MGWCC #804 — "Color Matching"

[MikeyG]

If you think those tools are silver, you have grate expectations.

[sactonortherncal]

lol… I solved it within 30 minutes but held off to get my Halloween badges and forgot to submit in time.

[Joe Ross]

If you think those tools are silver, you have grate expectations.

Puns...

"Please, sir! May I have no more?"

[woozy]

Do you guys actually know that those are the answers? If Tongue can be used for silver than Heaven is a better answer for blue than either globes or goo (I had two nudges fairly sure blue was supposed to be Goo... and globes are not blue. The planet earth can be blue [or green] but a globe is not any particular one color) and AGE is equally good for silver and gold. And Golden can go with Globes (if one hadn't figured the framing bit) much better than Silver goes with swords (is silver describing metal objects actually a color? It's a material and a shiny quality but what color is it actually).

On the other hand if we disallow phrases (such as silver tongue) this becomes a lot less ambiguous.

Here's the thing. I figured out that we had to have 12 colors and things of that color that are alliterative and that we had to find 12 other entries of things that are that color and we had to use those to spell the entry. I got a nudge to confirm that was the case. Once I figure that much out... it took me over THIRTEEN HOURS to finally get the answer. THIRTEEN HOURS of knowing exactly what had to be done but not being able to do it because identifying everyday objects into exact yes/no absolute categories is just to subjective to be a clear that is it answer (that's why I said it broke a "cardinal rule").

On the other hand, once I decided phrases were out so no Silver Tongue, no Blue Heaven, no Silver Age, it was less ambiguous. (But wool isn't really white, it's more gray, and fog isn't really gray, it's more white and doves aren't always white and bats are more brown that black. Okay, bats are ICONIC-ly black and doves are iconic-ly white [as roses are red and grass is green] but the other answer weren't all so icon [bison are brown? whatever...]). Once I did get that there were no phrases the puzzle this was a lot more satisfying that I had thought. And the layout of the frame was ... brilliant.

So in all : the concept and design were brilliant! But the details were atrocious.

[KayW]

I submitted TINTED FRINGE and Matt was gracious enough to grant it to me. I concur that graters are silver-COLORED, but my confusion partly came from finding ambiguities in some of the colors as follows:

PEPPA - PINK - TONGUE, ICED LEMONADE?
YOLK - YELLOW/GOLDEN - ICED LEMONADE, GLOBES
ROSES - RED - NOSEBLEED
SWORD - SILVER - TONGUE, GRATER?
BISON - BROWN - BAGS, ELKS?
WOOL - WHITE - DOVE
GRAVEL - GRAY - FOG
BAT - BLACK - RAVEN
GRASS -GREEN - IVY
ORANG - ORANGE (are they? I spose...) - NEMO
BRAINY(SMURF) BLUE - HEAVEN, GLOBES?
PLUM - PURPLE - EGGPLANT

I was so excited to see a valid phrase form that I submitted before noticing that I used TONGUE twice. Had I taken a deep breath and counted to ten, I'd have found it. I didn't see GLOBES instead of HEAVEN for BLUE until the H made no sense.

But what a brilliant technicolor meta - a walking work of art! Which brings me to my earworm for the weekend:

[TMart]

This was a slog. I saw what was going on pretty quickly, but the subjective calls on what entries were what colors was too much for me. I considered Peppa/Tongue, but thought silver tongue was a better match. And I get that Smurfs are blue, but "blue brainy" didn't even cross my mind, and golden globes seemed to fit better. In the end, I had Golden Globes/Golden Age, Silver Sword/Silver Tongue, Blue Bison (a company)/Blue Heaven, and Brown Bags/Brown Elk. But even after all that, I was only missing the two G's (I had an H and A instead). And it spelled nothing, in any order. I couldn't get two words, but got A REFINED HINT (which would have been nice!) or A DINNER THIEF (?)

I had noticed that most theme entries were on the borders, and should have focused more on that, but didn't. So I gave up, consoled by the fact that I found the mechanism but got lost in the noise.

[Andrew Bradburn]

I did not notice that I had used TONGUE twice, after initially using it for silver. And then when I Googled TINTED FRINGE and found that it was a thing (well, COLORED FRINGE is a thing, a hair color styling, and TINTED FRINGE is just a small step from that), I didn't go back to discover that, if I used TONGUE for pink, I needed to find a different entry for silver. (After the fact, I found GRATER).
I think because TINTED FRINGE is close to a known phrase, and TONGUE could be silver in at least one idiomatic sense, and TINTED and TINGED are so close in meaning, that he had little choice but to accept it as an alternate answer.

[ZooAnimalsOnWheels]

I'm mostly frustrated with myself for not getting farther on this before getting help on Isaac's Last Call. I had the mechanism, but was limiting myself to fringe entries which were, as someone said above, iconically that color: red roses, green grass, white wool, yellow yolks, etc. I had discounted BRAINY and PEPPA entirely because I never tied them bag to their characters through the clues.

So I was trying to figure out which six colors I was supposed to use, figuring I would get the other six letters as an additional step. At one time, I had the word INBIDER by taking the first letters of the interior entries I suspected in grid order (including the incorrect BAGS for brown). And I thought I might be a letter or two off from INSIDER or INBIBER or something that might lead to a second step.

Once I got the idea that it was all 12 edge entries (there's the 12 I should have been looking for!), it was an amusing hunt, and I submitted late Monday to get the Halloween badge.

[ricky]

I got the answer with nudges but there's got to be some sort of mental distinction between people who can see the forest for the trees with loose groupings like these and those, like me, who generally can't. Not sure if I'm too pedantic or literal-minded or what but when faced with the idea of globes being blue, I rejected it over and over again, because globes are only partially blue. Similar struggle with wool being white and then with doves being white.

[dlonoff]

I struggled a bit at the end and had to backsolve a couple (GRATER and ELKS were the last to fall for me), but to me with 12 colors and enough (in my mind) 100% color matches (DOVE, RAVEN, NEMO, EGGPLANT, IVY, NOSEBLEED) that there was enough to piece together the rest. Or at least enough to confirm it was the right track and know it would work in the end. But I might've just been lucky to see where it was going.

It must've been hard to avoid other entries that didn't have color (and obviously some of us still found some that confused us). A really impressive construction in my mind.