"Playing Dress-Up" June 23, 2023

[Trish]

I thought this could be my week, the odds would be as good as they could possibly be for me to win the mug. Curses, foiled again!

Me too! I thought with fewer submissions, my chances were greatly better! Oh well, will keep trying!

[clonefitz]

Ah well, maybe next week. Nice clean, well-constructed meta, just not in my wheelhouse.

[michaelm]

Knew the three baseball terms SLIDER, ACE and DINGER, knew not that they were mascots.
Thinking replace the W in WATER with T for TATER (Dinger) but got no more traction there.

Thinking the answers were "dressed up" and maybe look for simpler versions:
Thus, learned that Eddie Rickenbacker was a member of the Los Angeles Elks Lodge #99.

IMO, whether solved or not, Mike and Matt always provide an amazing experience on a weekly basis.
Have a great week all!

[ship4u]

Our shovels got one heck of a workout this week digging rabbit holes.

Playing Dress-up had Cynthia searching for clothing items reminiscent of childhood fun. PATS (10A) can be PANTS if you add an "N", HOES (47A) can be SHOES if you add an "S." SRI (38A) can be SARI.

I took Dress-Up more literally. When would one dress up? Going to a PROM, (6D), changing the "I" to an "O". Going to a DANCE (29D) altering Lance.

Then, of course, maybe "UP" is the real clue, eh? When you hit ROCK BOTTOM, there's no way but UP. A (money) PIT begs one to look UP.

What an exhausting exercise!

We finally googled all 4 of the second words of the themers at the same time and started down the mascot road.......

[BethA]

This is what I sent in along with my (correct) answer —

A thing of beauty, though I had a hard time getting to baseball, since I’d never heard of any of those mascots. Maybe easier if you were from one of those cities, and enjoyed watching baseball. I was off in fashion designer land, playwrights, characters, and everywhere else for a day or so. Makes the aha moment even better when there is a bit of a struggle for it!

In addition —

I had a lot of flailing around, uncertain if the theme answers really were theme answers. Found exactly 4 clues using -ing forms of verbs:
Bugling - Elk
Chatting - Lol
Jousting - Lance
(ELL_, now all I need is an E to get that fashion magazine!)
Deserving - Absolvable —Dang!

Also found exactly 4 characters or roles, (CARLA, SCROOGE, ALMA, BORAT) but could get nowhere.

Decided to check this forum Friday afternoon, to see if a lot of people were struggling or not. I was helped by the comment that someone had stumbled onto the correct theme by googling. I had only fleetingly thought about baseball Thursday evening. I was also encouraged (and impressed) to see BarbaraK and EricP at the top of page 1! In times past it seemed like both were sort of in sync with my meta-solving, not always, but often. If they struggled then I struggled. So along with other usuals, kind of a barometer to use! Gave me some confidence that I could solve, anyway!

[LesY]

This may have been mentioned already but was anyone else thrown by the presence of both “casual” (dress) and “formal” (dress) in the clues? That plus “tacky” kept me distracted for a while.

Also PRIM —> PROM, PROV —> PROM.

[FloridaMan81]

For me this puzzle was definitely fair and solvable and as Conrad said very Shenkian. It was soundly constructed and had a reasonable to high degree of difficulty. But I would also say it wasn't Mike's finest. I got the baseball theme fairly quickly (though I saw RBI and not the full Orbit as relevant) and spent time:
1. Looking for clues (not CLEWs which though I saw I didn't ascribe enough import to like other solver/constructors) that met the definition. I saw SLID and thought BOLTED DOWNWARD or RACED LIKE THE WIND; I saw DINGER and thought GO THE DISTANCE etc.
2. Thought each key word had the additional UP applied: slider could be CHANGE UP and FLY could be POP UP. STIll nothing
3. Then abandoneed baseball and looked up DRESSAGE terms - wrong googling!
4. FInally gave up after thinking it may have to do with Plays (like Shakespeare)
I even looked for the very-Shenkian trick of placing a relevant co-clue on the same line as the themers but hadn't made the city connection.
I even said to myself that Shenk is a big baseball fan. Well in the eternal battle of constructor vs. solver, today the constructor won! Will I be back? Oh definitely.

Also new term? Getting MASCOTED?

Wow Matty… we went through an eerily similar path here except I went #4, #3, #2 on your list before finally getting it. I even found some google terms from the grid that synched with dressage, I was sure that was the path for a while.

[MaineMarge]

Well gang,my Pageant peony has gone by, but if you landed on GARB (like me) or some other pageant worthy answer, put on this banner and smile til next Thursday
I’m wearing one myself

[DBMiller]

Also new term? Getting MASCOTED?

How about getting GARBled?

[The XWord Rabbit]

The XWord Rabbit begs your forgiveness.

He carefully read and reread your responses, expecting a steady stream of great tales of Muggles lost in the woods. What he got instead was – well, it was more like a tsunami.

First, the methodology of Mr. Shenk’s “Playing Dress-Up” puzzle: Each of the anchor across entries ended with the name of a MLB mascot: SLIDER (Cleveland), ACE (Toronto), DINGER (Colorado) and ORBIT (Houston). Each 4-letter entry adjacent to those answers consisted of the scoreboard abbreviation of that city plus one additional letter. Those added letters spelled out the meta: WEAR.

So what happened? Well, the first step seemed to be baffling enough for a great many of you and that resulted in a general thrashing about like your Rabbit has never seen before. Trouble is, most of all that energy covered the same ground.

Some of you correctly identified the baseball-related terms in the entries but then flew off and got mired in team names or parts of uniforms. With the tiniest bit of anagramming GARB became a popular incorrect answer.

Your Rabbit appreciated those of you who tried to connect motion picture references to the meta … CARLA, SCROOGE, ALMA, BORAT … and Tom Hanks. For whatever reason, Mr. Hanks always seems to turn up in a lot in your tales.

And then there was the entry at 19A: CLEW. Correctly interpreted by many as being involved in the meta construction, but not much else.

It’s probably best to just let this one pass and hope for greater things next week.

Oh, and incidentally, here’s the answer to JeanneC’s question (#243):
Yes! They’re available on Amazon, of course.

[ricky]

I figured that 19A “clew” had to be part of the answer, because a typical crossword would use “claw” crossing with 12D “tman”. I noticed the potential baseball theme from “slider”, “ace”, and “dinger” but abandoned it for awhile because “orbit” did not seem to fit.

Eventually I Googled “orbit baseball” and discovered the mascot theme, which revealed why “clew” was necessary.

A bonus from this meta is that I now know that Clark is the Cubs mascot. I have been a Cubs fan since 1982 but could not have named the mascot.

I thought the same thing. Not only could CLEW - a very odd entry - have been CLAW, that whole NE corner was ugly. There had to be some reason for that. What I didn't catch was that each hidden-letter entry was on the same line as the theme entry, so CLEW had to be in that particular spot.

I also immediately thought baseball and then set it aside because I couldn't find an angle for POLAR or ORBIT.

This puzzle really needed a Gaffney-style final across entry like TEAMS ["Organizations with mascots"] or MLB or something. I don't follow baseball but I have a decent mental stockpile of sports trivia and the only baseball mascots I could name off the top of my head are the Phillie Phanatic, Mr / Mrs Met and the four Nationals mascots who are the US presidents on Mount Rushmore.

Also, this puzzle had 17 clues that were two-word alliterative phrases. I know this is a common Shenk clue format from getting bogged down on prior metas, but I still wasted a lot of time thinking "17 occurrences... Has to be meta related, right?"

[Bird Lives]

When I don't see anything right away, I look for signs of forced entries. In this case it was CLEW, which could have been the less obscure CLAW. Also CHAO (52A) which could have been the the less obscure CLEO. But it wasn't until after I'd solve the meta that I understood why Mike could not have used either of these.

[Miki]

I submitted GARB very early on. I even included an explanation, which I don't do normally.

Would WSJ ever admit to us, curious muggles, how many GARB submissions they received?

[BarbaraK]

I submitted GARB very early on. I even included an explanation, which I don't do normally.

Would WSJ ever admit to us, curious muggles, how many GARB submissions they received?

There were 84

See post #292.