"Medal-winning Positions" by benchen71

[SJMcK]

Stormed

[madhatter5]

See a man about a horse. I gotta start using that.

[benchen71]

Another day, another 7 solvers bring us to 28:

lbray53
Tyrpmom
rjy
Darth
DIS
imontoo
SJMcK

We're still a couple of days away from the nudges. Keep at it! This isn't supposed to be a tricky one, especially if you recall the mechanism of a WSJ puzzle from not that long ago!

[ajk]

lol tried several times to do what turned out to be the right thing but failed. Finally came at it another way and saw the light. Moat crossed. Fun one, thx.
p.s. I was stuck in pretty much the same way on that prior puzzle as well

[ReB]

Crossed the moat after a fresh attempt today.

[benchen71]

Crikey, I was so focused on the WSJ yesterday that I forgot to post the nudges for "Medal-winning Positions"! But first, an update of solvers:

ajk
kurtalert
Carolyn
bereolos
SeamusOL
ReB

That's brought us up to 34. Let's see if some last-minute nudges can shake a few more solvers loose...

[benchen71]

Nudges, in order of increasing blatancy:

1. The only signpost is the puzzle title.

2. "Medal-winning positions" implies "first", "second", and "third".

3. Do you notice something that the three long entries (which were asterisked) have in common?

4. The three long entries are all comprised of three words.

[Cinny]

Finally crawled across the moat. Needed nudges, but realize I should have seen it without them. Nice one. Thanks!

[edestlin]

Finally dragged myself out of the moat with the nudges mocking me the entire time. Overthinking was my downfall. You're right that it was a pretty easy one, I just made it too difficult. Thanks, Ben!

[KayW]

Doh!! Needed to be nudged across the moat this week. And afterwards, I had to go back through the page of previous WSJ solutions to remember the "similar recent" one. A -worthy meta - thanks, Ben!

[benchen71]

Monday morning here in Oz, and it's time for the answer reveal. But first a solver update:

Tobonic
Cindy Heisler
woozy
edestlin
KayW

We got to 39 in the end. Either there are a lot of people out there who were bamboozled by the meta or else many Crosshare users are only interested in grid-filling. I say this because "Medal-winning Positions" is now 3rd on my list of "Most Solved Puzzles" with 203 completions. Actually, this is very cool since I can now say the puzzle has won the Bronze Medal!

And with that it's time for the medal presentation ceremony...

[benchen71]

Here's the answer and explanation to "Medal-winning Positions":

I had this puzzle constructed well before Mike Shenk's WSJ puzzle "Countdown", which has an extremely similar metanism. What makes it especially galling to me is that I did not successfully solve Mike's puzzle! Wow, I was really mad with myself for not seeing it.

I submitted this puzzle to Will for possible inclusion in Pandora's Box. He wanted me to change 39 across, since AREA STATE SCHOOL might not have been familiar to a US audience. But I didn't have the time to make the change, which would have been a rather extensive one. So I passed.

[ajk]

I spent waaaaay too long between this:
"Maybe 17A/39A/63A is Gold/Silver/Bronze, so try the first/second/third letter of each word in those"
And: "Oh, maybe it's first/second/third all in the same themer"

Funny thing is that I did almost the same thing on that WSJ one. Instead of doing the countdown within each themer I was trying to do it across the themers.

[Dplass]

Here's the answer and explanation to "Medal-winning Positions":


Medal-winning Positions (solution).png


I had this puzzle constructed well before Mike Shenk's WSJ puzzle "Countdown", which has an extremely similar metanism. What makes it especially galling to me is that I did not successfully solve Mike's puzzle! Wow, I was really mad with myself for not seeing it.

I submitted this puzzle to Will for possible inclusion in Pandora's Box. He wanted me to change 39 across, since AREA STATE SCHOOL might not have been familiar to a US audience. But I didn't have the time to make the change, which would have been a rather extensive one. So I passed.

"AREA STATE SCHOOL" is definitely not familiar to a US audience.

[hoover]

"AREA STATE SCHOOL" is definitely not familiar to a US audience.

I think I've heard it a few times, but more often I've heard the more derisive term "Directional State University" as in:

• East Texas State (now Texas A&M–Commerce)
• North Texas State (now University of North Texas)
• Southwest Texas State (now just Texas State University i.e. TXST, not to be confused with Texas Southern University i.e. TSU)
• West Texas State (now West Texas A&M University)
• South Texas College (a 2-year transfer/feeder school to UTRGV among others) (not to be confused with South Texas College of Law, which is loosely in East Texas)