"Team-Building Exercise" -- Sept. 20, 2024

[ReB]

Ashore after a shove from the Last Call rescue squad. As I expected, I had been overthinking it.

[IHeartMusic]

Ashore! A team effort with my big brother, LuscombeDriver.

[mikeB]

Ashore after surrendering unconditionally, game over, period, full stop. Just decided to take one last look, and voila. Relearning the core lesson that there are many ways to solve a meta, but giving up isn't one of them.

[meowmiao71]

Late start but onshore.

[Qmark]

With the clock ticking down, I had another look at the themers and saw the light...joining the crowd on shore.

[steph]

Made it ashore after a busy weekend! Almost didn’t make it, but happy to be here

[hcbirker]

Thanks Zoomers. First down pass was over the receiver's head. Had to be pushed over the goal line.

Our motto is no Muggle left behind!

[Dickie_Dunn]

Count me ashore! Just got to it and happy to see the light. Neat one! Water will work before bed.

[hcbirker]

[hcbirker]

[Jace54]

I figured out Packer and Saint first, and then saw Bill in the last word of the second theme answer. I was then convinced that I needed to focus on the last word of the first theme answer, and could only come up with Buck as a variant for Buccaneer.

Finally got out of that hole and saw Viking, but the unused Bill as an additional NFL team member made the solve less clean for me.

[MikeyG]

Me, for at least 15 minutes on Thursday:

"What in the world are MIPS?"

[hoover]

My rabbit hole was seeing bits and pieces of team names scattered throughout the grid. For example, 1A contains TEX, and you add that to the ANS from 2D to "build" the "team" TEXANS. Then you take the unused T and V and ...

Um, yeah. In a way, that led to my solving the meta, because I saw SACKER and looked for a nearby P, didn't see one, but saw the V from my first attempt somewhat nearby HIKING ...

[dk letter]

I figured out Packer and Saint first, and then saw Bill in the last word of the second theme answer. I was then convinced that I needed to focus on the last word of the first theme answer, and could only come up with Buck as a variant for Buccaneer.

Finally got out of that hole and saw Viking, but the unused Bill as an additional NFL team member made the solve less clean for me.

I had literally the exact same solving experience. What's a MIPS? I took one last look at 11:20 pm last night and saw HIKING/VIKING.

[Beth C]

Did anyone notice the teams are all in the NFC, which is one letter changed from NFL? I thought the more complete answer would be NFC MVPS.

[flepper]

I hope that 30D and 31D was intentional. When I saw a puzzle about the NFL and saw LEON LENT sitting side-by-side, I could only think of Leon Lett formerly of the Dallas Cowboys. He owns two of the worst plays in NFL history--within one calendar year no less. In Super Bowl XXVII (January 1193), he picked dup a fumble and made it almost the whole 65 yards to end zone when he started showboating and got caught from behind by Don Bebee and gave the ball back to the Bills--no harm, no foul because it was a blowout Cowboy win. On Thanksgiving Day 1993 the Cowboys blocked what could have been a game winning field goal by the Dolphins. If Leon had done nothing, the ball would have been dead and it would have been the Cowboy's ball to close out the win. Instead, Leon tried to pick it up and run with it. Alas, he booted the ball, and it end up back in the hands of the Dolphins who then kicked the game winning field goal. On at least those two occasions, Leon Lett put forth far from MVP effort.

[Lee-Ann]

Changed ball to Bill and was sitting with MIPS for about a day. Had my husband take a look (he doesn't do crosswords) and he noticed right away that MIPS is close to MVPS and that is when I realized I needed to change hiking to Viking.

[Bobj]

I started with "RAN" back == so NAR
Then the "leading" of SACKER == S
Add the "face" of PAINT == P
"Hike" the ball == the letters above B == ROS

That all anagrams to SPORRANS -- which is kind of like what a quarterback would wear to keep his hands warm.

(to be fair -- MVPS are often quarterbacks)

[ZooAnimalsOnWheels]

I got to RAM, VIKING, PACKER, SAINT quickly enough. And then I spent time wondering what mechanism RSVP could be hinting at.

With three of the four teams being from two-word locations (Green Bay, New Orleans, Los Angeles), I also wondered if I could get something going from there and maybe Minnesota would turn out to be some variation of Minneapolis/Saint Paul. The clue "Greek bread" captured my attention because Matt could have used any country in the Eurozone, but he gave us the initials GB, matching Green Bay. But he probably just hoped some unfortunate with a pen would fill in PITA. The grid also had two trigrams (SNO and TLA) which hinted at New Orleans and Los Angeles.

But with Minnesota being the odd man out on place names, I eventually looked at the swapped letters again and got there.

[Eric Porter]

I figured out Packer and Saint first, and then saw Bill in the last word of the second theme answer. I was then convinced that I needed to focus on the last word of the first theme answer, and could only come up with Buck as a variant for Buccaneer.

Finally got out of that hole and saw Viking, but the unused Bill as an additional NFL team member made the solve less clean for me.

Exact same thing for me. When I saw Viking and Bill, I thought there must be 2 per themer, so I thought Buck must be one too. I then spent a while trying to find something for 'Leading' and 'Face'.

I messaged someone who said he wasn't completely sure and we realized the answer must be MVPs.

If all team names in the answer were on one side or another, I'd be OK with it, but this really makes me wonder if these get less testing than a SSS or MMM puzzle. Matt could have easily made it "Hiking Pigskin" and even kept the same number of letters. There were no other constraints on the puzzle.