"Mixed Together" August 2, 2024

[Tina]

Checking my email to see if I won the mug then remembering I didn't solve it this week.

[mheberlingx100]

My rabbit hole was MOREL. If you take the first letter of all the odd clues that end a row or column, this is what you get reading across.
Plusses: reasonable methodology, 5 letters long.
Minus: relates in no way to the title.
After a kind Muggle indicated that this should be a 100% certain, slam dunk, I went back to the drawing board and saw just how many odd answers I missed the first time around and hit on the answer.

[LadyBird]

My NW corner of the grid was initially all screwed up because--really--how could 1 down NOT be Ted Baxter! Especially with 10 down being MGM (or is it MTM).

Once I got that sorted, I was intrigued with the dead-center down answer of A-AND-W, intersecting with ODDS AND ENDS. Couldn't make a go of that. I was just moving on to the end letter of every odd-numbered grid answer, when my husband suggested the correct metanism. I circled away at the letters. It was so fun to see the words emerge--that solving high keeps you coming back!

[woozy]

I only did the ends of the odd length across answers first , and got THEAASERIME

The “THE” at the beginning intrigued me, so for my final Hail Mary actually started circling the ends of all the odd length grid answers . Reading out the answer, literally spelled out, was jaw dropping

This is exactly how I did it. I didn't assume it was across only but for transcription reasons I write out the across entries first. The across only didn't look promising but when I got a N between A and S and an MT between the ET and glancing ahead seeing there'd be a W it was obvious what was happening. As I had only an overly used bit a scratch paper with little room for notes and a spouse who gets annoyed when I get too involved in puzzles when there work around the house and those black-berries aren't going to jar themselves I couldn't concentrate on solving precisely, but as I had gotten a relatively late (30 minute) start and we were still on page 1 and I'd been doing this between dealing with those danged blackberries, I figured I'd be safe to declare myself ashore. After jarring the blackberries and sitting with a pen to actually spell it out, Page one had gotten to 19 by then, so I don't feel guilty either.

[Cindy N]

Looking at the ENDS of the ODDS, but did not find all of them first. But I saw THE ANS ER and across the bottom I saw MERGE - but I was looking at across. I would have submitted MERGE in any case, but just wasn't getting there.

[Darth]

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It’s the second anniversary of THE GOLDEN RABBIT HOLE AWARDS! Can you believe that? Your Rabbit never imagined he would last this long, especially since he ran out of Carmen Miranda videos ages ago.

Your Rabbit was a greeting card editor in his former life and saw his share of bad poetry in the process. Still, he has mellowed with age. Darth’s rhyming(?) submission (Post #213) in the “Sign Language” puzzle made him wince many times, but he doesn’t want to discourage this sort of thing, either. Congrats, Finalist #3.

And now we come to THE GOLDEN RABBIT HOLE AWARD WINNER. and it should be no surprise that this year’s ultimate honor goes to ** drum roll, please** … benchen71.

Over the course of the last year Ben has received a record six nominations, demonstrating a dedication and consistency to the art of being lost. His logic, faulty as he has repeatedly demonstrated, always seems so much clearer as he provides color grids, clearly outlining the error of his ways. Ben travelled to ALBUQUERQUE while everyone else was going to SCOTTSDALE (“Make it an Even Dozen” Post #254 ), dined at ARBY’s when the crowd was at TACO BELL (“Sign Language” Post #167 ) and found his own RUBRIC in the “Piece Process.” Post #253.

There is a certain amount of irony that Ben was last week’s guest constructor of the Friday Gaffney puzzle. He is to be commended for his ability in creating metas as well as showing humility and humor in not solving them. Like DB Miller, last year’s winner, he is being honored for a body of work as much as any single post. The X-Word Rabbit salutes you!

And so it goes, Muggles. As always, your Rabbit truly appreciates your dedication to the game. To paraphrase a better-known poet than Darth: “The woods are lovely, dark and deep and there’s mugs to mail before I sleep.”

Roses are red,
Delphiniums are blue,
Sugar contributes to obesity,
so don't overdo!...

And the rumor that Darth won a mug for his (admittedly) flawed poetry is true!
And so, to the Xword Rabbit, goes a golden "Thank you"!


And, of course, a golden "Congrats" to the well-deserving @benchen71 too!

[BarbaraK]

So, the answer is a five-letter word. There are exactly 5 five-letter entries in the grid. They're all right down the middle.
LUMET
ISIAH
AANDW
ONEAM
RIDGE
Take the middle letter of each and there it is, MINED, a five-letter word. Tada! Only problem is that doesn't use the hint.

I tried many of the interpretations that others here have mentioned (though I wasn't clever enough to keep iterating the "theme" entries odd letters plus the ending letters, like @Bobj did here

Tried looking at the odd numbered squares, the odd numbered letters of the alphabet (A, C, E...), the letters in ODDS and/or ENDS, etc. Tried adding "ends" to the ends of the odd numbered grid entries. Nothing.

Decided I needed to parse that central clue as odd "S" and end "S", and when I found that exactly 5 odd numbered grid squares had an S, I was sure I was on the right track. When the ending letters of those entries didn't spell anything, I looked for words that ended with an S, and there were 5 across entries. Five! Again! So now I was really sure I was onto something. There must be some way to "mix" one from each set to come up with something new. (Also, the five odd S's included 3 6 letter words and 2 4 letter words. The five end S's had 3 4's and 2 6's. So you could get 5 10's. Or 5 8's if you skip the S's since I couldn't do anything with the 10s. But then I couldn't do anything with the 8s either.)

I never did get out of that rabbit hole.

[MikeMillerwsj]

The contest answer is MERGE. As suggested by 34-Across (ODDS AND ENDS), find all of the letters in the grid that are ends of odd-length answers. Those letters, in grid order, spell “The meta answer is MERGE.”

Tough one this week! And exceptionally ingenious. We had just 492 entries, with 68% correct (below a typical rate of 75%). Other guesses included BLEND (19), SALAD (18), THESE (4), AISLE (2) and DENSE (2).

Congrats to this week's winner: Karen Holt of Allentown, Penn.!

[ELSavage]

Tough one this week! And exceptionally ingenious. We had just 492 entries, with 68% correct (below a typical rate of 75%). Other guesses included BLEND (19), SALAD (18), THESE (4), AISLE (2) and DENSE (2).

If reports to @Bob cruise director and my math are correct, we muggles made up more than 1/3 (34%) of the correct answers this week. Is this a record? or at least notable?

[clonefitz]

As most of these do, this one seemed gettable in hindsight. I even had all the odd numbered length words in a list, but not in any kind of order. I had one time-consuming rabbit hole involving the six letter words. Why six letters? I don't know, only that I made two observations: 1. That some of the six letter words had many of the letters from "ODDS AND ENDS". 2. Many of the six letter words could be changed to make another six letter word by changing one or two letters and then rearranging (kind of a warped word ladder): POLICE - ONLINE - NODICE - DEMONS - ODENSE - ERODES - STEEDS - DETECT. Some of the other six letter words almost fit into this chain. I knew this wasn't the mechanism, but I thought it might have led me down a path to the mechanism. Was I wrong! The real mechanism was clean and clever, nice job Mike!

[LadyBird]

Tough one this week! And exceptionally ingenious. We had just 492 entries, with 68% correct (below a typical rate of 75%). Other guesses included BLEND (19), SALAD (18), THESE (4), AISLE (2) and DENSE (2).

If reports to @Bob cruise director and my math are correct, we muggles made up more than 1/3 (34%) of the correct answers this week. Is this a record? or at least notable?

I've wondered myself what percentage of Muggles make up the stats from Mike Miller. One issue is that not everyone who declares themselves ashore on the forum goes on to officially submit an answer. Many folks do not submit an answer if they needed nudges to get ashore, so that skews the comparison.

[The XWord Rabbit]

Well, there’s nothing like an award ceremony and the possibility of receiving a piece of crockery (not to mention a more-difficult-than-usual puzzle) to motivate Muggles into sharing stories with the Rabbit.

“Mixed Together” may have been the title to Mr. Shenk’s puzzle but “Odds and Ends”, the entry at 34A was really what it was all about. The last letter of all of the grid entries with an odd number of letters (including the downs) spells: THE META ANSWER IS MERGE. And so it is.

The common problem, rabbit hole-wise, was that many Muggles started from the same wrong assumption (last letters of just the odd-length across entries). That undermined “uniqueness of method”, one of the things important to your Rabbit. And then there was the anagram issue after desperation set in. The puzzle’s title “Mixed Together” opened the door for that sort of thing, but it was a fool’s errand, like usual.

Your Rabbit was ready to give a nomination nod to ElSavage (Post #185) for parsing 34A as “Odd S and ends” but then BarbaraK did that…and more … examining the “End S” part in the same fashion.

And so it goes. Your Rabbit has decided to just soldier on, hoping the first step of the next puzzle is a little less obvious. A slow start, perhaps, but rest assured, there’s a doozy of a puzzle in the near future.

Incidentally, your Rabbit lied when he said he had run out of Carmen Miranda videos during his award post. There’s lots left! (He knows you’re relieved). Here’s one:



Until next week, then.

[flyingMoose]

We had just 492 entries, with 68% correct (below a typical rate of 75%).

On the old scale, this is a 4.

[woozy]

I'm wondering about "only the across entries". I realize across entries are for common for key and themers and components and the reason why is pretty clear. But I always figured downs should only be ruled out if there is a specific part of the mechanism stating so. Far more common though is a puzzle to simply not have any down entries that could fit the metanism and a constructor should actively make efforts to avoid having inadvertent down entries that fit the mechanism (if it is across only.)

And of course there a plenty of times down entries *are* part of the meta.

So.... why did anyone assume to only look for across entries? Why wouldn't you cover your basis and look to see if there were any downs?

[Flying_Burrito]

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Incidentally, your Rabbit lied when he said he had run out of Carmen Miranda videos during his award post. There’s lots left! (

Sorry Mr Rabbit, but the right video for this Monday is this one:

[DBMiller]

For the third time in a month, I got the right answer for not quite the right reason.

While I looked at odd numbered entries, and every odd letter of the longer answers, these attempts fell apart so quickly that I wouldn't even call them rabbit holes.

Knowing I needed a better definition of ODDS, and realizing that the grid looked a little funny, I quickly notice the how few entries had an odd number of letters. When the first three across entries I saw spelled "THE", I was sure I was on to something.

But as I went through the rest of the across entries, I was quite saddened to find that "theaserime" didn't get me anywhere. I wanted to give up, but I decided to look at the downs as well. This time I came up with "theaserinmrewesg".

An anagram solver wasn't very helpful with this many letters, and again I thought it might be just a rabbit hole. But "theaser" looked so much like "The Answer" that I knew it had to be the right metanism. I only looked for "N" and "W", and found them in the downs. At which point I loaded a new copy of the puzzle on another device and put in only the letters I had found and the phrase "The answer is merge" was as plain as could be. Done and done!

It wasn't until the Zoom meeting when it was mentioned there was 20 letters, and I had only 16, that I was flabbergasted to find out I completely missed four letters! And they just happened to be the letters for the word META.

Sign me,

[C=64]

Anyway, I appreciate the post-non-solve reminder to stop making this assumption: "Oh, the answer is five letters long? Then there must be exactly five grid entries that do the trick!"

[Bob cruise director]

Tough one this week! And exceptionally ingenious. We had just 492 entries, with 68% correct (below a typical rate of 75%). Other guesses included BLEND (19), SALAD (18), THESE (4), AISLE (2) and DENSE (2).

If reports to @Bob cruise director and my math are correct, we muggles made up more than 1/3 (34%) of the correct answers this week. Is this a record? or at least notable?

@ELSavage and @LadyBird It is a bit of apples and oranges comparison. Of the 114 on the shore, we do not know how many actually submitted answers to the WSJ. Typically, most of us who get more than a little nudge will not submit the answer to the WSJ. The best metric is on weeks like the past two where the percentage of WSJ correct is very high and a high percentage of muggles did not need any nudges based on comments. In those weeks it is safe to assume that all muggles on the shore also submitted. In those weeks, the percentage of the muggles on shore is between 10% and 15% of the total number of correct submissions. I suspect based on comments, but have no data, that of the 114 on the shore, about half did not submit so the percentage would be in line with historic averages.

[steveb]

The contest answer is MERGE. As suggested by 34-Across (ODDS AND ENDS), find all of the letters in the grid that are ends of odd-length answers. Those letters, in grid order, spell “The meta answer is MERGE.”

Tough one this week! And exceptionally ingenious. We had just 492 entries, with 68% correct (below a typical rate of 75%). Other guesses included BLEND (19), SALAD (18), THESE (4), AISLE (2) and DENSE (2).

Congrats to this week's winner: Karen Holt of Allentown, Penn.!

My friend's sister-in-law, on her first submission. This may be the closest I'm ever going to get!

[Joe Ross]

The contest answer is MERGE.

Congrats to this week's winner: Karen Holt of Allentown, Penn.!

My friend's sister-in-law, on her first submission. This may be the closest I'm ever going to get! :lol:

🥳🏆