"Starting Positions" - August 20, 2021

[lacangah]

Wow - congratulations to all who solved this!

I ended up fixated on 'darts' (which was dead center). Looking at the letters in cells 1-20, I convinced myself that 'alarm' was hidden in there.

See you all in a few days - have a great week,

[JRS51]

That is just beautiful! My hat is off to all solvers. There is not enough space here to describe my path to failure, but let’s just say it had a lot of ZEEs in it!

Agree - beautiful! I am very impressed!

[BethA]

Kas 5 for me. I submitted PLUMS. Because there were 5 CARs, and I added PORT, LOT, USED, MAT, SEAT. Voila! A plum job would be a great starting position!

My first miss this year.

[EVJ]

Uffda! Never could have seen this in the clues.
Congratulations to everyone that got the meta.
You ALL deserve a mug!

[hcbirker]

Glad i finally got it. I would have slapped myself other wise. So many rabbit holes. I thought the clues were a little odd though. That's what turned the corner.

[escapeartist]

I did not get this one.

There were some serious rabbit holes that I went down that I could not get away from.

- there are five "CAR" entries in the grid, which cross "PACE" & "SPORT" (or "PORT" (carport))

- there were five clues that were simple five letter clues

- there were five clues that had capital letters as abbreviations in them

- etc


Whoever wins the mug this week should have it plated in gold. (AU)

[JeanneC]

Not even in the same galaxy. Footstools became ottoman along with “empire”, unionizing became wedding with “date” and biscotto became biscuit to go along with “sea” as in Seabiscuit, etc.

May the Great Bird of the Galaxy (Roddenberry’s nickname) forgive me for waaaayyyy overthinking this!

Congrats to those who solved!

[EmilyW]

Wow, congrats to those who solved and good luck getting the mug! I remember thinking the clues were strange for FOOTSTOOLS and OUTERSPACE so I wish I would have looked at those more closely. My biggest rabbit hole was the GO at the end of FARGO and CARGO. I kept thinking of it as a starting position on a board game but couldn't find anywhere to go from there. It was also right next to DARTS which also had a clue that made me think of board games. I even googled the rules for darts when I was running out of ideas.

[Dow Jones]

I was tempted to apply the clue for 24 Across - "Put in alphabetical order", but that resulted in "Acers" (which didn't fit the title). After being "lost" for 3 weeks, this one was a quick solve.

[clueless_solver]

I usually forget about the clues once I solve, guess I will have to add this to my toolkit. Maybe if I rewrote all of the clues in monospace font, it would be easier to parse. I prefer my mechanism with the 5 cars, I took the last letter of the remaining bit of the word (after removing CAR) and got POLES, as in pole position.

The double letters (both with the grid and diagonally) were driving me insane, especially FOOTSTOOLS. I also can't believe that it DID end up involving the long ones, but not the right long ones. ATELIERS and DATELINE steered me so wrong that I gave up completely. Once my mechanisms started including OBOE I knew I was a goner because there was no way it would include a crossword word like that.

The cluster in the middle also reminded me of that ladder puzzle from a few weeks back, FARGO CARGO ? CARTS DARTS.

[escapeartist]

CARGO crossed FARGO
FEAT crossed SEAT

different starting positions, but only 2 - not 5

arg.

[LadyBird]

I think it is rather diabolical (and possibly sadistic) to have 4 pairs of words that differ just in the letter at the starting position: FARGO/CARGO; FEAT/SEAT; GAT/MAT; CARTS/DARTS. Spent ALOT of time looking for a fifth pair. And then kept at it because--on occasion--the number of letters in the answer does NOT equal the number of theme answers.

And then to have a clue that says Story STARTER = DATELINE. So I moved on to trying to make something out of the geographical names in the grid. Grrr. And then a few more rabbit holes.

Congrats to those who figured this out (I only made it to shore with a nudge)! Good luck on the mug.

[Joe Ross]

Maybe if I rewrote all of the clues in monospace font, it would be easier to parse.

This has helped me more than once, with credit going to @Dplass for suggesting the monospace font Consolas for the Excel forms.

[escapeartist]

Another rabbit hole :

Positions hinted at in the clues:

STARTER
ENDER
ASSIGNMENT
RANK
STOCK

(edit) - all 2 word clues with one 5 letter word in it

arg.

[DannyWalter]

Surely I was not the only one to find five CARs, then PACE, RACE, USED, SEAT, and POOL.

I guess that was an accident. Maybe I should have submitted CRASH.

[cbarbee002]

36A was my hook into the meta (after being disabused about another rabbit hole) - - the wording was way too superfluous. Once I caught onto the fact that the first letters spelled second, the rest was downhill. Very clever that the answer was the first, second, etc. letters from the relevant grid fills, AND first, second, etc. after you got those letters.

My first attempt was to think of 31A (DATELINE, with the clue "Story starter" - - was thinking "international date line") as relevant, so I looked at the place grid fills (Guam, Cabo, Fargo, etc) trying to make something of that. Yeah, went nowhere.

[ZooAnimalsOnWheels]

I also started this one out chasing the shiny "CAR"s. I was trying to make sense of them a number of ways when I noticed that if you carom the ONECAR off the corner, you can get CAROM with the start of ROMULAN, and then CARP can become CARPOOL with another carom, while CARGO and CARTS also "bounced" off each other.

After CARL didn't seem to follow that pattern, I went back to the ROMULAN clue and noticed the unnecessary addition of "Roddenberry", which pinged with some of the other weird clue wordings and the fact that no one thinks of Harry Nillson's "Coconut" when they think of music in "Reservoir Dogs"!

[DrTom]

Wow, what a crazy week. I was able to get this with a nudge and came up with the SCAREy answer. Luckily I did not send it in because it just did not seem "right". I also say STONE (obviously hindsight going back a week) and NOTES. I was pondering my fate because I knew Mike doesn't usually anagram, and then I got my second course correction (and the reason I did not submit) saying simply FIRST, SECOND.... DOH!

Oh an speaking of going back a week, I was DELIGHTED to see FIAT FEAT in the puzzle, had there been WORD LORD or AUDI ALDI I'd have asked for an honorable mention in the credits....

Fun puzzle Mr. Shenk

If only I could be so sassy about MGWCC. I think I know what I am supposed to do, I just cannot do it. That is OK, no long streak to worry about, I think it might be all the way up to 2!

Oh, and this is a representation of me flitting from dead end to dead end in the MGWCC puzzle, attracted by the bright, shiny, but unfulfilling paths...

[DrTom]

36A was my hook into the meta (after being disabused about another rabbit hole) - - the wording was way too superfluous. Once I caught onto the fact that the first letters spelled second, the rest was downhill. Very clever that the answer was the first, second, etc. letters from the relevant grid fills, AND first, second, etc. after you got those letters.

My first attempt was to think of 31A (DATELINE, with the clue "Story starter" - - was thinking "international date line") as relevant, so I looked at the place grid fills (Guam, Cabo, Fargo, etc) trying to make something of that. Yeah, went nowhere.

Been on the dateline thing for sure. Turns out the International Dateline starts just a bit after Guam so Guam is a day ahead. That meant of course that I should chose square 19 as one of my letters (the puzzle came out the 20th so a day ahead). Ateliers are French, Arles is in France (and a site where one finds many painters), France is 5 hours ahead so the next day, therefore 21 was a square where I'd find a letter....finally I said "Nah, that is even too weird for YOU Tom" got to be something else. Still didn't keep me out of holes though.

[Miki]

Realizing that the starting positions relate to ballet, I submitted "Races" at 5 pm on Sunday, about 48 hours later then my usual AHA moment. But my funny rabbit which I promise to share ... 5 cars in: carp, Carl, cargo, carts, and one car + outer space made me think that there is one car in outer space, it happens to be a 5 letter word- "Tesla" !