"Counting Calories" - December 20, 2019

[sphorning]

Didn't enjoy this one very much. I was thinking "counting" the number of "calories" would be counting the K's because calories are K-cals. Then I looked for numbers in the answers to add those up and find corresponding letters in the grid, etc. Finally saw the eleven and seven, but there were 12 seven letter words, not eleven...
Bah humbug!

[MajordomoTom]

I also wanted it to be SLURPEE, or HOTDOG, or COFFEE, but couldn't find any support for those anywhere (thank the gods I'm not an anagrammer).

[tim1217]

I saw the themers right away on Thursday afternoon and went with the 'go to' mechanism of first letters. Unfortunately (as Al mentioned in his comment) I threw a hurdle up by combining the 3 letters of the 4 groups of seven and reading them each DOWN and then ACROSS when trying to make a 15-letter word. So I ended up with TRE HEM USK EER TES, which was just gibberish to me. So I abandoned the idea and then spent the next three days exploring elsewhere. Then on Sunday afternoon I realized my mistake and read the letters literally from 'top to bottom' and of course, there it was. The amazing thing was that in almost all cases (there was one this summer than ran 'left to right') this mechanism runs from 'top to bottom', but because I threw up that mental hurdle, it blocked me from seeing the obvious.

[Eric Porter]

At first I tried common methods like looking for common words. Then you have Elector/Elektra, NOCAL / LOWCAL (taking the start of 35D) which threw me off. Finally, there was "haha good 1" (27D), which led me to go hunting for numbers.

When there's a new solution method and the title only confirms a 100% answer, these frustrate me. I probably solved it in a little under an hour after noticing that the grid was unusual. We usually have 3 grid entries across the top/bottom, not 2. I was also focusing on 7 and 11 after everything else failed.

[spotter]

This one broke a 7 week solve streak for me. Funny I had looked at the end of the 7 and 11 letter clues, but completely overlooked the simple task of taking the first letters. Oops! I got too caught up with the title. It really didn't help on this one.

[MajordomoTom]

Like the answer - saw the THREE METEERS part but didn't catch on to add the 3 other clues. Long, wild stretch alternative: If you take the bottom right of the puzzle, and then count out "CAL" OR "IES", the remaining letters anagram to SLURPEE.

more detail, please? I'm not able to follow the rabbit tracks on this one.

[tim1217]

My WAG's at the very beginning were the obvious 'SLURPEE' but I thought it was too obvious and would be an squeezy guess that anyone could randomly get. The other was SUSHI. 7-Eleven is now a Japanese-owned company and yes, they do sell sushi (I think there's a common joke about that).

[juliet]

Finally, there was "haha good 1" (27D), which led me to go hunting for numbers.

I followed that rabbit for quite a while--there were seven clues with numbers (several years, plus the "1" mentioned by Eric, and the "538" electors), calling attention to themselves.

[juliet]

Did anyone else notice that 30A is NOMEN and that all the gender-specific clues/answers going across are female? And 7D is GREATMEN and all the gender-specific clues/answers going down are male? Coincidence? Red herring?

If this was intentional, Matt Gaffney should send Bill Bovard a mug!

This is so clever of Bill to notice! Perhaps noting "gender-specific clues/answers" is worth keeping in mind for a future meta-solving strategy.

[Jeanrosz]

I found 11 capital C’s in the clues so I was hoping to find 7 capital I’s too for ICEEs ...but no. So maybe seven seas?.. then I hunted capital R for RC. As in cola... even though it didn’t quite fit. I submitted to you I was on shore but I guess wrong beach!

[pookie]

I thought the answer was a $3.25 can of cat food.

[Tina]

Having begun constructing crosswords myself, the first thing I notice when I start a new puzzle is the grid design. In this case, I noticed the triple-stacked 7's in every corner and the three 11's going across the middle. (Along with several other long entries.) This is an unusual grid design for a meta and looked more like a themeless. So when I saw the SEVENELEVEN entry, I had a pretty good idea what the meta mechanism probably involved. This is a good tip for a beginning meta solver: Anything unusual about the grid probably has something to do with the meta.

[jag]

I completely missed the rabbit on this one. I got wrapped around the axle on using Roman Numerals in some fashion. Given the large number of I, V, M, D, L, and C's I felt justified in pursuing this trail.

I attempted to add up all the Roman numerals (in various permutations, some of which are non valid/well-formed Roman numerals - e.g. CDC) and got various numbers such as 7013. My "hail mary" answer was "M&Ms", on the assumption that somehow one could add up the numbers and obtain a sum evenly divisible by 1000 (M) - e.g. MMMMMMM - M and M's.

[MajordomoTom]

The excessive number of IVs and VIs in the grid also caught my eye. Also the six Ks.

Failed to note the "CDC", which is ironic, given that I have an older BMW 750 with the license plate DCCL (yes, I'm proud of that one).

[Bob cruise director]

Having begun constructing crosswords myself, the first thing I notice when I start a new puzzle is the grid design. In this case, I noticed the triple-stacked 7's in every corner and the three 11's going across the middle. (Along with several other long entries.) This is an unusual grid design for a meta and looked more like a themeless. So when I saw the SEVENELEVEN entry, I had a pretty good idea what the meta mechanism probably involved. This is a good tip for a beginning meta solver: Anything unusual about the grid probably has something to do with the meta.

Excellent advice for us all.

[Wendy Walker]

That is why I was so amused when I got the answer to THIS puzzle. I failed to solve that earlier puzzle and even dragged poor Mark down the candy aisle at Wegman's hoping for inspiration!

I remember well your distress with that puzzle, so when I saw your comment here, before I'd even looked at the puzzle, I knew what the answer was going to end up being.

And you call yourself the spoiler police?! Tsk Tsk.

(Just kidding; no worries. Getting there was the fun part.)

That is completely amazing. What an incredible memory! So sorry I provided a spoiler!

[tim1217]

Another rabbit hole I went down (after my initial mistake) was taking Counting Calories literally. So I counted all the C's, A's, L's, etc. And then looking to the letter in the grid number that corresponded. Again, gibberish.

[MajordomoTom]

I did that and also took the number of Cs, As, etc and said "ok, what letter in the alphabet does that number correspond to" ... which produced pretty deep gibberish. I didn't even finish that - I got to either the O or the R and realized that I had one vowel and something like a J and a Q and ... nope, didn't see that path leading anywhere I wanted to be, anytime of day or night.

It clearly wasn't a path into Apu's Kwik-E-Mart.

[DBMiller]

The calories part led me to finding a 2x2 square in the grid that held DIET. And I found a chain of letters that spelled SODA. But nothing tying it all together. Also went down the NOxxx path as noted by others.

Three Musketeers was going to be my guess as that and a Pepsi are the two things I buy most often at 7-11. I knew somehow those numbers had to be a clue and after sleeping on it overnight, I took another look and the grid pattern jumped out.

[Joedbee]

I was in the right ball park but was playing the wrong game. Should have bunted but punted instead. My consolation is that the Eagles won.