MGWCC #829 — "You In or Out?"

[GGX]

A perfect week 3, I think. Challenging, but not completely inscrutable, with rabbit holes aplenty, a great metanism and subsequent aha! Really loved this one!

If it hadn't been for the red herring (which I didn't care for at all) I thought it would be the perfect week 2. Certainly more apt as a week 2 then nearly any of the week twos for the last year or so. .... but the red herring was... not difficult, but a definite curve ball. For me at least. It doesn't seem to have bothered others all that much at all but it sure bothered me.

It was nice to have a week 3 that didn't require 20 minutes of banging a head on a wall. Admittedly the three hours of scratching the fingernails on my scalp weren't entirely cost free, but it was a lot less painful than head banging.

Curious what the red herring you saw was. I must have completely missed it!

[hcbirker]

Beamed up thanks to @MarkWoychick Got pulled in by a very tempting rabbit hole.

[MikeyG]

I absolutely have to hear about all the rabbit holes when the deadline passes!

[HunterX]

Awaiting transporter beam. Nice one.

[Jeremy Smith]

Beamed up after bit of a course-correction from a helpful muggle. Clever puzzle! Nice job, Matt!

[sharkicicles]

Gone down a few holes but nothing so far.

[ReB]

Beamed up yesterday. Can never tell with Week 2 and 3 (or even Week 1 sometimes) which ones will yield and which ones will elude me.

This wasn't a 100% certainty, but it felt certain enough to submit. Will be interesting to see if there is a piece I missed that would have made the solution airtight.

[sharkicicles]

I’m declaring bankruptcy here, if anyone wants to send a hint please do. I’m just not seeing anything.

[sharkicicles]

Thanks for the nudges! Hopefully I won’t have to bother anyone further…

[Dr.Buttbeard]

Spent the whole weekend moving (not fun), then spent the night watching the Knicks win (fun!) and finally solving this meta (very fun!) just awaiting the beam but feel very confident!

[BrennerTJ]

I don't schmooze or chat well,
Got no stories to tell,
But these graphics you view,
That's something I can do
Using borders and hues
To untangle the clues.
Well, this verse is now done
So below's the next one:

[rjy]

I don't schmooze or chat well,
Got no stories to tell,
But these graphics you view,
That's something I can do
Using borders and hues
To untangle the clues.
Well, this verse is now done
So below's the next one:

These deserve more than just a quick tap of the "Like" button... fabulous poem and graphics! Thanks for doing these!

[mkmf]

My red herring was there were exactly eight U's in the grid: four on the outside (border) and four on the inside. Chased that a while before all the ORs slapped me out of that.

The second pothole was thinking that 104A. Put Up = HOUSE and assuming it was okay to use just the ending word of compound world. I should have known that Matt wouldn't be that inelegant. But the answer ERECT was at the bottom of the first column underneath STUDI so it seemed to fit the pattern.

I couldn't make anything work with that E and was running out of time so I hail mary-ed studious at the last minute.

[MikeyG]

My red herring was noting all the initial words for things like FLAVOR and HONORS might have alternate answers in the clues themselves! I saw "Eats" later on, which is possibly a "foodie's concern," and there was also a clue that started with "clump," and I thought maybe that was a hint the litter box needed to be changed.

Desperately wanted to make DECOUR (not the British spelling!) work, but then when I grokked the OU mechanism, I realized TREAT FOUR wouldn't make that much sense...though perhaps the Cubbies need to treat four issues moving forward! (Especially the bullpen, haha.)

Already preparing myself for the Week 4 this Friday!!

[rjy]

Desperately wanted to make DECOUR (not the British spelling!) work

There needs to be a name for the phenomenon of being hungry, looking in the fridge and seeing nothing, closing it. Then opening it again, thinking something new will have appeared, but nope. 'Course not. Then looking again, because maybe by nowwwww? Or later, how about about this time?

That's the way I was with DECOR. I can't tell you how many times I poked into yet another website trying to find confirmation that I could DECOURIZE (decourise??) DECOR.

oof!

[ZooAnimalsOnWheels]

I had to laugh at myself after trying to backsolve to find a 'U' somewhere in the puzzle once it dawned on me that I could just add it in.

Matt seems to give himself more leeway with quirky clues in the MGWCC than in the WSJ, but I still circled 39D "Across the ____" when filling the grid because of its parenthetical. And the fact that COLOR crossed it pointed me on the right path quickly. But this was fun to solve and search for the OU opportunities and matching clues. I am fortunate to have eaten at a Firehouse Subs before, so that one only slowed me down a bit.

[Joe Ross]

I prefer Tamara @BrennerTJ's graphics, but also 15D FLUSH OUT with 73D ON RADAR – One way to detect an enemy, which is still in LEFT to RIGHT grid order, over 90D OUST - Eject.

[dlonoff]

I think SUEZ was perfectly fine, and indeed is good to make sure you dial in to the intended theme. I initially was just focused on grid answers that could take an extra U (e.g. SUEZ, CES becomes CUES, RSA becomes URSA, RSS becomes RUSS, SPOT ON becomes SPOUT ON). There needed to be other "takes an extra U" grid answers or else you could've solved the meta without the British connection.

I liked this one a lot! (Maybe because I actually managed to solve it solo)

[woozy]

I had to laugh at myself after trying to backsolve to find a 'U' somewhere in the puzzle once it dawned on me that I could just add it in.

It really bothers me a lot that STUDIOS and STUDIOUS are completely different words and not simply a case of adding a U to make a Britishism. Someone argued that there were two sets of words to add U to-- first the britishism and then the resulting cross entry-- so that was fair, but I feel the britishism mechanism is primary and foremost while the complete no word is secondary and dependent that it really feels wobbly. Had there been another entry whose clue described studios it would have been better.

And the deliberate non-existent DECOUR/ TREAT FOUR red herring just seemed like a mean trick.

[HoldThatThought]

If only someone would invent some sort of easy-to-use tool that would allow the general public to look up stuff like "What film won the first ever Best Picture Oscar?" or even "Do British people spell the word "Décor" with a "u"?", that would be so amazingly useful.

And...

The "gimmick" behind the metanism wasn't to discover that there are certain words that are spelled with a "u" in British English, but without a "u" in US English.

The gimmick was that spotting exemplars in the grid created situations where adding a "u" to the crossing word turned the crosser into a new word.

Kind of like how adding a "u" to STUDIOS resulted in the contest answer, STUDIOUS.