MGWCC #793 — "Consider the Alternative"

[HunterX]

So were they red herrings or Easter eggs?

My $.02
<snip>
However - in seeing the write-up on crossword fiend, I'm altering my take on it.)

Thanks for the lead. I almost never remember to look at Fiend. Over there, Matt says,
The original answers to these eight clues (EINE, AURORA, FONDUE, ATOM, DAD, HERON, BORO, RAY) . . . were 100% necessary,

But in his next comment he says,
I realized that someone might just spot the eight OR- words and score right away,

Not to be picky and all, but if you can score right away without noticing the original eight answers, then those answers are not necessary. That is, they are not necessary to the solution. They are, however, necessary to a full appreciation of the puzzle.

@Bird Lives I agree. This one reminds me of the "Word for Word" on 12/23/2022, though it has its differences. That puzzle had 26 pangrammatic, 1-word clues, and you had to identify a subset and look at the first letters of the answers to those clues (in reverse order). In an astounding feat of construction, Matt also made the answers pangrammatic 1-word answers. Quite impressive! But also unnecessary to figuring out the answer to the meta. It was a little distracting for me, though I was able to get the answer. I kept thinking I had a cypher and needed to decode other answers. Fortunately, there was nothing obvious to decode. But for "Consider the Alternative," I can see why people would work back to the original clue-answers. It's a classic metanism, finding links to other clues/answers and using their initial letters.

Thank goodness I wasn't perceptive enough to get that far in the process!

@rjy, I appreciate your laying out how it works thematically. That makes perfect sense. That was something I missed about the title to the WSJ meta this past week, "Think Different." As others pointed out over there, understanding the meaning behind it would have helped me solve. I thought it wasn't helpful enough. Turns out I just didn't get it. Had I realized Steve Jobs meant it to be read similar to "Think: Victory!" or "Think: Beauty," I might have done better.

[minimuggle]

Did anyone else explore the possibility that kiddie pool filler could be "pee"?

[Bird Lives]

Did anyone else explore the possibility that kiddie pool filler could be "pee"?

That was the first thing that occurred to me. I'm fairly certain that the ambiguity was intentional, given the demographics of the Gaffney household.

[woozy]

I depends on what "necessary" necessarily means.

I think they are necessary for the mechanism and the theme to be valid and aesthetically enjoyable. Being valid isn't necessary for a puzzle to be solvable not is being aesthetically enjoyable necessary for a puzzle to be solvable but...

Okay... suppose there weren't those words. Then the mechanism is would be just "find the entries that begin with OR (uh, why?) and if you drop the OR you get another arbitrary word (uh, so what? that's not a very interesting observation if the words are so utterly arbitrary and ... half the words are DER, and ION, and EGON and EOS and the only half way decent words are CHARD, SON, and IBIS which are pretty weak...) and you just take the first letters of these utterly mundane words whose only notable condition is the are preceded by OR.... what the heck kind of pointless inane puzzle is this?

Okay. Maybe they weren't necessary to solve but if they weren't there it'd have been a TERRIBLE meta, wouldn't it? And, I suppose this is a matter of opinion and I've disliked my share of metas.... this was *not* a bad puzzle. It was a clever and fun meta.

[HunterX]

I depends on what "necessary" necessarily means.

I think they are necessary for the mechanism and the theme to be valid and aesthetically enjoyable. Being valid isn't necessary for a puzzle to be solvable not is being aesthetically enjoyable necessary for a puzzle to be solvable but...

Okay... suppose there weren't those words. Then the mechanism is would be just "find the entries that begin with OR (uh, why?) and if you drop the OR you get another arbitrary word (uh, so what? that's not a very interesting observation if the words are so utterly arbitrary and ... half the words are DER, and ION, and EGON and EOS and the only half way decent words are CHARD, SON, and IBIS which are pretty weak...) and you just take the first letters of these utterly mundane words whose only notable condition is the are preceded by OR.... what the heck kind of pointless inane puzzle is this?

Okay. Maybe they weren't necessary to solve but if they weren't there it'd have been a TERRIBLE meta, wouldn't it? And, I suppose this is a matter of opinion and I've disliked my share of metas.... this was *not* a bad puzzle. It was a clever and fun meta.

Point taken. And yes, it definitely wasn't as clever or fun for me, since I saw the OR's, took the next letters, and was done. I don't think it would have been "terrible" though. The 7-Eleven puzzle was that type (don't remember whose puzzle or where it was published off the top of my head): Find the 7 instances of XI and think of a company name. But again, yes, thematically and aesthetically, the linkage with the other answers was great.

But to those struggling, I advised, "Remember, it's just a week 2. Don't overthink it." Without seeing the links to other answers, it was a week 2. (Turns out it was a very elegant one.) More than one person was confounded for a bit due to that extra element.

[KayW]

I think this is another instance of what Matt called a "front door" meta. He describes it in his comments here.

He likens it to hiding behind the front door in a game of hide-and-seek. It's risky cuz you might be found right away, but if the seeker doesn't see you on his way into the house, he's going to spend a lot of time searching a big empty house before he comes back and finds you right where he started.

Which is of course what I did as I meandered through all those related alternatives to the OR words

[Bird Lives]

I think this is another instance of what Matt called a "front door" meta. He describes it in his comments here.

He likens it to hiding behind the front door in a game of hide-and-seek. It's risky cuz you might be found right away, but if the seeker doesn't see you on his way into the house, he's going to spend a lot of time searching a big empty house before he comes back and finds you right where he started.

Which is of course what I did as I meandered through all those related alternatives to the OR words

In other words, if you miss simple solution, you are led on a wild goose chase. To me, that wild goose looks an awful lot like a red herring.

[DCBilly]

I loved having the clues confirm that what I found in the OR entries was relevant. I spent a minute confirming that the grid entries for those clues didn't add up to anything, so I went back to the post-OR words and immediately found "decisive." In sum, no problem here with Matt's approach.

[BrennerTJ]

How to choose, how to choose..