"Power Play" August 5, 2022

[Kas]

This post--Sunday thread is brilliant...and it's only 9:10 EST!
re: Rabbit award...absolutely fabulous idea--I'm wondering if it would be possible to add a 4th response button option (to the current [!]. {"] and [thumbs up])--perhaps ["R"]?--less because I care about democratizing the process, more because the amount of time already put into this website over the years is...I'm struggling here for a word between awesome/terrifying/humbling/ridiculous/(and mostly) very appreciated...

[katnahat]

I was too busy with our visiting Dallas grandsons to do more than solve the grid. Add to that the fact that we had a very determined critter breaking into our utility room from inside the wall by enlarging the space around the dryer vent. All attempts to block and/or trap it were unsuccessful until I used sticky traps. We woke up one morning to find a skunk in the trap in the utility room. Removal by an expert left a lingering odor, somewhat reduced by enzyme spray. Today they're bringing an ozone treatment. Nightmare!

I wouldn't have solved this puzzle even without the boys and the skunk. Congratulations to those who did!

[ZooAnimalsOnWheels]

I had a few weird rabbit holes, but nothing too deep.

The common power play in hockey is also known as a "five on four". Right in the middle of the grid we have a 5-letter word on a 4-letter word: SOLAR MERE. "Solar mirror"? Used to gather sunlight? Do I need to look at the 'O's in the grid and reflect them to some other grid position???

And then the SHAKES SPARE connection many others have mentioned. The clue for META mentions a "play about a play". Hamlet was one of those, and, hey, you only need an H and L to add to the letters in META to get HAMLET. We need a 4-letter word, Shakespeare had four big tragedies, another one was Othello. OTOOLE looks like 'Othello'. Just needs an H and another L! And its clue is a movie about a Henry, like may Shakespeare plays. I was sure I was going to find some reference to King Lear and Macbeth, until I wasn't.

[Ergcat]

This English major went the "word" route rather than the "number" route. There were just so many words that would fit with "power" beside the obvious "solar": power trip, power tool, power hour, power mad, power bar, spare power. And I had SUCH high hopes for LAMBSKIN (lambs' kin) = ewes.

Wendy, me too! That LAMBS/KIN = EWES was the hole I had the hardest time leaving. There were 4 long down answers. MADRI/GAL = NINA ( I thought Madrid gal so I need the “d”). REF/ERRER like “Ref Error”? Ok, so that gives me an O. Well, you can see I mixing mechanisms and struggling to make this work but it looked so darn shiny!! LAMBS KIN right next to EWES!
My DD, Regfish7, is a Math Professor so she was all over the math route … SQUARE ROOT , A LOG, TEN ! Although we looked at grid squares that had a square or were a square root, we got nada. Never thought to look at word lengths! We shoulda looked at the MATH route more!

[eagle1279]

Wow. I also researched plays within plays (which I learned are technically called "metadramas"), forms of energy (power), and square root references in the clues (16 ounces in a pound). The closest we got was my daughter's observation that the box numbers in 25A added up to 196 (14 squared). Also noticed four rhyming pairs (MAYS/MAZE, TOAD/LODE, NUS/EWES, ROTE/VOTE) that led nowhere. It was a "SQUARE ROOT META" that we couldn't solve in 4 days, and wouldn't have solved in 16, 25, or even 36 days!

[hcbirker]

After not finding any other power sources, I concentrated on the word "counterpart" in 59A. Ewes - scram (rams)! New - lode (old)! That led nowhere and started looking for squares of 3X3 and only found "we do Lamaze" in top right corner.

[MatthewL]

I saw SQUARE ROOT clued by the word "power" and figured it had to be significant. One rabbit hole I went down for a while was to assign numbers to the letters in the themers and add those up to see if they summed to a perfect square (A=1, B=2 and so forth). Applied that method to first one, and I get 144! Aha -- I'm onto you Shenk, you wily so-and-so. Next themer is 185 -- uh oh, maybe I added wrong. Let me try that again. Nope. Well, let me try the next one. Still no. Crap. Spent several hours off and on staring blankly at it, and finally succumbed to the siren song that is the Friday 4:30 Zoom call. Congrats to all who solved and good luck on the mug!!

[jhseeman]

was busy driving to and from Houston between thusday and sunday.....was a challenge to do the grid with the wife calling out the clues and getting answers....finally got the grid completed....then the rabbit holes started.
- Power Play - two words alliterative...4 clues that were two words and alliterative...yeah dug around that rabbit hole for a period of time, until someone ever so nicely let me know I was in a deep hole that wasn't going to pan out.

Solar as the middle clue....yeah another fun rabbit hole.

Got a good clue that pointed me in the direction but alas, by the time we got back to SC and I stumbled onto the aha moment it was 1:30....

On the plus side...it's been a while since I was hanging with Isaac and it was good to catch up.

[woozy]

I can't complain that I have never seen word-lengths to natural multi-digit numbers before but I can claim it's just not a natural thing to look for. I'd have preferred if this had a string "trigger" to point one to that bag of tricks. The square root use of "power" does count as a trigger and I certainly saw it but I couldn't make sense of it.

[Inca]

Rabbit award is a great idea since it seems to have brought more members out to explain their paths and that's always interesting. As for me, I must confess. I'd much rather win that mug! And anyway, all my ideas were mentioned. Even seeing TEN and ALOG, especially with the latter on top of META. But there was nowhere to go with it. Oh well, on to next week

[C=64]

And for the real math nerds, how I got 361 and 56 without a calculator….

19*19=20*19-19=400-20-19=361
Then verified in my head, 81+90+190, yep.

(a+b)^2 = a^2+2ab+b^2
3136=2500+300+300+36, so a=50, b=6

What, you don't have 19^2 memorized?
Extension: you could also use a^2 - b^2 = (a+b)(a-b) with a = 19 and b = 1.
19^2 - 1^2 = (19+1)(19-1)
19^2 - 1 = 20*18
19^2 - 1 = 360
19^2 = 361

To check √3136 without a calculator (mind you, I did all this Sunday night after reading the posted solution), I know √4096 = 64, so I estimated √3136 = 56. (If a square ends in 6, its square root will end in 4 or 6.) There is a trick for squaring a two-digit number ending in 5, which I used to square 55: take the tens digit, 5, add 1, and multiply those two numbers. 5*6 = 30. Then stick a 25 on the end, and 55^2 = 3025. Then to get 56^2, do 3025 + 55 + 56. (Mental math: 3025 + 100 + 11, yup, that's 3136.) If 55^2 had been too large, I would have checked 54^2 by doing 3025 - 55 - 54.

I spent way too much time one-finger typing this on my phone and need to get in the shower before my Zoom algebra class starts in 30 minutes.

[Deb F]

I was in awe of the smart rabbit holes discussed on the Friday Zoom call. Mine were nowhere near as brilliant. And the comments this Monday morning illustrate it further. My diversions were a whole lot more basic so I won't take your time by listing them! Nice job. Good meta, even though I was only able to solve it with the great assistance of the ZooMuggles.

Would love to see one of our gang rewarded with the mug this week after this particularly arduous puzzler. Have a great week.

[Abide]

A Hail Mary! (144) MATH, says I! (441) So freaking obviously! (289) Grapes, sour! (64)

What does this spell? I get DSWH from the grid....

[Joe Ross]

I spent way too much time one-finger typing this on my phone and need to get in the shower before my Zoom algebra class starts in 30 minutes.

After adding ordinal numbers for the letters in WHY SHOULD I & getting 144 = 12^2, I was excited & repaired to Excel formulas. The remaining Theme Entries didn't pan out, but letter counts in sets of words did:

[Guy]

My rabbit holes on the square roots were misdirected and to shallow to mention, likewise some music stuff. I finally as a last resort settled solely on 61D "ten" (thinking i might have something mathy with"alog" being across from "square root", and in dim memory, whether accurate or not, "log" as a logarithm without more is often understood to be log10...are logarithims even used anymore?). I took the tenth letter from each of the four prime across answers which made no sense, but did when anagramed to "fiat"....wrong shore!

[clonefitz]

Another off week. I went down a lot of the rabbit holes that have already been mentioned, but there are a couple of others that had me for a few minutes, both on the path of square root: 1. The 9th column had the letters (in order) T H R E E? 2. 64 across was GATE with an ATE (8)? My biggest gripe is I actually have 3 9 1, 2 5 6, 3 1 3 6 and 6 4 written on my paper. D'Oh! How could 256 and 64 not jumped out at me? I have to say though: great meta!

[AaronT]

SOLAR tripped me, too. When nothing else worked, my last minute submission was:

(Energy choice) + (4 letters) = WIND

I also submitted WIND but I got there by the "second power's counterpart" clue. I saw TRIP and SOLAR and thought those might have represented two "powers" (power trip and solar power - I was desperate to find something to submit and move on with my life), so what made sense as a counterpart to solar power? WIND sounded good enough even though I couldn't find a way there using other grid entries.

The fact that the next clue mentioned "play" and solved to META increased my confidence level from a 1 to a 1.5. I never would have gotten to the right answer so I think I made a good decision to not spend any more time on it.

[ship4u]

My favorite rabbit hole this week was @Al Laubenstein on our Friday Zoom elaborating on what he saw as the Shakespearean angle. It amazes me how erudite this group is!!!

[vandono]

And for the real math nerds, how I got 361 and 56 without a calculator….

19*19=20*19-19=400-20-19=361
Then verified in my head, 81+90+190, yep.

(a+b)^2 = a^2+2ab+b^2
3136=2500+300+300+36, so a=50, b=6

What, you don't have 19^2 memorized?
Extension: you could also use a^2 - b^2 = (a+b)(a-b) with a = 19 and b = 1.
19^2 - 1^2 = (19+1)(19-1)
19^2 - 1 = 20*18
19^2 - 1 = 360
19^2 = 361

To check √3136 without a calculator (mind you, I did all this Sunday night after reading the posted solution), I know √4096 = 64, so I estimated √3136 = 56. (If a square ends in 6, its square root will end in 4 or 6.) There is a trick for squaring a two-digit number ending in 5, which I used to square 55: take the tens digit, 5, add 1, and multiply those two numbers. 5*6 = 30. Then stick a 25 on the end, and 55^2 = 3025. Then to get 56^2, do 3025 + 55 + 56. (Mental math: 3025 + 100 + 11, yup, that's 3136.) If 55^2 had been too large, I would have checked 54^2 by doing 3025 - 55 - 54.

I spent way too much time one-finger typing this on my phone and need to get in the shower before my Zoom algebra class starts in 30 minutes.

I started writing a response to DBMiller's post because it aligned with what I was trying to do with the squared numbers on the Zoom whiteboard call (once graciously led to them). Then I saw your response and it was too close to what I was saying to be worth my long-winded explanation for using those mental math methods for first estimating using squares of multiples of 10 and 5. It is pretty cool - but probably not surprising - to run into others here that enjoy mental math.

[Abide]

If you thought this puzzle was clever, I highly recommend this meta from our own @MarkWoychick

viewtopic.php?p=102165#p102165

Better odds to win a prize too!