MGWCC #760 — “Word for Word”

[BarbaraK]

I guess it is technically true that the answer words didn't also have to cover the whole alphabet, but I think it was pretty key to the solving process and therefore definitely not irrelevant. The fact that there are 26 one-word clues (each with a one-word answer) is a pretty strong hint to wonder if they make a cipher. You check them and they do, so you *know* this has to be part of the solution. And a natural thing to do is to write down the cipher in alphabetical order. Once you do that, if you're like me you stare at it for two days without finding the answer and then you randomly glance at it one afternoon and you see a backwards word and you're like "oh, there it is" (and then the "T=20--M=13" thing confirms it). Not easy ... but it would have been much harder without the mid-solve "you're on the right track" confirmation provided by the fact that the 26 clue/answer pairs make a substitution cipher, and the resulting motivation to write the cipher down.

pgw

Once you find a "cipher", if you're like me, you start trying to decipher things. The central entry since it's otherwise unused. The title, the instructions, Matt's name. That 2013 puzzle, the 1913 puzzle. The rest of the grid, the rest of the clues. Because a cipher must be meant to be used to decipher something. Needed a friend to pull me out of that rabbit hole.

[HunterX]

So if what you're saying is 26 one word clues, but only 10 one-word answers that spell CHAMPION. that still could be accomplished in a normal grid or 17x17. And your letter string would yield a lot of random letters except for CHAMPION. [kinda like what happened in the original].But you wouldn't want to use many of the CHAMPION letters outside of 13 to 20. And you wouldn't want to spell out any other words. And you might have to change the title, since there are now a lot of single words in the grid instead of a defined set.

That would have been much easier for Matt. But you still have to pick out CHAMPION backwards, which as we know is not intuitive. So he had two choices, and took the superhuman route. I can't see a nit for that.

Well, yeah. I pretty much agree with that. Except I never suggested either that the grid be smaller, or that the answers to the clues for A-L and U-Z not be one word. As you said, if some of them weren't one word, the title wouldn't work. And the title directs you to look for pairs of one word. And you also make a good point that if the other random letters for the A-L and U-Z clues happen to spell a word, that might be confusing or distracting, causing people to think that it could be part of the answer. Though, even with pangrammatic letters, as the grid contained, that would be a possibility. I agree that it should be avoided, but since they'd be outside the 20-13 range, it wouldn't change the answer.

I was only saying that the 26 one-word answers (to the 26 one-word clues) didn't have to be pangrammatic for the meta to work. That's all. It's not a big complaint in any way. I admire the construction greatly. It just made me think there was a reason for the answers to be pangrammatic. And the "It implies a cipher" reason is the only one I can see as a justification for why he did it. And that reasoning wasn't necessary to solve the meta. That's all.

[oggy]

Once you find a "cipher", if you're like me, you start trying to decipher things. The central entry since it's otherwise unused. The title, the instructions, Matt's name. That 2013 puzzle, the 1913 puzzle. The rest of the grid, the rest of the clues. Because a cipher must be meant to be used to decipher something. Needed a friend to pull me out of that rabbit hole.

Ksow. O wpzmk wn qhts koqz uztopszjomb wkhvv ksrk O ksomy ok qobsk srcz pzjqrmzmkix unmz wnqzksomb kn qx ejrom. Jzbhirj Zmbiows kzdk yomur innyw wkjrmbz kn qz mnl.

[Al Sisti]

Once you find a "cipher", if you're like me, you start trying to decipher things. The central entry since it's otherwise unused. The title, the instructions, Matt's name. That 2013 puzzle, the 1913 puzzle. The rest of the grid, the rest of the clues. Because a cipher must be meant to be used to decipher something. Needed a friend to pull me out of that rabbit hole.

Ksow. O wpzmk wn qhts koqz uztopszjomb wkhvv ksrk O ksomy ok qobsk srcz pzjqrmzmkix unmz wnqzksomb kn qx ejrom. Jzbhirj Zmbiows kzdk yomur innyw wkjrmbz kn qz mnl.

Jobsk?

[Laura M]

Once you find a "cipher", if you're like me, you start trying to decipher things. The central entry since it's otherwise unused. The title, the instructions, Matt's name. That 2013 puzzle, the 1913 puzzle. The rest of the grid, the rest of the clues. Because a cipher must be meant to be used to decipher something. Needed a friend to pull me out of that rabbit hole.

Ksow. O wpzmk wn qhts koqz uztopszjomb wkhvv ksrk O ksomy ok qobsk srcz pzjqrmzmkix unmz wnqzksomb kn qx ejrom. Jzbhirj Zmbiows kzdk yomur innyw wkjrmbz kn qz mnl.

Jobsk?

Qz knn, rii nv ksz bjou zmkjozw rmu tihzw, om enks ksz zmtnuz rmu uztnuz uojztkonmw. Womtz O tnhium'k vobhjz nhk 124R O lrw bnomb kn ejhkz vnjtz ok. Ok sru kn ez kszjz wnqzlszjz!

[HoldThatThought]

I'm pretty much done with this, because, at this point, I can certainly see why readers of this thread might conclude that this is a great personal cause for Hunter and me. The presumption goes that, the more times we discuss it, the more emotional we must be.This is that one rare case where I can confidently speak for the both of us, reading his mind, and state that:

1. We both enjoyed the puzzle and were extremely impressed by its construction

2. Our feedback was never intended to be critical, and should not be read that way.

Hunter began this conversation by sharing a solver's conversation we had had, in which we both agreed that a certain element of the construction had led us to contemplate paths far afield from the eventual solution. I concurred, and, probably made the mistake of attempting to further explicate our logic; making this, I can now see, seem like a huge cause. The response was "No, no, the two of you are wrong, that HAD to be an element", and, since that time, we have both - only - tried to better explain our thesis. None of this is a flame war, and none of this is personal.

I believe that the "argument" comes down to semantics. The counter to our position is that "Matt Gaffney gave us a discoverable cipher, and therefore, there are implied rules to what a cipher must look like." The rule that seems to be underlying the objection to our umm.. dissent? ... is that a simple cipher is 1:1, each letter has a unique substitution.

To some extent, that statement is true. iF the author gave us a cipher.

Hunter and I have suggested that Matt need not have provided a discoverable cipher, but, rather a discoverable look up table. Look up tables are a poor relation to the cipher - they have much less restrictive rules. Most importantly to the present case, a look up table need not feature distinct transpositions.

How was the lookup table "discoverable"? Exactly as the supposed cipher key was. Each of the 26 one word clues had a one word answer. The table is nothing more than a set of matched pairs; (first letter clue, first letter answer).

Once so discovered and constructed, instruction : "Read out the letters associated with the letters M through T in reverse order" provides the solution CHAMPION.

If you proceed from the understanding that the solving method required discovering a cipher, then yes, both the clues AND the answers were necessarily pangrammic, so as to provide a unique mapping. Hunter and I have (apparently badly) made the claim that the underlying method could well have been a less rule-constrained look up table, to the same end.

I've said what I had to say. Gaffney did, in fact, provide a cipher. Hunter and I thought that this unnecessarily complicated our own shared solving process.

[ricky]

One-word clues never stand out to me as something to pay attention to. I wonder if that has something to do with clues in newspaper puzzles being shorter than they used to be due to shrinking print space? For the last puzzle I constructed for Universal, the editors cut many of the clues to one or two words (not a complaint - they're great editors).

[TMart]

I thought it was a beautifully constructed cipher. But after trying dozens of things, I couldn’t figure out what to decipher with it. And like others, I already had the answer written backwards on my scratch pad but just didn’t see it.

[Abide]

Hunter/Hold: I never ascribed any bad intentions to any of your posts. I fully understand you were explaining the original thoughts. My perspective was from trying to look at how Matt approaches the creative process. When there is less theme material in the grid, he would never construct a super-sized grid. Case in point - the two 13x13 puzzles earlier this month. So having ten theme words in a supersize grid didn't connect with me.

Another alternative would be to scrap the 2013 idea and have the 26 theme words in the grid spell out a message like SRENNIWLLAEREWREAYWENYPPAH. I think that might have satisfied both of us.

[MMe]

I wonder how many hits Matt's Dec. 21, 2013 anniversary meta received this week. Anyone rifling through my recycling bin will be very confused by grids of that puzzle and the Wynne one filled out using the substitution cipher.

But I'm disappointed that apparently there won't be a (nother) week 5/5 this week.