"Singing Out" November 22, 2024

[moxy]

I initially had SCOUTS, aka "Talent seekers," for FANS (along with the correct I, R, E), spelling _IRES. I thought both "Ooh, misleading 'singer' since FIRES singe!" and "Shouldn't the answer clue be plural 'singers'?" And then I could not find the appropriate F word.

[Zobo3737]

I matched ROCK with EASES (“moves gently”). Gave me the E.

[benchen71]

1A. GONE clued as "Out of here", given the puzzle title, is so freaking misleading! I needed a nudge to look past that.

[Mister Squawk]

Curious if anyone picked up on the SIDE FOUR hint as leading to the mechanism. I didn't. I was looking for different ways to "take out" letters from the theme answers when I noticed the mechanism.

[Joe Ross]

Curious if anyone picked up on the SIDE FOUR hint as leading to the mechanism. I didn't. I was looking for different ways to "take out" letters from the theme answers when I noticed the mechanism.

Yes. First thing I do is look at the grid layout, since roughly ¾ths of metas involve theme entries. The TEs seemed obvious within this grid with the SIDE FOUR entries filling out the top & bottom of their rows.

Multi-entry clues can often be indicator clues.

I concentrated on filling out these two, first, then the theme entries, solving the remaining grid enough to help me finish the TEs and to find the meta answer's initials.

[femullen]

If I rack up enough sea miles, do I win a free cruise?

All my rabbit holes were New England rabbit holes: I hit granite just four inches down.

[CV-at-Sea]

As I was completing the grid, what jumped out at me was that Mike had the albums for the singers and not individual songs. And then there was the two part clues leading to Side Four.

I knew some of the artists but there were a couple I could not get from the down letters so I started googling all the clue titles which is when I found out that they were albums. The first sentence of each google page was that this was about the album with things like “this is the 5th solo studio album for Tina Turner” for 17A

And with equal emphasis what came out was that Be Yourself was the 9th solo/studio album for Patti Labelle. So I felt I was onto the path to success. And so I continued.

38A was Barbra Streisand’s 4th

53A was Roberta Flack’s 13th

62A was Faith Evans 7th.

I kept digging now that I had the numbers 5, 9, 4, 13 and 7. I started highlighting the appropriate letters in the long answers. T for 17A as the fifth letter. E in 22A for the 9th. B in 38A for the 4th and then OOPS!!! 53A only had 12 letters so there must be another path

So it occurred to me that this is where “Side Four” must come into play. I assumed that the top was Side 1, the right side was Side 2, the bottom was Side 3 so the left side must be Side 4. Now do I go from bottom to top or top to bottom. And do I count blanks? I tried every combination and got nowhere so either there is another way to use the numbers or I needed a different rabbit hole.

All of this is more of a Gaffneyesque than Shankian but I was into a good rabbit hole and was not to be denied.

I tried several other rabbit holes with no success
In each of the long names there are four or five letter words
Turn
Label or Bell
Sand
Lack
Vans

And as Maine Marge pointed out to me, we have SAND in 49D. So we have several paths to the rabbit hole. First we can look for alternate clues for the words above and that led nowhere. Second we can look for embedded words in the grid with an extra letter and that went also nowhere.

As a last gasp before calling for help, I went back to the In Concert album set. Ball and Chain is track 14 on the album set so maybe the path is tied to the number 14 and the themers. That also went nowhere. So the cry for HELP went out.

I chased those exact rabbits
My deep-dive numerology from those Wikipedia summaries turned into two full days of alphebalgebra (new word that emerged in my brain as I tried to solve quadratic equations of Flack & Streisand)

[CV-at-Sea]

Wait, did AutoCorrect change the spelling of my own made up word? It was meant to be “alphabalgabra” to blend in the abracadabra-magical hope I invested in it

[ron]

I was headed to wrong way until I corrected. I initially drew a blank on BAND and for ROCK I went to OAKS. So I had SI_ON.

I'm thinking Simon of the Chipmunks! He's a singer.

But there was no way to make an M work and I realized it had to be an R in the middle. And then switched from OAKS to EMO.

[krf]

I ignored what should be my primary rule: If there is a very, long and/or detailed clue, it usually means that the constructor is fighting to get something into the puzzle that absolutely has to be there.
Instead, I spent the weekend wrestling with DO, RE, MI, etc.
Among other things, I looked at the placement of TI, FA, LA, etc in the scale, (1,2,3, etc.) and the actual letters of the notes C,D,E,F,G,A,B,C.
Then I went to combining them with the three and four letter words (The Excel Concatenate function works well for that).
Came up with MOOLA, LOOFA, SPARE, and TIMES.
Also took the singing syllables "OUT" of words like MISDO, RENT, ALA, MES in hopes of something there.
I had hoped to finish the year with a success rate of 80%, but that has slipped away.
Oh well, The Maui Invitational will start today, so things aren't a total loss.

[DrTom]

My white whale also was a numbers thing. All of those singers have albums that carry the name of the song mentioned at different tracks: 5, 3, 12, 2, 7 so I took the letters in those and (because of a too quick read) came up with UNBOS – BOSUN! Yes I know it breaks the cardinal rule of the answer not being an anagram, makes no sense and was based on a misread letter, but it was a WORD and I was lost. It had to be the way, I was just not doing it right. I then tried the album number in the release, the album number of the album named for the singer (they all have one as a single name (ala CHER and BEYONCE) and any number of other things. DO, RE, ME…, NATURNE, PATILLA, BRAST, AFLACK, FAIT (for NPAKI – PANIC= PANIC! AT THE DISCO (OK, it is the K that is extra in AFLAC, but it seemed so right!)

Finally (and fully admitting NEVER having tumbled to the obvious long and forced Janis Joplin clue) I said NUTS, man I would have made that answer FANS…hey wait a minute if I take the OUT reaches of the singer FAITHEVANS…yep it is a thing for all of them, HOORAY.

I did get this one without help, but not without angst, from the depths of hell I stabbed at it!

[femullen]

I notice that Saturday's WSJ crossword has Friday's meta answer at 63D, "Sailor temptress." Shenk must do that just to drive the spear deeper into my ego.

[otlaolap]

Never noticed any of the rabbit holes or overt clues (e.g. SIDE FOUR) -- just saw the pattern in the long names pretty much immediately. That worked this week; in recent prior weeks this looking-into-the-long-answers-themselves method has yielded no sight of any shore.

But this was also right down my alley. Two weeks ago I was on a river cruise right past the Lorelei (failing to see any shores of course) and a song and poem I was forced to memorize in a German class sixty-five years ago kept spinning through my mind:

     Ich weiß nicht, was soll es bedeuten,
     Daß ich so traurig bin;
     Ein Mährchen aus alten Zeiten,   
     Das kommt mir nicht aus dem Sinn.

The song sings of a siren luring sailors to their deaths on that particular bend and rock in the Rhine. The song really did not come out of my mind after all, and "singer of a sort" must have popped "siren" into my brain.

[Dickie_Dunn]

Curious if anyone picked up on the SIDE FOUR hint as leading to the mechanism. I didn't. I was looking for different ways to "take out" letters from the theme answers when I noticed the mechanism.

I was very focused on taking out letters to get the path, so focused in fact, that I didn't look for any other path! Remove DO RE MI FA LA TI from the themes (TITILARELAFA), then the entire puzzle (TIRETILALARERELALAFAFAFAREMIDO) and got a bunch of gibberish letters, but I bet it sounds nice.

[BarbaraK]

Curious if anyone picked up on the SIDE FOUR hint as leading to the mechanism. I didn't. I was looking for different ways to "take out" letters from the theme answers when I noticed the mechanism.

I didn’t either. Based on the title, I looked at the sides of the theme entries, and when one letter from each end didn’t work, I tried two.

[Cruciverbalisticexpi]

I made similar attempts, but with the album/song title track number on the album matching to clue numbers. Went nowhere. Thought I was being SO clever! Lol

As I was completing the grid, what jumped out at me was that Mike had the albums for the singers and not individual songs. And then there was the two part clues leading to Side Four.

I knew some of the artists but there were a couple I could not get from the down letters so I started googling all the clue titles which is when I found out that they were albums. The first sentence of each google page was that this was about the album with things like “this is the 5th solo studio album for Tina Turner” for 17A

And with equal emphasis what came out was that Be Yourself was the 9th solo/studio album for Patti Labelle. So I felt I was onto the path to success. And so I continued.

38A was Barbra Streisand’s 4th

53A was Roberta Flack’s 13th

62A was Faith Evans 7th.

I kept digging now that I had the numbers 5, 9, 4, 13 and 7. I started highlighting the appropriate letters in the long answers. T for 17A as the fifth letter. E in 22A for the 9th. B in 38A for the 4th and then OOPS!!! 53A only had 12 letters so there must be another path

So it occurred to me that this is where “Side Four” must come into play. I assumed that the top was Side 1, the right side was Side 2, the bottom was Side 3 so the left side must be Side 4. Now do I go from bottom to top or top to bottom. And do I count blanks? I tried every combination and got nowhere so either there is another way to use the numbers or I needed a different rabbit hole.

All of this is more of a Gaffneyesque than Shankian but I was into a good rabbit hole and was not to be denied.

I tried several other rabbit holes with no success
In each of the long names there are four or five letter words
Turn
Label or Bell
Sand
Lack
Vans

And as Maine Marge pointed out to me, we have SAND in 49D. So we have several paths to the rabbit hole. First we can look for alternate clues for the words above and that led nowhere. Second we can look for embedded words in the grid with an extra letter and that went also nowhere.

As a last gasp before calling for help, I went back to the In Concert album set. Ball and Chain is track 14 on the album set so maybe the path is tied to the number 14 and the themers. That also went nowhere. So the cry for HELP went out.

[Bobj]

After a couple of brief missteps wondering if this had something to do with sewing machines or a person who lightly burns something (pronounce it "sinjer") I stumbled (and that's all it was) into the right hint of side four and how to apply it right away. Took a couple of tries to get the right set of letters / clues -- and never realized the answer was in theme order. So, even though anagramming was wrong, it worked.

[Mirage]

I also focused on the title Singing Out and the 1A clue “Out of here” and was certain I had to remove letters. I first removed letters from the word singing in the five theme answers but got nowhere. Removed double letters in the singers’ names and songs. Nothing. A few other shallow rabbit holes (e.g. side B songs from those songs released as a single) and again nothing. Finally zeroed in on the answer to 1A “gone” and decided that MUST be it - all across answers that are a song must be “gone” and stricken from the grid, leaving the meta answer. Thus began my google search of songs that are titled the same as the answer in the grid. Gone - that’s a song so it’s out. Push - ditto. Crib - ditto. Avow - ditto. Eases - not a song though “ease” is so it stays in. Four answers “gone” but now I’ve got my first letter E. I’m thinking how clever Shenk is and how music savvy those Muggles are who solved in 15 minutes! Next Aida - it’s an opera but is it a song? Goes into the maybe column. And on and on I went through the whole grid this way, continuing to marvel at what a genius Shenk is - so very many of those entries are songs - but beginning to question how even the most musically savvy Muggle could have solved this so quickly. When I saw my answer was looking like EUPRMIS… and there was no salvaging the answer no matter what I used or discarded from the maybe column, I finally threw in the towel at 11:50 pm. Ten minutes later the answer was posted. Never saw a glimpse of that path. Kudos to those who solved.

[mheberlingx100]

Curious if anyone picked up on the SIDE FOUR hint as leading to the mechanism. I didn't. I was looking for different ways to "take out" letters from the theme answers when I noticed the mechanism.

Yes, I usually focus on the long clues first as containing the first step of the process, and then look for a clue. This clue wasn't in one of the usual spots (bottom right corner, top left corner, middle of grid) but when the clue is so unusual and on topic (as in this puzzle), it draws my attention.

[DBMiller]

Curious if anyone picked up on the SIDE FOUR hint as leading to the mechanism. I didn't. I was looking for different ways to "take out" letters from the theme answers when I noticed the mechanism.

Raises hand. All album related clues, and FOUR SIDE / SIDE FOUR sounded like a direction, so I ran with it

Only side step was that I do a bunch of crosswords each day and the two previous puzzle used ASHY as a answer and so I used it instead of ILL for pale. Once saren didn't make sense, I knew I needed an I and found my mistake.