A place to discuss the weekly Wall Street Journal Crossword Puzzle Contest, starting every Thursday around 4:00 p.m. Eastern time. Please do not post any answers or hints before the contest deadline which is midnight Sunday Eastern time.
"Calling Dr. Tom... Calling Dr. Tom... You're needed in the Muggles wing, STAT!"
Here as paged! I was playing Hide and Seek with a drug rep....... Plus I was also busy trying to counsel a patient with bladder control issues, seems he cannot always control his elimination and sometimes manages to wet his hand, he called it his pee knuckle.....
To paraphrase Sam Cooke -- Don't know much about urology, but in my amateur opinion, this could be a symptom of the problematic results of holding back too long......
Judging from post 370 followed quickly by post 372, I'd say those flood gates opened wide!
Hey, I love a good pun-pot-shot (and not just on 4/20) as much as the next guy (okay, more), but when the pun-typhoon hits... RUN FOR THE HILLS!
I loved this meta too. Finding the replacement words for the second word of each phrase was fun. Then realizing you could do it for ALL of the words made it more fun.
My only quibble was the numbers. I've got nothing against numbers, per se, mind you. It's just that it adds a little inelegance, albeit probably necessary with this particular meta. It's always great when the mechanism extends itself into the words you find, instead of just basically giving you which letter to use. Though I can't imagine a construction like this, with 8 substitute phrases-and-words, that you could do without the help of the numbers!
Nice! Even when looking at the solution, I still have trouble seeing it . Glad I didn't spend too much time working on the meta and enjoyed Isaac's company.
My hang up was that I saw way more alternatives (probably nonsense if said them out loud), and then thought the SWAPS would MEET - meaning the meta would be composed of where the words intersected. Once I went back to only having one alternative, it worked perfectly. Very fun.
Given that each of the theme answers was x AND y, I thought it was a bit of a cruel rabbit hole to have two identical clues of trials AND tribulations. I, too, wandered down a few numerical rabbit holes until the word VINEGAR clicked.
SusieG wrote: ↑Mon Apr 19, 2021 1:54 pm
My hang up was that I saw way more alternatives (probably nonsense if said them out loud), and then thought the SWAPS would MEET - meaning the meta would be composed of where the words intersected. Once I went back to only having one alternative, it worked perfectly. Very fun.
Similarly I was hung up for way too long with the notion that something needed to MEET and noticed that there is a 5 letter section in the grid where 16A and 20A MEET and the same for 56A and 65A. The fact none of the parenthetical numbers was greater than 5 seemed confirmation that the mechanism involved SWAPPING letters between or within the two abutting sections. After trying every possible permutation of that MEET SWAP and getting only gibberish, I was at a loss. It was only when Wendy Walker nudged me out of that rabbit hole that I was able to see the much simpler word swap that was necessary for the solution.
There lies my beef with this otherwise very clever puzzle. We are so often reminded of the importance of the title when solving the meta yet a full 50% of this title was a misleading red herring. I fail to see any significance of the word MEET. I would have preferred the title STOCK EXCHANGE making reference to the exchange of words in the stock phrases used in the mechanism.
SusieG wrote: ↑Mon Apr 19, 2021 1:54 pm
My hang up was that I saw way more alternatives (probably nonsense if said them out loud), and then thought the SWAPS would MEET - meaning the meta would be composed of where the words intersected. Once I went back to only having one alternative, it worked perfectly. Very fun.
Similarly I was hung up for way too long with the notion that something needed to MEET and noticed that there is a 5 letter section in the grid where 16A and 20A MEET and the same for 56A and 65A. The fact none of the parenthetical numbers was greater than 5 seemed confirmation that the mechanism involved SWAPPING letters between or within the two abutting sections. After trying every possible permutation of that MEET SWAP and getting only gibberish, I was at a loss. It was only when Wendy Walker nudged me out of that rabbit hole that I was able to see the much simpler word swap that was necessary for the solution.
There lies my beef with this otherwise very clever puzzle. We are so often reminded of the importance of the title when solving the meta yet a full 50% of this title was a misleading red herring. I fail to see any significance of the word MEET. I would have preferred the title STOCK EXCHANGE making reference to the exchange of words in the stock phrases used in the mechanism.
Just my halfpenny’s worth.
I thought that was part of the meta-solving process.....figuring out which part or parts of the title apply to the meta. Sometimes it's the whole title, and sometimes it's just one word.
Catching up here with apologies for the delay! Regulars here know that Patrick Berry is a puzzle genius and this one was a veritable Swiss watch of intricate construction. We had 1594 entries, with a very impressive 86% picking apart the solution successfully. Plus a long list of other guesses, inclyding GIVE & TAKE (12), TRADE YOU/YA (6), BAIT & SWITCH (3), and lots of others.
Congrats to this week's winner, Tom Clayton of Davidson, NC!