"Well-Rounded" January 31, 2025

[dk letter]

With only a couple of hours before the deadline, I decided to give it a try and fortunately found shore quickly!

[EmilyW]

Ashore

[Colin]

Make that ten onboard,
Soccer and golf on TV!
Anyway… asea.

[hcbirker]

[hcbirker]

[escapeartist]

Forehead slap

[Colin]

Another forehead slap here! Nice one!

[hcbirker]

Another SAD meta. Simple And Difficult. You just have to see it.

[lacangah]

Ms Lacangah and I typically fill out the grid in lower case, which added a wrinkle in solving this weekend. What case do pencil/pen Muggles typically use?

Congrats to all who solved it - have a great week

[scrabbler]

Ms Lacangah and I typically fill out the grid in lower case, which added a wrinkle in solving this weekend. What case do pencil/pen Muggles typically use?

Congrats to all who solved it - have a great week

I do it in caps myself, but after solving it occurred to me that anyone solving in lower case would have a harder time with it. (My sister solves in lower case when using paper, so you're by no means alone.)

I was lucky in another sense that I happened to start this grid with the lower right corner, and so was thinking about curves while solving the grid. It's nice when the first thing you try works out...

[steveb]

Ms Lacangah and I typically fill out the grid in lower case, which added a wrinkle in solving this weekend. What case do pencil/pen Muggles typically use?

Congrats to all who solved it - have a great week

Upper case, always, because that’s how completed grids are always shown. Besides, with lower case I might get sloppy and have trouble reading my own writing. Upper case letters have those nice straight lines and, of course, curves.

[avian]

Thought the answer was "Good Job" but not because of the curves clue; just because that answer made sense and those letters in the names (especially the "J" and the "B") "jumped out" at me. However, I wasn't 100% confident so I didn't submit.

[benchen71]

Here's a late entrant for the XWord Rabbit. This one hinges on the fact that Mike provided us with, not one but two symmetrically-placed meta hints:

Perhaps I need to explain those "alternate answers":

1. SOX obviously refers to the Red Sox, who have had their fair share of "high notes", like when they scored 23 runs in Game 4 of the 1999 playoffs.
2. A "Reuben base" can also be a SMILY, since a smile is the base of a facial expression for a person called Reuben.
3. I have to admit that I backsolved this letter: SLOP has the only clue that starts with the letter U. That said, I don't know of any SALONs that serve appealing food.
4. And, of course, the end of a ship's spar is when it is sold off for scrap.

[woozy]

Dr. Graham was played by Lake Bell, so Graham Bell implies Phone app so Tap on. And the Bell Curve. And all the Ls form aLaffer curve and. Well somethings gotta happen.

[femullen]

Some time ago, I recall another meta whose solution depended on the manner in which you happened to form letters. In that one, you had an advantage if you used lower case, which made it a Monday morning forehead-slapper for me.

This week, the advantage went to upper case, which saved me another bruise on the noggin.

[Saraplus5]

Aw, so close. I definitely was on the right path - and I think I could have made it to shore easily had it not been for the stomach bug that hit my 2 year old and my husband! Zero brain cells to spare.

[Bobj]

I saw this one realtivley quickly. It's based on an old Brain Teaser I learned as a child:

On which row does "Z go?
A EF H....
BCD G....

Most (probably including me) try to find some pattern to the number of letters on each row.

[Wendy Walker]

My mind first went to sports (I know ... WHAT!), interpreting "curves" as "curve balls," which I understand is a baseball term. Hey! Didn't Sam MALONE of "Cheers" fame used to play baseball before he became a bartender? Perhaps all the surnames in the themers are famous TV or movie or real-life baseball players. I started Googling and realized quickly that there are a seemingly infinite number of such people.
I fill out the grid in lowercase letters, so to get the meta answer I had to rewrite the themers in ALL CAPS. As soon as I got GOO I knew where it was leading.
And my apologies for using the answer when congratulating solvers on the Friday Zoom call! Though it actually might have been more conspicuous if I DIDN'T use that phrase.

[Commodore]

Aargh. Here's a word wi' curves in 'er: OOPS

M E T A

[Bob cruise director]

I think that Mike could have expanded the answer to GOOD JOB BOB (meaning any one of us Bob's who are muggles) by adding an extra minithemer at the bottom where he had ICIEST. And maybe sneaking something into where he has Paella for symmetry.