"This, That, and The Other Thing" - April 23, 2021

[John77]

Still on the boat, you can find me on the Apophenia Deck. Reassuring (?) to see that this is a 3-star already.

However, I do have a WAG prepared for submission before the deadline. Cheers to all.

[John77]

Just an artifact of the camera, sorry to say.

I have to disagree, Wendy — if I’m not mistaken, that’s a lookout raccoon hiding in the grass making sure the barn cat doesn’t pull any mischief. He’s camouflaged and ready to spring into action should the need arise!

I wish I could post the videos! Seconds after that first image was made, Scruffy hightailed it off to the left. The raccoons always try to gang up on her, but she outsmarts them by beating them to the dish of kibble that I put out. Here are five of the bullies from the other night -- one is taking advantage of the VIP mezzanine seating and four (yes, four!) are scarfing down the seed falling from above.

Looks like you could use one of these:

[mpmanning]

Ashore with my toes in the sand. Spent too much time helping Issac as a barback. Now on to the other Gaffney MGWCC.

[Bob cruise director]

Ashore, although I agree with those who are only 95%. I can see two answers but have decided which one I am submitting. To me, this may be one of those weeks in which a second answer could be defended.

ALS

or a third

[Bob cruise director]

Our Sunday noon report a little early. The comments here and on crosswordfiend.com after midnight should be interesting. I have seen one answer that I can defend but is not a 100% one, another that makes a lot of sense but... and a third that also that can be justified but doesn't quite fit.

On the positive side we have more new muggles since yesterday - pjc, Steven Latrou and mlvilv (which I assume are a couple's initials and I wondered if they got together because each of them had roman numeral initials). Great to have more muggles

So far we have 35 on the ship and 169 on the shore. However several on the ship probably have one of my three answers but does not like it enough to jump to the shore and many on the shore who have done so with more than a little trepidation.

And one final comment before the list. I missed Al who had comments #3 and #4 so I will buy him a Guinness. However he gets chastised for a POE comment (see comment #44) so the Guinness may not have poured correctly.

New to the ship since yesterday are:
otlaolap
Diane
Larrry
BreeZynCO
Limerick
Colin
Jeremy
auee89
Carter
Commodore
TheCatt
Collegetowngirl
Tom S
WSJosh
Anaerobe
John77

and on the shore since yesterday are:

higgysue
Moi
Plymouth Rock
bread-girl
EVJ
lbary
sphorning
Dow Jones
Al
tonyrobots
jimbo1
mlvilv
iggystan
rosiegirl
Michael S
John B
Steven Latrou
Tmart
Olof
streroto
mitchel674
JennyByrd
JRS51
Burak
BeTheLight
Cap'n Rick
dk letter
Jackie88
pjc
mpmanning
ALS

Good luck to all and our final report will come out tonight.

[SReh26]

A third option? Now I have to find it.

[Preterosso]

Ashore! Not as ambivalent as many others, so I’ll just bask in my personal certainty....

[auee89]

Ashore! Thanks boharr for the nudge!

[jrdad]

Click. It just occurred to me why answer #2 is the right one; now I'm at 100%.

[Dapperdan]

Ashore, I think....sure learn a lot from these puzzles.

[howardl]

I'm ashore. If I'm wrong, I will be enormously disappointed. My only reason to doubt is that the answer is not the theme I expected, given what weekend this is.

[jenirvin]

Well, I had my "aha" moment... that led to a "what next" moment. Waiting for that second bolt of lightning, but don't think that Tom Waits is gonna help with the next step. I have an educated guess, but I need to see it to believe/submit it.

[Cindy N]

And one final comment before the list. I missed Al who had comments #3 and #4 so I will buy him a Guinness. However he gets chastised for a POE comment (see comment #44) so the Guinness may not have poured correctly.

What? It wasn't a perfect pint? Do you not have one of these like this fine gentleman then?

[Susan Goldberg]

I have had a significant breakthrough since yesterday, but still working. Hoping to get there by midnight but, like some others, and having my first dinner out in a year for a friend’s birthday AO may not make it!!!

[yungchap]

Any minor nudge would be greatly appreciated! I feel like all the tiny rabbit holes I've found are leading nowhere. Been looking at this for hours and no dice, lol

[mikeB]

Ashore, but with a lot of salt water in my lungs. As did others, I discerned more than one candidate answer. It was a bit of a meta-quandary (no pun intended) -- not knowing whether it was a real or imagined ambiguity and, if real, how to resolve it. I decided to revisit the clues and found something that (to me at least) pointed directly to one of the candidates, so that was my solution. I admire the constructor and have a lot of respect for those that found this puzzle so much easier than I did.

[jenirvin]

Count me on the uncertain shore. Pulled the plug and went with my gut, but still searching for that 100% confirmation.

[Trey]

Marion and I are on shore..............like many others, the confidence level is not 100% but we're declaring it done.

Good luck.

[HunterX]

Ashore with 75% certainty...as with some other Gaffneys there isn't going to be 100% verification, but I don't think it's possible there could be any other answer.

Interesting... I've always felt the opposite. Once I find the mechanism of a Matt Gaffney puzzle, I usually find everything falls into place quite neatly and elegantly, and I feel 100% confident. This is one where I'm only 95%, which is what bothers me.

Recently there were MAKE HIM FROM THEM and WE'LL HAVE WATERS ALL AROUND, both of which had answers that weren't fully confirmed; to solve for USHER in the first puzzle required overlapping the pronouns, which was an extra step not suggested by the title or grid, and to solve for THOUSAND ISLAND DRESSING in the second meant adding the word DRESSING without any real logic other than intuitively knowing the product name.

Both of those were ones a lot of muggles got correct but struggled over; they didn't have the satisfying "click" of last week's 100%er.

Hmm... I thought MAKE HIM FROM THEM was very straight-forward. Each pronoun added one letter. I was 100% certain on that one. WE'LL HAVE WATERS ALL AROUND seems similar to this one, though to a lesser extent. The THOUSAND was obvious, the ISLAND as well. Only the DRESSING left any uncertainty. Though not much, given the clue mentioned that the phrase was "something you might ask for in a restaurant." This made the third word pretty obvious. Again, 100% certainty, for me at least.

So yes, there are some Gaffney crossword contest puzzles where I might have less than 100% certainty in the answer. But of the last 28 of his, I got 20, and 100% was my "usual" certainty level. At least that's my experience. Your mileage may vary.

[billkatz]

Safely on shore!