" Make A Run For It " November 18, 2022

[mydogsam]

I'm not a regular poster here but I have a few suggestions:

1) Since we're talking mutliple mugs, and there were four different chances of seeing the 5 K's from four different answers, I think there should be four mugs awarded between those who correctly answered FIVE-K since we couldn't be sure which of the four answers triggered the actual AHA moment.

2) Also since we have a now have a weekly RABBIT HOLE award, I suggest in honor of this Thanksgiving we have a yearly TURKEY OF THE YEAR crossword puzzle award. Among other things it could be based on how many "AHA" moments end up in a "what-the-etc." moments.

(Disclaimer: answered 5-K based on 59 Across, i.e. cup 4)

[DBMiller]

Waiting for the big "mea culpa" explanation. I suspect it goes something like this...

MG: Hey Mike, I got this weeks WSJ meta ready, can you solve/edit/review it?

MS: I did the puzzle... Is the meta 5K, or 20K?

MG: It's 5K. There's no such race as 20K, right?

MS: Ummm... Google says there is, maybe you should add an extra K somewhere so people don't count them all up.

MG: Okay, change 6A to DELI and 21A to NECK. and run it.

[Zobo3737]

I submitted 20 K, and yes, that is a race. Run wild (amok) convinced me to count all 20, not just 5.

However, put me in the camp that believes that "half marathon" is a better, more complete, more clever answer--one more worthy of the Contest.

[DaveWa]

Waiting for the big "mea culpa" explanation. I suspect it goes something like this...

MG: Hey Mike, I got this weeks WSJ meta ready, can you solve/edit/review it?

MS: I did the puzzle... Is the meta 5K, or 20K?

MG: It's 5K. There's no such race as 20K, right?

MS: Ummm... Google says there is, maybe you should add an extra K somewhere so people don't count them all up.

MG: Okay, change 6A to DELI and 21A to NECK. and run it.

MS: Well, Google says the half marathon is also called a 21k. Now what?

MG: Let's leave the 21st k in the grid and enjoy the Muggle discussion on Monday. You have plenty of mugs so you can give one for each of the three responses.

MS: I'm with you up to the last part. We'll just accept all three (or more) answers as correct and still only have to part with one mug.

[HunterX]

…

Took a photo of this guy here in Africa. He would win any 5K against mere humans:

C592B7DD-D936-44FF-A010-3046789E9779.jpeg

I believe that's a Mountain Bongo! Good pic!

Thanks! Had to take that one quickly, as the kudus are skittish in Nambiti. They call them kudus, which may be the same as a Mountain Bongo. But I don’t know the latter.

There were tons of these around. They even got into our compound, which is surrounded by an electric fence. They are like deer, but with the size of a big horse.

Kudus to anyone who knew that name!

[Joe Ross]

I may have "won."

After scrambling to provide the puzzle in the various forms available pre-drop & trying to convince people where they could find them, I solved the top half of the grid, thought "5K" & declared myself ashore. Then I finished the grid & was convinced of "5K." Saw all of the chatter about multiple answers, which was intriguing, but paid little mind: This was a Gaffney puzzle made easy for the WSJ, in my mind. Done.

Since I declared myself ashore, I got a PM from a muggle asking me about the other answers. I replied not knowing of other possibilities & offered my answer, then was told about 20K & half-marathon. I found "half-marathon" to be a fantastic, if unintended, alternate answer and told the muggle to write to the always approachable @MattGaffney, which happened. The backstory is incredibly interesting, but not mine (nor the other muggle's, in his or her opinion) to share.

How did I "win"? In all of the hullabaloo, I forgot to submit an answer. So, in a contest where the odds may have been halved due to other legitimate options, I gave myself no chance to win. "Yay, me!" Right?

Let's wait for Mike Miller's report to see if that story comes out. I think it needs to.

I will caution everyone to not assume bad intentions on anyone's part in the creation & publication of this contest crossword.

[Limerick Savant]

Not surprised at all the hubbub over the solution. I would have liked something a bit less ambiguous to work with too. I considered just about all of the above, including the ski relay but ultimately settled on “5K Run.” I guess that may be disqualified because of the extra word but I reasoned that it was the run of the 5 Ks in the grid spanning answers that was significant. Plus I think it’s a more accurate title for the footrace.

Anyway here is my pre reveal verse with a nod to Thomas A. Harris.

I’m 5K, You’re 5K

This week’s meta, when all’s said and done,
Ain’t straight forward but certainly fun
There’s a number of ways
You can run through the Ks
Each OK for a 5K to run

[MikeyG]

Mine was 5K, and someone previously talked about how Matt often has several themers giving the same meta answer separately.

I figured the alternate was 20K, and I didn't notice the 21st K until right now. Oops.

My favorite footrace of 3 AM RUN TO THE FRIDGE TO GET A SANDWICH is decidedly not correct, it looks like, in any case.

Fun week to start doing the WSJ! Here's to many more shores!

[CPJohnson]

Kind of curious - have the long-timers here ever seen another WSJ meta where the answer was basically in the grid four (or more) different times? I haven't been here THAT long, but don't remember seeing that particular technique before.

As we know, usually the idea is to COMBINE things across multiple answers/clues to get the AHA moment (like the 21K/HALFMARATHON/RELAY crowds did). I don't ever recall the meta being all contained in one answer - and REPEATED a few times across other answers.

Yes, I can think of at least one....I will go look for it.

Here is a partial list; there are probably more.

9-21-15, Road Test, answer VW (already mentioned in post #416)
10-2-15, The Inner City, answer RENO
11-3-17, Head in the Clouds, answer TORNADO (only 2 times)
11-17-15, You Better Shop Around, answer IKEA.

The puzzle I remembered was 5-12-17, Driving You Crazy, answer DOUBLE-PARKING, which had 4 sets of car models in the grid.

[michaelm]

I will caution everyone to not assume bad intentions on anyone's part in the creation & publication of this contest crossword.

Echo that.
Matt Gaffney, Mike Shenk, Patrick Berry et al have provided us endless hours of clever amusement, mental stimulation and welcoming camaraderie.
They also seem to be uncommonly fine human beings as well.

[Cindy N]

I actually submitted:
5K + 5K + 5K + 5K + 1K = 21K
21K = half marathon

I wanted to "show my work." Interestingly enough, Matt didn't comment on Crossword Fiend as he has several times in the past when people have claimed the answer wasn't clear.

[turbotron]

Seriously, putting the 21st K in 21A was just Gaffney being brilliant, sealing the correct answer as HALF MARATHON. Thus not having to have a number in the solution ie. “5K”.

My thoughts exactly! Oh well.. I always still enjoy the free puzzle.

[Bob cruise director]

Our polling of a small sample last night seems to reflect the general meta population

Without counting every comment, it seems pretty balanced between 5K and 21K/half marathon with a few 20k's thrown in. And each argument both pro and con for each answer is very defensible.

I wonder if the candles are burning late in the WSJ world deciding what to do?

[Merry Potter]

As the "Judgement of Solomon" dictates, the only real solution is to break the mug into 3 pieces and reward it to the random entries for the best 3 possible answers...

[iblinked]

Another question about the answer: I correctly landed on five Ks but in my email response I absent-mindedly replied 5 kilometers, thinking that it’s not actually a 5k race but a 5 kilometers race. Yes, I know. But still. Was my submission considered a correct answer?

[MattGaffney]

FIrst I'd like to apologize to solvers for the issues with this meta, and thank Joe Ross and Bob Cruise Director for their efforts here in general and on this meta in particular.

Here's the curious case of what happened on this one, with the great Mike Shenk's full permission to discuss:

I submitted this meta to Mike five weeks ago as usual, in a version that had a total of 22 K's in the grid. The intended meta answer was "5k" as in a 5 kilometer race, indicated by the five K's in each of the four grid entries.

Because a 20k race is also a thing, I of course wanted to eliminate that as a possible alternate answer (four entries times 5ks = 20k). To this end I added two extraneous K's to the fill, in the upper-middle at LACK/NECK and in the lower-middle at (in my original fill) OKOK and AKIN. OHIO and SOFA were the other Acrosses in that section if you want to re-create it.

My reasoning behind adding two extraneous K's instead of just one was that a single K could be overlooked or perhaps justified as a constructor's oversight, but *two* extra K's would be enough to discourage anyone considering submitting 20k as their answer from doing so.

This is a subtle reason for adding those two K's, so in retrospect I should have mentioned to Mike Shenk in my e-mail when submitting this puzzle my reasons for doing so. In my post-mortem analysis of why I didn't do so, I believe that, in that one fateful moment, I thought "he'll see that, no need to mention it." As I've stated before in talks and print, Mike is a rather godlike figure in my mind since I began writing crosswords in the 1980s, so I believe that is why in that split-second of consideration I decided against a clarifying note that would've avoided all these problems.

Again, I knew 20k was a type of race so avoided using 20 k's of course, and then googled "22k race" to see if by chance that was a thing that could be confusing. It wasn't, so off the puzzle went and I didn't consider that there could be any problems with it.

But then Mike, who is normally a pretty hands-off editor in my experience (especially since one small change can lead to big trouble in a meta), decided that the *two* extra K's were unnecessary, and changed the lower-middle to remove one of them. That is a reasonable editorial decision, and I myself had wavered on whether I needed 21 or 22 (I hadn't realized that a 21k was a race at that point; I only Googled 22k).

Unfortunately, as in a Rube Goldberg contraption or an OK GO video, one little change can turn out to be a big problem. The big problem here being that a "21k race" is indeed a thing, since 21k is approximately 13 miles, a.k.a. a half-marathon. So while it's not as common a distance as a marathon or a 5k, it's common enough to lead to confusion.

So that's what happened, and I of course blame myself for not writing a quick note explaining the two extra K's, and of course Mike blames himself for not checking whether a 21k race was a thing. And you have my apologies for the hassle and angst, and if "I got 21k'ed" enters the meta lexicon I won't be upset and will consider it my cross to bear and not Mike's.

[Fogway]

As a life-long fan of the Cleveland Browns, this thread reminds me of a time when Bill Belichick as the Browns head coach was asked about the upcoming game with arch rival, Pittsburgh Steelers. "Well, this game is not about life or death. It's much more serious than that."

Thank you Matt, and Mike for all that you do. Wishing all a very happy Thanksgiving.

[Colin]

Thanks for sharing the explanation @MattGaffney and for all your great metas. To Mike also. A simple solve in the end, but there was I, concerned about finding clues leading to the 4 decimal points missing from the 21k!
Cheers!

[pookie]

Am I glad that I never finished the puzzle Friday and forgot all about until today.
My only comment belongs to Calvin Coolidge when asked about his preference regarding 5K, 21K or half marathon.

[31 Down]

Given how hard Gaffney probably had to work in order to find four separate 15 letter answers with exactly 5 Ks, and the fact that a 5K is a super popular race, that seemed like the obvious solution as opposed to going in any other direction. If he was going for 20K or 21K or something else, I don't think he would have had all 4 of the long answers have exactly five Ks- there probably would have been a clue with 4, one with 6, etc...

I agree that each of the theme answers having 5 Ks each made it a more obvious choice. Maybe the problem here is that it was too and suspiciously obvious. Footsteps of PAGEANT?