"But You Can Call Me" January 24, 2025

[Libbypibby]

Saw it at last second! Phew

[InAJelly]

Fun little rabbit hole i went down, before officially solving...

ERNIE.

To get ERNIE, I started out looking at the 5 names labeled with numbers in parenthesis going across, and immediately I realized that if the answer is 5 letters, then surely there is a letter I am supposed to get from each of these 5 names, and then order them in the way that their numbers lead. So, then I had:
Rob
Abe
Ben
Tom
Cal

and this didn't give me anything. As I am looking around the grid, something stands out to me.... Abraham Lincoln's clueing says "Penny Person", and I remember 47 down was "50 Cent", giving me R from RAP. Good start!

Then looking at Rob Estes, I know he's an actor so I went right to EGOT to give him an award, and i got my E. Momentum!

After I had my ER _ _ _, I quickly got my N connecting ben zobrist to the pirates and padres clue for NLERS

And with Tom and his clue of "seven super bowl rings", i though that sounded like "Dressed to Dazzle" 54d connecting to INRED for my I.

ERNI _ ...... Ernie!! Yes it must be ERNIE! Like from the movie Kingpin, "Hey, you can call me Ernie, or Big Ern"

[scrabbler]

Oh geez, I solved it for the right reasons, but without realizing I should be getting the fourth letter of the words from the last names. I was just going by the shortened first names, and adding any letter to make an alternate answer to another clue. For BEN I backsolved after I realized I needed an "O" to finish the word. Made it a bit harder than it needed to be, but still solved fairly quickly (for me).

[Wendy Walker]

This cemetery near me has no roads. It does, however, have a bovine escapee eating an American flag for lunch.
(This is an old African-American cemetery, and the flags are to honor soldiers who fought in the Civil War.)

[Aaron]

I got caught in something close to a rabbit hole. The clue to 4d (Ham) struck me as oddly worded and therefore significant. Then, I thought the way forward might be with the letters removed from the full names. For Thomas, that left me with "has." Change one letter and you get a biblical name: has=Ham. Might this work with others? Raham=Rahab. Jamin=Jabin. Vin=Zin.

I thought I had something. But try as I might, "ert" was a dead end. I even tried to reverse solve, but no matter how hard I squinted, no initial letter would make "_bbmz" into a word. So back to the drawing board, and eventually to the right answer. And the realization that this was either a coincidence or a very clever distraction built into the puzzle.

[mikeB]

This puzzle gives us guidance from the first glance. The title ends with the ellipsis . . . which naturally has us wondering what those omitted words might be. That’ll become clearer at the end. Also, we may happen to notice the parenthetical numbers attached to the five clues. These reliably identify the five theme entries. In this case, they also imply sequencing, since the numbers cover the first five integers with no duplicates or gaps. (When we see duplicates or gaps, we may be looking at lengths of character strings or spaces to count, but not so in this case.) Also, prompted that the answer is a five-letter word, it is safe to assume that we’re to harvest one letter from each theme entry. So, with these nudges tucked away, we set about working the grid. Early on we realize that each of the theme entries is the name of a person – first and last name. However, there is something relevantly odd about the array of first names: Matt deliberately deployed the long form of each first name, even though Tom, Ben and Rob are commonly identified using the short forms. There must be a reason for sticking with the long names – definitely a hefty nudge, silently implicating the short names that we don’t see there. The most straightforward manipulation is simply to replace the long form with the short form in each entry and see what materializes. Whoa, there’s TOMB . . . and didn’t we see “Cemetery feature” as a clue? Aha, it’s the Alternate Entry feature – and it works for all five theme entries. Use the aforesaid numbers for sequencing the initial letters of the Primary Entries, and we have the answer. Interestingly, two different constructors gave us two complementary mechanisms based on short first names; despite their similarities, they have markedly different solving paths, further illustrating the amazing creativity that goes into designing these gems. Hats off to Matt for bringing this one to us.

[sjm]

Oh geez, I solved it for the right reasons, but without realizing I should be getting the fourth letter of the words from the last names. I was just going by the shortened first names, and adding any letter to make an alternate answer to another clue. For BEN I backsolved after I realized I needed an "O" to finish the word. Made it a bit harder than it needed to be, but still solved fairly quickly (for me).

Same here! Which made me appreciate the brilliance of the puzzle's construction all the more.

[The XWord Rabbit]

Your Rabbit is a big fan of the Eagles.
He especially likes "Hotel California."

[Faust]

I’m new here… been doing crosswords for about a year now. This was the first meta/contest puzzle I have attempted and proud to say that I got it without any help with 3 hours to spare. I’m probably completely hooked now.

All that said, did anyone else get stuck going down an “IN” rabbit hole? I spent a decent chunk of Saturday trying to make sense of “In a trance”, “Flooded in”, “In red”, “Rarin”, “Latin”, “Min”, “Vin”, “Lin”, “Ein”, Etc….

[ZooAnimalsOnWheels]

I certainly had the "You Can Call Me Al" earworm when I first saw this puzzle, but after the Starbucks commercial in the NFL playoff games yesterday, I'm stuck with this other name-related one:

[woozy]

Hmm... my experience was a bit different than most. I thought this was rather mundane and uninteresting. Surely we had to do something with the themers and the title would imply finding nicknames or maybe associated adjectives ("honest", "silent") but most don't have nick-names (some call Tom Brady "the Pharoah" but most don't. Ben Zorbrist and Rob Estes have no nicknames). As Benjamin and Thomas seemed awkwardly formal and long, the nicknames would be just the shortened versions (that was most obvious with Benjamin Zorbrist) but then it can't just be a the shortened names as they have the same letters. So what's left to do? Well, the only remaining option is the informal last initial. And Abe L makes the whole thing obvious. Yawn. No aha moment, nothing clever. In neither clue nor grid order. Obvious oddball entries (ROAD = cemetery feature???) that didn't even try to hide. And a mechanism that certainly feels as though it's been done many times (even if it hasn't). I'd say this one was phoned-in except I think it's impossible to phone in a crossword. Of course, they can't all be great and some will have to be mediocre.

[hoover]

Hmm... my experience was a bit different than most. I thought this was rather mundane and uninteresting. Surely we had to do something with the themers and the title would imply finding nicknames or maybe associated adjectives ("honest", "silent") but most don't have nick-names (some call Tom Brady "the Pharoah" but most don't. Ben Zorbrist and Rob Estes have no nicknames). As Benjamin and Thomas seemed awkwardly formal and long, the nicknames would be just the shortened versions (that was most obvious with Benjamin Zorbrist) but then it can't just be a the shortened names as they have the same letters. So what's left to do? Well, the only remaining option is the informal last initial. And Abe L makes the whole thing obvious. Yawn. No aha moment, nothing clever. In neither clue nor grid order. Obvious oddball entries (ROAD = cemetery feature???) that didn't even try to hide. And a mechanism that certainly feels as though it's been done many times (even if it hasn't). I'd say this one was phoned-in except I think it's impossible to phone in a crossword. Of course, they can't all be great and some will have to be mediocre.

I actually started down the nickname path, and BenZ does have one.
Tom: The GOAT
Ben: Zorilla
Abe: Honest Abe
Cal: Silent Cal
Rob: ??? is when I knew it wasn't the mechanism.

[flandangle]

Late to the party, but I did make it ashore! One of my favourite constructions in a while. ABEL was the giveaway for me, because HAM was suspicious

[woozy]

I actually started down the nickname path, and BenZ does have one.
Tom: The GOAT
Ben: Zorilla
Abe: Honest Abe
Cal: Silent Cal
Rob: ??? is when I knew it wasn't the mechanism.

It was googling the Tom that made me realize it'd go no-where. Googling "Tom Brady nickname" and the first two or three hits being articles about Tom Brady but nothing really about nicknames except as an arbitrary word elsewhere, a couple of articles about some sports-caster giving him a "brutal" nickname (but absolutely no mention what it was-- It was written as an "of course you know what I'm taking about" style) then equally many references to the GOAT, Tom Terrific, the Comeback Kid, the Pharoah indicating he may be a record holder of the most nicknames nobody actually calls him. That seemed a dead end. After that Zorilla seemed more an affectation than a nickname.

[Gwert]

Wow that song is hard on the ears. Dont call me maybe. Apologies to Carly Ray Jepsun.

[NuYear68]

I too tried the nickname angle, using ones that weren't necessarily associated with the clued individual. That had me working Peeping Tom, Silent Cal, Gentle Ben, Honest Abe and Boston Rob (a reality TV star). Nothing linked the nicknames with other clues or grid entries. I did see the robe-skirt connection, but not because of Rob plus the E from Estes, but because an E followed Rob in Robert. That could give me Calv and Benj, which made no sense, and failed to work with Abraham and Thomas.

As usual, if I do not solve these by Friday evening, the weekend takes over and I never remember to go back and finish.

[MikeMillerwsj]

The contest answer is SHORT. Take the short form of each theme answer’s first name and the initial of the last name to form a word that fits another clue. For example, TOM B. at 17-Across could answer “Cemetery feature” [ROAD] at 33-Across as TOMB. Similarly, CALC works for TRIG, BENZ for OPEL, ABEL for HAM and ROBE for SKIRT. The first letters of those answers, in the order of the parenthetical numbers in the theme clues, spell the contest answer.

We had a successful turnout for this tricky puzzle: 1071 entries, 87% correct, way above our usual level around 75%. A big vote for ALIAS (just guessing from the title?) with 56 submissions. After that, 2 for NAMES and 1 for a couple of near-misses--SPORT and SHIRT-- plus LONER, CHATS, and a few others.

Congrats to this week's winner (claiming his second mug after another win in 2020): Paul Yee of Oakland, Calif.!

[DaveG]

I was up skiing in the mountains Thursday-Friday, and only had access to the puzzle on my iPad when I sat with the puzzle on Saturday evening. The themers were obvious, as were their short names, but I didn't connect the last initial aspect, despite the clue H.S. Math Subject, in which I hadn't cross-filled any letters yet, thinking to myself "either Calc or Trig." Sadly, I didn't consider that alternative answer again after Trig fit into the grid.

As a note to self, I really ought to pay mind to times like that where an alternate answer strikes me when completing the grid. Had I given that more consideration, I very well would have seen Cal C. Also found ROAD to be an odd cemetery feature, but again, shrugged it off.

Alas... ended my mini-streak to start the year at three, but gives me a chance to start a new streak this week.

[The XWord Rabbit]

The X-Word Rabbit has no intention of taking the easy way out this week with a Paul Simon video, but he does intend to take some liberties with the title of the puzzle: BUT YOU CAN CALL ME A.I.

ChatGPT provided this rather flat-footed introduction:

“We certainly enjoyed the clever construction of Mr. Gaffney’s contest puzzle: ‘But You Can Call Me…’ The theme of shortened names, like Josh for Joshua and Bea for Beatrice, was both fun and challenging to navigate. The twist of using the extra letters from the across answers to spell out the final answer was a delightful touch.”

Had enough? Thought so.

Then let’s move on to our only nominee of the week and that would be InAJelly (Post #242) who was anything but SHORT-sighted, connecting 50-Cent to Abe Lincoln and awarding an EGOT to Rob Estes, a memorable actor who your Rabbit has never heard of. The answer came up a bit short – 4/5ths of ERNIE, but your Rabbit takes what he can get.

Some rather challenging puzzles in the last few weeks brought the number of nominees over the last six months to 20, exactly the same number of Muggles we had during our last review. Mug winners will be announced on the regular Friday Zoom call, February 7th. Good luck, everyone!

[Susan Goldberg]

I have no excuse. Stared at it all weekend. Major head slapping today. Oh well, some weeks it just doesn’t click. (I feel like the Commanders and the Bills - except they make a lot more money while losing.)