILS (sort of like the pirate's treasure map meta with the three X's). I went so far as to print out a new copy of the puzzle and cut out all the A's, B's, and C's to make a stencil, and then tried placing it in various positions on the other copy to see if the holes picked out any phrase that would lead me to the answer. No luck, and it left me with a bunch of little white squares of cut-out paper littering my home office.
User avatar
Bird Lives
Posts: 2607
Joined: Tue Apr 09, 2019 6:43 pm
Location: NYC
Contact:

#83

Post by Bird Lives »

Meg wrote: Tue Mar 30, 2021 12:30 pm After Australia and China, I initially thought Burma for the B, but no way did Matt hide 5 things related to Burma anywhere in the puzzle. The letter change is a nice week 4 twist and the hardest to find for me was the animal. Am I sure CAPYBARA isn’t in there somewhere? The meta gods were smiling this time.
It would have been hard to choose among all those Burmese sports stars.
Jay
User avatar
Bird Lives
Posts: 2607
Joined: Tue Apr 09, 2019 6:43 pm
Location: NYC
Contact:

#84

Post by Bird Lives »

ky-mike wrote: Tue Mar 30, 2021 1:23 pm My nit on this is that Rio isn't the full city name, so I was stuck on changing loges to Lages (a real Brazil city name). Then it was a matter of whether to take first letters from changed names, or the letters taken out or the letters added in. Tough one. Am looking forward to a Week 1 again on Friday.
Nobody said that the answers were full city names. You could think of the unstated category as "what a city is called." Perth is known as Perth, Xian as Xian, and Rio de Janeiro as Rio. Like Vegas, St. Pete, LA, etc. People from Rio are known as Cariocas, not Cariodejaneirocas.
Last edited by Bird Lives on Tue Mar 30, 2021 10:50 pm, edited 1 time in total.
Jay
User avatar
BarbaraK
Posts: 2592
Joined: Tue Apr 09, 2019 2:37 pm
Location: Virginia

#85

Post by BarbaraK »

Babel was my first guess, but that was nothing but a guess.

I ended up submitting Burma with what felt like a reasonably solid click. I had all the Australia and China answers so knew I needed a B country. I did look at the other rabbit holes mentioned and didn't find anything. Some time this morning, I got to thinking about all the people who were looking for "dressing" in the WSJ grid and wondered if I was doing the same thing here. When I saw on the map that Myanmar nee Burma was between Australia and China geographically as well as alphabetically, it just seemed to fit and I thought I didn't need to keep looking when a perfectly appropriate answer was right in front of me.

Congratulations to those who got all the way to Zaire. I don't think I'd have got that one even with more time. I'm so used to seeing meaningless coincidence in the short answers that I can't say I'd have followed up even if I'd noticed one or two.
User avatar
Al Sisti
Posts: 2037
Joined: Thu Apr 11, 2019 1:28 pm
Location: Whitesboro NY

#86

Post by Al Sisti »

Bird Lives wrote: Tue Mar 30, 2021 6:35 pm
Meg wrote: Tue Mar 30, 2021 12:30 pm After Australia and China, I initially thought Burma for the B, but no way did Matt hide 5 things related to Burma anywhere in the puzzle. The letter change is a nice week 4 twist and the hardest to find for me was the animal. Am I sure CAPYBARA isn’t in there somewhere? The meta gods were smiling this time.
It would have been hard to choose among all those Burmese sports stars.
What? You never saw U Thant play chinlone?
Big Mac
Posts: 114
Joined: Fri Apr 10, 2020 1:01 pm
Location: Vienna, VA

#87

Post by Big Mac »

I've never been gladder that I didn't have time to work on a meta...
User avatar
BarbaraK
Posts: 2592
Joined: Tue Apr 09, 2019 2:37 pm
Location: Virginia

#88

Post by BarbaraK »

And as if missing the MGWCC were not a big enough disappointment for one day, they finally announced who won the seat on the civilian space mission, and it's not me. :(
User avatar
DrTom
Posts: 3765
Joined: Sat Apr 20, 2019 6:46 pm
Location: Jacksonville, FL

#89

Post by DrTom »

I did not solve, though did get a chance for an AHA. A friend pointed out there were 5 things from two different countries. I didn’t see anything that popped out. Then I thought « ok there are two athletes let’s see if there is a third. » I kept looking for the athlete near the other two (since there was a one across near one down thing going on, but no luck. Then for some reason I saw PILE and thought “hmmm if I replace the I with an E I get PÈLE, could that be”. Let’s see he was from Brazil....WAIT A MINUTE Australia, China, and the B is! Took a while to find the other words (AÇAÍ and BOA the hardest) but there they were and ZAIRE as well. I just wish I had seen the connection myself so I could have claimed a solve. Still it was VERY elegant and at least I am not alone on one of the 23 islands!
NUDGES!I am always willing to give nudges where needed; metas should be about fun, not frustration. Send me what you have done so far because often you are closer than you think!
User avatar
ricky
Posts: 450
Joined: Sun Jun 21, 2020 3:47 pm
Contact:

#90

Post by ricky »

One of the things that bugs me about MGWCC puzzles is that Matt doesn't seem to believe in doing anything to warn solvers away from the plentiful red herrings that lead them to plausible-but-wrong answers. Case in point here.

How I got to BURMA after spotting the Australia and China entries:
Screen Shot 2021-03-31 at 5.13.46 PM.png
Check out the meta challenge at Lexicon Devil

Latest puzzle: "This Place Looks Familiar," March 7, 2024

Deadline: Tuesday, March 12, 2024, 12 PM EST
User avatar
Hector
Posts: 1297
Joined: Thu Apr 11, 2019 8:15 pm
Location: San Francisco
Contact:

#91

Post by Hector »

You can always petition Matt to accept an alternate answer, though right now he might be just sitting down to some prime udder after taking his roars for a walk. ;)
markhr
Posts: 342
Joined: Thu Apr 18, 2019 7:56 pm

#92

Post by markhr »

Surprised to see some negative comments here. Maybe I'm biased, but I thought the meta was really well done. It's a week 4, so it's supposed to tax your brain. Finding A and C was pretty straightforward, but finding the B elements was quite the challenge, and certainly not obvious. I felt like I got a workout there. Kudos to Matt for an imaginative meta.
Dplass
Posts: 1739
Joined: Sat Dec 28, 2019 10:09 am

#93

Post by Dplass »

markhr wrote: Fri Apr 02, 2021 1:23 am Surprised to see some negative comments here. Maybe I'm biased, but I thought the meta was really well done. It's a week 4, so it's supposed to tax your brain. Finding A and C was pretty straightforward, but finding the B elements was quite the challenge, and certainly not obvious. I felt like I got a workout there. Kudos to Matt for an imaginative meta.
I didn't even see that there WAS an A and C so you saying "Finding A and C was pretty straightforward" is a nonstarter for me.
Locked