"Consider the Alternative" October 6, 2022

[Streroto]

Well if there is a “swim of shame” back to the ship I am taking it. I mistakenly thought the first letters spelled “OTHERS” which certainly fit and I went with it.

Serious head slap

[Bird Lives]

The title was “Consider the Alternative.” The answer had six letters.
I know that Matt says he does not put red herrings in his puzzles. But in the Across entries, I couldn’t help noticing a school of six OR-fish swimming by, and they certainly looked at least dark pink.
,

When I finally stopped following them, I was able to swim to shore.
.

[KscX]

I’m in the OTHERS camp. It did have two problems in that 1. The title is singular, so I didn’t like the plural nature and 2. while in order, you did start in the middle to get it and really there was no indicator to do that. So knowing it was probably wrong (metas- when you know, you know), I waved the white flag in the interest of time management and then WW pushed me further down the path. EVEN THEN I was having a hard time justifying OPTION because of the order, when a few hours later it hit me to do it in the grid order of the three letter words, et voila.

WHO KNEW the WSJ could fit a five step solution into one paragraph?!

[dk letter]

No-one had the rabbit ... footprint... that IVY LEAGUE SCHOOL => BROWN<= BACK TO THE FUTURE SURNAME ?

Yes, I got stuck in that rabbit hole for a good long while!

[Colin]

Great meta! Being an engineer got me stuck on the sandbar again I went straight to the numbers: Eisenhower 34th president, Saturday 6th (or 7th) day of week, October 10th month, Othello 20-somethingth play, Connecticut 2nd NE state and Harvard 1st Ivy League school. The letters in those numbered squares spelt gobbledygook, but that didn’t stop me trying to make it work all weekend! If at first you don’t succeed; try, try, try, try, try, the same thing again! Right?

[BethA]

I’ll get my confession out early, so I can move on… Kas 5 for me, just unable to see it. Stayed below deck on the ship all weekend, looking at the puzzle off and on. I submitted OTHERS at the eleventh hour, but also had OPTION, BACKUP, and VIABLE lined up as wild guess alternatives.

One of the last things I tried seemed promising, but didn’t produce a nice 6-letter word:
1. Get the alternative answers to the theme words based on length.
2. Use an ordinal number associated with each. (Eisenhower 34th president, Saturday 7th day, October 10th month, Rhode Island 13th state, Harvard 1st (oldest) Ivy League, Macbeth 27 Shakespeare play - based on a chronology given in Wikipedia)
3. Use the numbers to get the letter in that square in the grid. [that might have been the end of it, but still didn’t produce a word!] ARDMYU
4. So, apply the alternative answer idea one more time (instead of Annas-Elsas, Rotates-Cycles, Doles-Metes, Uvea-Iris or Lens, Mop-Vac, Yacht-ketch or ???) ECMIVK

What really stymied me was the fact that SO MANY non-theme clues were worded in such a way that there alternative answers readily available. For instance, on Thursday I noticed 22A could easily have been BROWN - an alternative Ivy League school!!! The fact that this had NO part in the solution is rather annoying.

OK, letting it go now…See ya Thursday!

[Dplass]

Great meta! Being an engineer got me stuck on the sandbar again I went straight to the numbers: Eisenhower 34th president, Saturday 6th (or 7th) day of week, October 10th month, Othello 20-somethingth play, Connecticut 2nd NE state and Harvard 1st Ivy League school. The letters in those numbered squares spelt gobbledygook, but that didn’t stop me trying to make it work all weekend! If at first you don’t succeed; try, try, try, try, try, the same thing again! Right?

That was one of my rabbit holes too. I also took the differences between the written and alternate answers (Eisenhower minus Washington 34-1, etc). And the differences between their index in the alphabet (w - e) and, and and...

[MaineMarge]

@Bird Lives, I was swimming right along with you and those 6 ORcas, hoping we were swimming toward shore. But they were headed to a deserted 🏝

[Ergcat]

No-one had the rabbit ... footprint... that IVY LEAGUE SCHOOL => BROWN<= BACK TO THE FUTURE SURNAME ?

And then there’s WASHINGTON>9a DC FIGURE ?

[Dplass]

No-one had the rabbit ... footprint... that IVY LEAGUE SCHOOL => BROWN<= BACK TO THE FUTURE SURNAME ?

And then there’s WASHINGTON>9a DC FIGURE ?

And District of COLUMBIA - Another ivy...

[cheekumbaldy]

Drat! I’m an other in the OTHERS camp. My gut told me it was too simple though.

[Colin]

Great meta! Being an engineer got me stuck on the sandbar again I went straight to the numbers: Eisenhower 34th president, Saturday 6th (or 7th) day of week, October 10th month, Othello 20-somethingth play, Connecticut 2nd NE state and Harvard 1st Ivy League school. The letters in those numbered squares spelt gobbledygook, but that didn’t stop me trying to make it work all weekend! If at first you don’t succeed; try, try, try, try, try, the same thing again! Right?

That was one of my rabbit holes too. I also took the differences between the written and alternate answers (Eisenhower minus Washington 34-1, etc). And the differences between their index in the alphabet (w - e) and, and and...

Yep! … and the total number of presidents / days / weeks / etc … and the number of those left after removing 1 alternative … and after removing two alternatives … and …
Missed the alphabet index one though… nice thought!

[escapeartist]

My first thought was to find alternates in the grid with one letter switched:
TRIAL - APRIL
ABLY - YALE
ASYET - HAYES
THURSDAY - SATURDAY

That last one got me thinking about answer length, which led to the next step which I had correct, then switched Othello to Tempest to anagram to OTHERS

Seemed a bit sketch but I was done trying by that point.

[hoover]

I had the right alternatives, noticed they almost spelled ASHORE, and didn't get any farther.

[Onaquest]

Got the alternative answers sooooo quickly but just could not/did not spot the three letter words to connect them. Possibly because many weeks I get distracted by the three letter answers and that’s hardly ever worthwhile. Hats off to Matt G for a) finding 6 clever groups with alternatives and b) getting the explanation into one paragraph. Great meta.

[whimsy]

My first thought was to find alternates in the grid with one letter switched:
TRIAL - APRIL
ABLY - YALE
ASYET - HAYES
THURSDAY - SATURDAY

...

Me too!. But I had LAYSTO = TAYLOR.
And, of course, I so wanted to fudge ERODE ISLAM for Rhode Island!

[LadyBird]

KAS 5 for me. But here is the rabbit warren (not just hole) that I thoroughly enjoyed exploring--although I am now worried about the integrity of the stern garden!

Here is what I found in my search for "alternatives":
** Alternative president = Hoover; as an alternative to 13D Floor cleaner/MOP; giving an M
** " day of week = Sunday; " to 57D List closing/ETC; giving an E
** " month = March; " to 19A Walk with a hitch (in the Army)/LIMP; giving an L
** " play = Tempest; " to 54A Rage (raging storm)/IRE; giving an I
** " NE state = Vermont; " to 46A Cheese go-with/MAC; giving an M
** " Ivy school = Brown; " to 22A "Back to the Future surname/MCFLY; giving an M

No matter how I order these letters, I get gibberish (although MELIM is a Brazilian trio). So, I had some tiny "aha" moments coming up with the alternatives, but not the big "aha".

[MMe]

As Joe said the play is The Tempest, not Tempest, so it doesn't work. Secondly, as a tip for solving Matt's puzzles, Matt is too polished to give solvers a random group of letters to anagram for a solution. Almost always the letters composing the answer will be found in grid order. If you have to anagram to get your answer be very skeptical of what you have.

True (though there are other "natural" orders that come in now and then: left-to-right, acrosses-then-downs, clockwise around the grid, etc.).

The "real" titles of especially Macbeth and Othello are iffy, but there is no doubt that the titles standard today are as needed for the meta to work.

[FirstMax]

So the repeats of Hey/Yet are unrelated to the meta? I’ve never known these puzzles to break the standard rules of crosswords unless it’s in service to the meta. Am I missing something? (BTW I thought it was a guide on how to solve, the Hey “turns” into Yet. AlTURNative)

[Wlawson]

I’m with Colin and BethA…When I used the ordinal numbers with Othello and got armdyu, I realized that it almost spelled “myriad”, if it weren’t for Othello. I thought “myriad” would be a good answer, so I saw that there was an “i” in square 11, and then found another list of plays that said Richard II was the 11th play by performance date. Richard fit, and I convinced myself that the II was just confirmation of the 11, so I went with “myriad”. Oh well, better luck next week.