"Plurality" May 12, 2023

[KayW]

And @Inca wittily replied:

On shore!
Thanks to the zoom sess. Should have mentioned that PLURALITY reminded me of a recent Shenk acrostic.

The poet says that plural of mouse is mice but the plural of house isn't hice.
My question is: Is the plural of spouse, spice?

[MajordomoTom]

yes, they are the spice of life, so that works

[steveb]

I briefly thought the answer might be TRIO. I spotted the METS/REDS thing while doing the grid, so I went looking for other clues that could have alternate answers that were 4-letter plurals. I found a couple of easy ones, since they were part of the theme that I hadn't quite grokked yet: 27A (OAKS*) and 10D (TENS). That gave me TR_O, so I went looking for an alternate 4-lettter answer starting with I. The best I could come up with was 4D (ICUS). That seemed way too sloppy to be the answer, and how did I know it wasn't RIOT instead? So I set it aside on Thursday and came back for another look on Friday, when I saw the plural conversions and found the right path.

I was a little slowed down because my first answer for 43A was BORES, so I wondered why 30D would convert to a word that was already used. On the Zoom call, someone mentioned 24D and I noticed that I had WEIGHB written in there. Then the whole thing fell into place.

* It turns out that a lot of trees have serrated leaves. Here in California, we have oaks everywhere, so that was my reflexive alternate answer for 27A. What is this "elm" you speak of?

[ron]

I had figured a mechanism pretty quick, but when I came up with D-A-T I tried to jump right to DATA somehow. So I was wondering if the solution would only use one of the E's substituted into SQUARE FOOT, and where was an A word to fit either TENS or REDS. That didn't really make sense though and there was no A word.

At one point I was looking at UNITS for TENS, and wondered if DATU could be a word. It is! Or rather they are - rulers in the Philippines.

But that just seemed too obscure. Then I got to crawling through the clues and the Reds popped out along with memories of Rose's nasty run at Harrelson and the rest fell into place.

well, as @OliviaL pointed out in post above, "REDS" does seem to fit the clue "Colored group as in Risk" which would yield "ARMY" and there's your A!

It's just as well I was never much of a Risk player, though in this case the result would have been the same.

I was probably going with DATA unless something much more obvious came to mind.

[vandono]

When i read the clue for 23A, I initially thought 'elms' before realizing it was too short. I initially had 'bores' for 43A until the crossing downs made me change that. And my first thought for 45D was 'tippled' before I looked at the grid and realized it didn't fit. Some days even my mistakes are lucky.

[michaelm]

In the spirit of the this week's contest, should WSJ award a plurality of MUG?

[LadyBird]

One of my solving rules is--DON'T pay attention to double letters because it is always a rabbit hole. But Cathy, THESE words with double letters intersect with words with the SAME double letter! That has to be significant.

I quickly found 3 such pairs and their intersecting letters were A L __ S. Ooh, it ends with an S--that's a good sign. The only plural nouns that I could come up with were ALBS, ALES, ALMS, or maybe ALPS. My search for intersecting B's, E's, M's, or P's failed.

Then I noticed the correct step one. So, ELMS is one of the new words. Look at that--HELMS. Well, there is no way that there is a TIPPLED+1 in this grid. Fortunately, I quickly saw the correct path shortly thereafter.

[DBMiller]

While I should have noticed the themers all having ending words that used irregular pluralizations right away, I didn't.

3 out of 4 of the long themers have an "S" in them, but I can't seem to make any plurals using them, and what would I do with 33a?

BRISKTE is almost BRISKET. Could that somehow correspond to 49d MEATS?

There are a lot of plurals in this puzzle, maybe I can match them up with other answers...

I can relate 27a Aspens to 44a Forest
I can relate 64d Rods (A distance of 16.5 feet) to 34d Mile
I can relate 53d Tons to 24d Weight
I can relate 10d Units to 7d Army

Forest Gump
The Green Mile
Cast Away? Big?
Saving Private Ryan?

Tom Hanks? What does that have to do with anything.

After beating that horse to death for way longer than I should have, I finally notice what I'm supposed to...

Tempo -> Tempi
Woman -> Women
Basis -> Bases (Back to Army?)
Foot -> Feet

Aha! Definitely a good start.

IEEE? That a set of standards... Nah...

I copied my notes wrong, and went with Forest instead of Aspens

Tippled -> Drank
Elms -> Forest (Should have been Aspens)
Bases -> Army (Should have been Bores -> Tires)
Tens -> Units
Reds -> Mets

So now I had DFAUM. That made no sense. Even I drop one of the two E's from the change in FEET, I can make DFAU or DFAM. Neither works. The latter is close to dram, maybe I got Elms wrong? Is DRAM plural? No! Move on, idiot.

I re-read the clue for ASPENS and made the final click. Real alternate answers for clues that could be applied to the alternate answers when you change the plurality of the themers. Very nice.

Datum -> Data

[Janet]

Another mugless Monday! I did enjoy the puzzle and got the right answer.

[mlvilv]

very clever. I had the idea of making the long answers plural but then I didn't know what to do with all these e's and other random letters. Never occurred to me to look at the new downs with those different letters. Even if it did tbh I wouldn't have known tempi would be the plural for tempo, and I wouldn't have known tippled meant drank. On to the next puzzle!

[ZooAnimalsOnWheels]

The cow in the plural may be cows or kine,
And the plural of vow is vows, not vine,

I remember cow/kine as an old Will Shortz Sunday puzzle: "What English language word has a plural form that includes no letters found in its singular form?"
He did allow that the plural was somewhat obscure, but hinted that it could be found in "The Lord of the Rings".

[ky-mike]

I totally missed that changing a letter to create the plural also created the new answer words. I had written out the themers and then converted to plurals on a separate sheet of paper. I knew I had to deal with the letter changes, but it took a bit of trial and error to get there. I just don’t solve as quickly when away from home. I should be back home for the next round of puzzles.

[The XWord Rabbit]

Another week, another sorry tale that there aren’t enough sorry tales worth mentioning, rabbit hole-wise.

A multi-step lesson in plurals from Mr. Shenk this week. First, pluralize the last word in the four across anchor entries: TEMPI, WOMEN, BASES and FEET. Second, notice the how the five down words that intersect those pluralized letters changed meaning. Third, find clues in the puzzle that those new words would answer. Fourth, make note of the first letters of the original grid entries of those other clues. The result? DATUM. Then, pluralize it, making DATA the meta.

Oh, sure, there were a couple of duplicate dead ends, like the appearance of double letters in crossing grid entries. And DB Miller, unsurprisingly, was able to deftly link four answers to Tom Hanks (yes, Tom Hanks) via 44A. Forest (Gump), 34D. Mile (Green) 53D. Tons (Big) and 10D. Units (Saving Private Ryan). But that’s business as usual, as far as your Rabbit is concerned.

So how do we “rap” this up? Well, Carmen Miranda never sang a song about irregular plurals, but this guy sure did –



(I don’t think Jay-Z has anything to worry about.)

[MikeMillerwsj]

The contest answer is DATA. The four longest Across answers end with words that are pluralized by changing vowels (TEMPO/TEMPI, WOMAN/WOMEN, BASIS/BASES, FOOT/FEET). If you swap those vowels in, the new crossing Down answers fit clues for other grid answers (TIPPLED/DRANK, ELMS/ASPENS, BORES/TIRES, TENS/UNITS, REDS/METS). The first letters of those other answers spell DATUM, whose own irregular plural is the contest answer.

A big turnout for this ingenious puzzle: 1710 entries, about 85% correct (nice going, solvers--that's higher than our usual 75%). Quite a large grab-bag of unsuccessful 4-letter guesses including FEET (23), MOMS (15), JURY (4), ARMS (2), APPS and many others.

Congrats to this week's winner: Deborah Henry of Maineville, Ohio!

[whimsy]

And @Inca wittily replied:

On shore!
Thanks to the zoom sess. Should have mentioned that PLURALITY reminded me of a recent Shenk acrostic.

The poet says that plural of mouse is mice but the plural of house isn't hice.
My question is: Is the plural of spouse, spice?

yes, they are the spice of life, so that works

Lunch on the terrace of a local winery today where I saw this:

[Bird Lives]

I used the same term (tour de force) on the Daily and Weekly Puzzles forum. It reminded me of one of the puzzles in the CCCC collection.

[Bird Lives]

(I don’t think Jay-Z has anything to worry about.)[/b]

Is this Benchen? Sounds Strine to me.