MGWCC #756 - “Consonantal Drift”

[HoldThatThought]

Speaking only for myself, I spotted the 7 letter CVCVCVC words that began 5 clues, and only then used those five to identify the five 3-vowel grid entries. My meta-chanism radar didn't light up for oui, eau, IOU, etc., which are oft-seen grid glue.

Sudafed and Botulin were far more eye-catching, for the reasons that others have already noted; Sudafed is not exactly a common headache remedy, and it's quite a stretch to clue the word "protein" with botulin. I circled those immediately for further pondering.

At this point, I was still far from home; thanks to the title, I spent a whole lot of time wondering how consonants could drift across the grid. The SI ending of AGASSI, coupled with its neighbor NUS, offered a promising "improvement" on the idea that Sudafed was a common remedy for generic headaches; now it could be sinus headaches, which seemed more justifiable, and, in a related but frustratingly different manner, the final H of SMH could "drift" to the ALO of the following ALOU entry, to provide HALO, an alternative answer to 35D's "surrounding glow". A helpful nudge pushed me off that fruitless track, and back to my Sudafed/Botulin curiosity.

Then noting the CVCVCVC pattern, I recognized the VVVs within as grid entries, and searched the rest of the clues for the 3 other 7 letter CVCVCVC clue openers I was sure I would find.

At this point, I assumed that the 5 CVCVCVCs were Step 1, intended to point to the five VVV words in the grid and then applied the frequent mechanism of looking at their clues (eg 34A Rhone contents") for the final step.

As solvers know, that was exactly backward; NRRDM made me think of MuRDeRiNg a few sheets of notebook paper, and I admit to uttering several non-5 letter interjections.

So... that's my version of how solving "backward" gave me a headache that Sudafed failed to ease.

[mkmf]

Egads! Last Saturday after seeing the prompt I said "I think the answer could be 'hmmph' - it's all consonants".

But I didn't start the grid until Tuesday. I saw the all-vowel answers and tried a lot of things, but I didn't notice the relevant clues. I kept at it Wed. morning, hoping to solve it in the last 5 minutes for that Buzzer Beater badge, but failed. I didn't think about a hail mary and had forgotten all about my earlier prediction of HMMPH.

I read just enough of Joon's Crossword Fiend blog of the puzzle -to where he called out 'Botulin'and 'Sudafed'- to see what I needed to look for in the clues and stopped reading. I found the rest of the clues and jotted down the grid answers in random order as I went. I figured there must be another step required because HHPMM did not appear at all promising. Then I did a double take. And a head slap!

I'm glad that I at least got to solve the end part of the meta myself, and that I didn't just have to just read the answer. But I kind of regret forgetting about my hail mary.

[FKelly]

A wonderful group solve with @Joe Ross, @KayW, @Bob cruise director, @FKelly, and @Jade. Synergy at its best!

I really didn't help solve.
I was merely listening to the strategy used and hoping Matt might use a similar mechanism for the WSJPC.