"Measure Twice, Solve Once" December 13, 2024

[krf]

I re-learned one thing: @MikeyG is a freak. Seriously. Even if he grokked the Mx upon sight, how? Bravo, Mr. G. BRAVO!

100% agree @MikeyG is unbelievable.
But I believe the fix was in this week.
One of the key clues was "Making cat noises".

I was not a fan of that clue. We have three cats in the house and they mostly purr, meow, and chirp, with the very occasional hiss or snarl. They have never been aroar. I realize there are big cats in this world that do this but they are a rarity in my neighborhood.

In hindsight, I realized that I ignored one of my rules: Any clue that is overly long, awkwardly worded, or no exactly applicable, is that way because it has to be that way.
That applies to "Making cat noises", "Big hallucinogen", and "Lendl up at the net".

By the way, did anyone else notice that there were two Tom Hanks references in the puzzle. The clue for 40 Across and the grid entry T-Hanks giving day.

[HunterX]

"Big hallucinogen" caught my eye early, as the "Big" was superfluous. But then it lead me to see that the preceding clue included "Tiniest." That lead to seeing another pair, 14 and 15 across which included "How did it take me so LONG..." and "SHORT on..." What was in between them? There's 22A "HALF of..."

So many other rabbit holes. Roy LichtENSTEIN referenced "Garr in Young FrankENSTEIN," which in turn referenced "FRANKincense..." The answer "tHANKSgiving day" referenced "DiCaprio/HANKS movie."

The first 3 themers all contain the letters of INCH. Etc. etc. etc....

The constructors don't ever intentionally put red herrings in their puzzles, you say? Hmmm...

[Joe Ross]

I reactivated my account just to grouse about this puzzle. When I finally saw the solution, I thought, "That's no fun." All my many rabbit holes seemed more clever than the final answer.

This isn't even the gripe of an unsuccessful solver. Through a totally wrong mechanism, some logic and some wishful thinking, I actually submitted the correct answer.

Submit eloquent details (with shameless reminiscing about comedies, adverts, and greeting cards from the 60s through the 00s) which might earn you a damned fine mug.

[MikeyG]

I re-learned one thing: @MikeyG is a freak. Seriously. Even if he grokked the Mx upon sight, how? Bravo, Mr. G. BRAVO!

100% agree @MikeyG is unbelievable.
But I believe the fix was in this week.
One of the key clues was "Making cat noises".

I dedicate this page-one solve to Ginger Cat!

Really not sure how I saw it. Cross-referencing @docison, who said something regarding the "Crossing State Lines" on the MGWCC earlier this year (with the Utah shapes) as fast as he did. He said something like, "It was just the first thing I saw and it turned out it worked." That was kind of like this for me! Different word lengths - nothing notable jumping out of them - let's try the clues. I forget which one I saw first and was like, "That can't be a coincidence, can it?" Turns out it wasn't.

Hope you all have a great, puzzling start to your week!

Mikey G

[Penny_Keatley]

After about an hour working on this one I had a feeling that I was never going to get this one...and now I know for sure: I was never going to get this one. Congrats to all who did, impressive stuff.

[Bobj]

By the way, did anyone else notice that there were two Tom Hanks references in the puzzle. The clue for 40 Across and the grid entry T-Hanks giving day.

I did -- and I even tried to pair them with the BIG Hallucinogen and look for two more references.

That was after I realized Gaffney was a grINCH and LITERally did not include enough units of measurement -- so the game was aFOOT. The end result did not make me sMILE

[The XWord Rabbit]

Submit eloquent details (with shameless reminiscing about comedies, adverts, and greeting cards from the 60s through the 00s) which might earn you a damned fine mug.

Shameless? ABSOLUTELY! Your Rabbit prides himself in that!

[mheberlingx100]

These kitties don't roar. But no mouse had better sneak in, otherwise there would be an awful commotion.

[SamKat9]

Oof I was not even close. Clever one! I’m going to blame not getting it on mom brain but honestly it was just a good construction. I’m happy to see I was not the only one keeping Isaac company all weekend.

Ahh, Mom brain is such a good excuse to use because it's usually the truth!

[DBMiller]

Tying "CatchMeIfYouCan" to "SLIP" was my rabbit hole. And more so after I discovered the clue for SLIP also has 15 letters. So I'm looking at the letters ALSKE, which could anagram to SLAKE, and I could find no set way to change the ordering. It wasn't until Wendy put me down the Tom Hanks rabbit hole where I was looking again at the "BIG" in "BIG HALLUCINOGEN" that I finally noticed the word pattern and could reduce the number of 15 letter clues down to the 5 I needed to correctly solve the meta.

[MikeMillerwsj]

The contest answer is ALIKE. Each of the five theme answers shares its enumeration with a clue: for example, BEHIND THE SCENES is (6,3,6), as is the clue to 59-Down, “Making cat noises,” (AROAR). The other pairs are 23-/46-Across (LSD), 40-/70-Across (IVAN), 52-/16-Across (KNAVE), and 64-/72-Across (ERGO). The first letters of those five answers spell the contest answer.

This was a tough one! We had just 335 entries, lower than usual, suggesting that a lot of you (like us) were stumped by this one. Not a lot of wrong guesses, though -- 85% of submissions were correct. The incorrect ones included INANE (3), FIFTH (2), WINDY (2), EXACT (2), plus DRAFT, VITAL, STALE, AMPLE and a few others.

Congrats on this week's winner: Lanny Gilbert of Sandy Springs, Ga.!

[Bobj]

The incorrect ones included INANE (3),

Might have been incorrect, but it wasn't wrong.

[Commodore]

[girubato1]

Hi all. Still doesn’t seem real, but I got the email from Mike Miller. I’m joining the mug winners club. Thanks to all for the MANY nudges over the years and for the space to hang out with fellow cruciverbalists.

[The XWord Rabbit]

Christmas came a bit early for your Rabbit.

First, he needs to acknowledge yesterday’s game which, surprisingly, did not hinge on the final seconds of play. A 13-1 record. Will wonders never cease? Yes, most certainly, but at least it will be during the playoffs.

We are now into our 20th week since finalists were last announced. With only 9 nominations thus far it appears we’ll be far behind the 20 nominations cited during the previous 6-month period. Have the puzzles been (gasp) getting easier? Or are all you Muggles getting savvier in solving? Hmmm…. that certainly didn’t appear to be the case with the “Measure Twice, Solve Once” puzzle by Mr. Gaffney. His method was enough to drive solvers to drink – at least at the bar with Isaac.

And we have three, yes, THREE nominees:

There’s Bird Lives (Post #184) who took a snake-like path embedded in the answers to the five THIS or THAT clues and found PRONE, a perfectly acceptable answer (just not to this particular puzzle.)

El Savage (Post #194) took two paths less travelled: an alliterative route to shoehorn STURDY into a 5-letter adjective and then topped it off by eventually trying to make sense of YOGI BEAR in two clues. (Your Rabbit couldn’t resist.)

And finally, we have femullen (Post #188) who plucked INCH from the first three themers and a FOOT from the last, resulting in… well … 15 inches.

So, there you have it. Your Rabbit debated about ending with a Christmas tune from William Shatner (unbelievably, it's an album that was released -- or escaped -- in 2018), but eventually he settled on this yule log video (just the last 30 seconds or so). Until next week, then.

[Joe Ross]

Somebody fell off of his yacht. 🙂

[Joe Ross]

Would have bet big money this was going to break out into another cover of the California Raisins.

[LadyBird]

KAS 5 for me. My Hail Mary was FIFTH.

Each themer was 15 letters. Measuring twice (once from each end) brings you to the middle letter 8. In reverse grid order, you get F-I-I-T-H. But that's not a word. But if you happened yo measure incorrectly on the middle themer--and go to to position 9 (an F) THEN you get FIFTH.

[chart]

The constructors don't ever intentionally put red herrings in their puzzles, you say? Hmmm...

The way I reconcile this is that every good crossword puzzle has clever word play and patterns in them. That's what makes the meta so hard. Differentiating "regular" oddities from the key one.

[ship4u]

Out of a pool of 290 correct entries, we come up empty. Darn, the force is not with us!