#578 - "Double Stuff" - June 28, 2019

[Al Sisti]

Well I somehow pulled that one out! Man, a couple days of solid stumpers... and now MMMM and PGWCC tomorrow (whoops -- today)? How's a guy supposed to find time to loaf around the pool?

[Orsys]

Phew, got it. Great meta. I had right idea, wrong rabbit hole for the longest time.

[BrianMac]

I didn't see AMATI the first time through, so I got stuck with FOUR. I looked for an S for a while, but didn't see it and FOURS was not particularly clicking / satisfying answer. So I applied the title to FOUR to get EIGHT, which I submitted with great confidence.

Even though I was wrong, I really liked this meta.

[Jacksull]

Great meta. Congrats to all who solved it.

Once again, a week 4 failure for me. I don't think I could gotten to "fours" as an answer. But if I had, I probably would have said "Nah, that can't be it".

[Laura M]

It was really only in a circuitous way that I got this one! After a bunch of empty rabbit holes* I looked up the Taj Mahal and the largest cities in South America, mostly for something to do. But seeing Agra and Lima, two common crossword answers, made me go hmm. I tried for ages to find more examples where a short, common answer could be substituted for a long, unusual answer, but most of them felt forced. Edible pods = okra, maybe. Stringed instruments = lyres? Lutes? So I gave up on that. Later, I happened to put together XXLI and MAXX (which was probably most people's starting point) and aha! But I wouldn't have thought anything of it if I hadn't found Lima already.

*My favorite rabbit hole was trying to come up with alternative clue answers that started with "double." Again it started feeling forced after a couple of them. Set up = double cross, yes. Stringed instruments = double basses, better without the plural, but O.K. Catch again = double take? Eh. I quit when I couldn't think of any "double" phrases where the second word started with a vowel :-)

Like many I wasn't totally happy with "fours" as an answer--although Week 4, and the Fourth of July, are timely fours--but it was a 5-letter word, and I figured it was as close as I was likely to get! Also, I'm glad I didn't know that "Every Man Has a Woman Who Loves Him" is on the "Double Fantasy" album (which I found out on Crossword Fiend). That could have kept me unproductively busy for a while!

[Al Sisti]

Did anyone else notice that the browser tab was titled "Centerpiece" instead of "Double Stuff"?

[Hector]

On the Crossword Fiend blog Matt says that "Centerpiece" had been the "placeholder title," and he's not sure how it was retained in the pdf.