"Aforesaid" January 3, 2025

[DannyWalter]

Did anyone else at least consider 1946 Oscar winner Harold (herald) Russell (rustle) as an answer?

Also, I am wondering how “Aforesaid” is related to the meta or to the answer.
I tried to connect the pair, herald with aforesaid, for way too long.

My husband and I chose Russell Crowe because of Russell being his first name as were the other homophones.


*Thanks Mike B for your explanation. I think I understand.

That would be me! The mechanism came pretty quickly, and I had RUSTLE/RUSSELL. Russell Crowe was too obvious for me, I guess. Finding no confirmation in the grid or the clues, I went back to the title. Aforesaid implied that I had to find the thing "afore", so Russell should be the last name. You could also say, correctly I guess, that I had found the thing "afore" so now I want the thing after. Perhaps it was just my iconoclastic nature that led me to the more obscure choice.

No complaints, fun puzzle, and of course, the constructor is always right

[Westside]

First post here.

I humbly submit my own rabbit hole entry...

Here are the unique non-theme grid words afore Reps, Exhale, etc.:

Pod
Ethan
Are
Kit
Colorado
Seedy

.. with first letters being an anagram for SPACEK. Google confirmed that only 3 (!!!) Oscar winners have a six-letter last name. Jack Lemmon, Jon Voight, and.. Sissy Spacek.

I submitted Sissy Spacek, proud but also amazed at how quickly some of you found and submitted this seemingly tricky answer.

Could you please explain how "Kit, Colorado and Seedy" are afore - or simply noted for the sake of an anagrammed solution? It matters to your Rabbit.

Gladly! I will cover these in reverse grid order of the Step 1 answers.

Phil/Fill was 63A LADE. The immediately preceding grid answer is 62A SEEDY.

Rex/Wrecks was 59A TOTALS, immediately preceded by 58A COLORADO.

Hugh/Hue was 32A UMBER, preceded by 27A KIT (skipping theme answer WENTZ).

Now comes the consecutive trio 14A REPS, 15A EXHALE, 16A SPHAGNUM. These are immediately preceded by 4A A POD, 8A ETHAN, 13A ARE. But actually 4A is two words, the second word being POD.

Putting this together, the afore initials are SCKPEA. With only three possible 6-letter Oscar names, it's SPACEK. Obviously!!

[The XWord Rabbit]

Meet Anagramma, a close personal friend of the X-Word Rabbit.

She will appear whenever a rabbit hole story resorts to anagramming for a solution, although that was not the intent of its creator. “Aforesaid” by Mr. Shenk is a lovely example to introduce her, providing two nominations.

We have the long-awaited Post #300 from altosax who put the homonyms in the wrong order and got LUSTER as a RESULT! From there it was simply a matter of finding the perfectly logical synonym – SHINE – and the actor who won an Academy Award for that film – GEOFFREY RUSH. Short, sweet and nominated.

Your Rabbit also appreciated the very first submission from Westside, a newly-minted Muggle who took an entirely different approach, using the first letters of words that preceded the six critical clues (Post #292). A bit of anagramming and voilà we have Sissy SPACEK, another Oscar winner. Bravo, Westside, the Rabbit sees many meta detours in your future.

And thanks to both of you for making Anagramma happy! Until next week then.

[hcbirker]

QUARTER anagramma copy.jpg

Meet Anagramma, a close personal friend of the X-Word Rabbit.

She will appear whenever a rabbit hole story resorts to anagramming for a solution, although that was not the intent of its creator. “Aforesaid” by Mr. Shenk is a lovely example to introduce her, providing two nominations.

We have the long-awaited Post #300 from altosax who put the homonyms in the wrong order and got LUSTER as a RESULT! From there it was simply a matter of finding the perfectly logical synonym – SHINE – and the actor who won an Academy Award for that film – GEOFFREY RUSH. Short, sweet and nominated.

Your Rabbit also appreciated the very first submission from Westside, a newly-minted Muggle who took an entirely different approach, using the first letters of words that preceded the six critical clues (Post #292). A bit of anagramming and voilà we have Sissy SPACEK, another Oscar winner. Bravo, Westside, the Rabbit sees many meta detours in your future.

And thanks to both of you for making Anagramma happy! Until next week then.

Anagramma is a great idea! Love it!

[Henry Paul]

OMG I just got Mike's email that we're the winner!

Just before Covid my wife told me about the Friday meta, which led me to this wonderful group. After all these years of submitting answers, wondering if my emails were going to spam, it's great to know they DO make it. Thanks to you all for (virtually) being a fun part of my puzzling life. Big shout out to @Wendy Walker who was so kind to mentor me early on.

2025 is starting off in a terrific way!

Cheers to all

[KayW]

OMG I just got Mike's email that we're the winner!

Just before Covid my wife told me about the Friday meta, which led me to this wonderful group. After all these years of submitting answers, wondering if my emails were going to spam, it's great to know they DO make it. Thanks to you all for (virtually) being a fun part of my puzzling life. Big shout out to @Wendy Walker who was so kind to mentor me early on.

2025 is starting off in a terrific way!

Cheers to all

Congratulations on getting "mugged"!

[MikeMillerwsj]

The contest answer is RUSSELL CROWE. Each of the starred answers is the last name of a man whose first name is a homophone for the first word of another clue: Jim/gym (REPS); Hugh/hue (UMBER); Pete/peat (SPHAGNUM); Rex/wrecks (TOTALS); Phil/ fill (LADE); Cy/sigh (EXHALE). The first letters of the answers to those clues spell RUSTLE, a homophone of the first name of the contest answer.

Happy new year and sorry for the delay. This was a contest with many twists, but we had a big and successful turnout: 1501 entries, 92% of them correct (well above our usual rate around 75%). One interesting judicial question was what to do with Harold Russell, 1946's best supporting actor (for "The Best Years of Our Lives"), submitted by 14 solvers. As it happened our randomly selected entry had Crowe, who fit the pattern of homophones of first names, so we didn't have to make that call.

Other incorrect guesses included Philip Seymour Hoffman (5), Hugh Jackman (3), Mercedes Ruehl (3... any ideas why?), and Robert DeNiro (2).

Congrats to this week's winner (celebrating in an above post): Paul Meijer of Mountain View, Calif.!