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.
Schmeel wrote: Sat Dec 04, 2021 3:02 pm
Ashore.
Not a phrase I've heard before, but Google helped.
I was wondering about people who haven't heard the phrase, because I am sure there are probably a fair number. I think this would be very hard to Google! Impressed that you figured it out!
I thought that familiarity with this phrase would track with age, with the "never heard of it" people being at the younger end of the axis. But Google nGrams shows that it has certainly not faded from use, at least not in books.
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This is interesting but not really surprising to me. I'm sure my 20-year-old son knows it, even if he's never used it. That said, I still think it's a hard one to Google in this context! We unsuccessfully tried to use Google and we knew the phrase
Team DoubleTow=Ali (who posts here) & Alex
with occasional assistance from son
Too many or too few breadcrumbs. This one is too many for me. I've got a lot of possible words but not a seven letter phrase. At this late hour I would call it 2.5x trouble. Any help would generate Thanks X 7
woozy wrote: Sun Dec 05, 2021 11:29 am
So I'm curious about where most people learn of Burma Shave signs. What percentage was Mad Magazine and what percent was Warner Brothers cartoons? And given that no-one could possibly of learned of them from actual Burma Shave signs, what other sources are there.
I remember them vividly from my time in the 1950s.
KFB wrote: Sun Dec 05, 2021 4:50 pm
Too many or too few breadcrumbs. This one is too many for me. I've got a lot of possible words but not a seven letter phrase. At this late hour I would call it 2.5x trouble. Any help would generate Thanks X 7
I am the queen of typos but just want to make sure you are looking for a 7 WORD phrase.
Team DoubleTow=Ali (who posts here) & Alex
with occasional assistance from son
TeamDoubleTow wrote: Sun Dec 05, 2021 8:53 am
I was wondering about people who haven't heard the phrase, because I am sure there are probably a fair number. I think this would be very hard to Google! Impressed that you figured it out!
I thought that familiarity with this phrase would track with age, with the "never heard of it" people being at the younger end of the axis. But Google nGrams shows that it has certainly not faded from use, at least not in books.
.
Meta.jpg
This is interesting but not really surprising to me. I'm sure my 20-year-old son knows it, even if he's never used it. That said, I still think it's a hard one to Google in this context! We unsuccessfully tried to use Google and we knew the phrase
I tried Googling it "after the fact" with what I had decided were the "generalizations" from which I had earlier decided I wanted it boiled down from. Turns out that it made a huge difference whether I used "phrase", "quote", "idiom", or "aphorism" with my other terms. Three were useless. One brought up the meta answer as the first option.
mntlblok wrote: Sun Dec 05, 2021 5:56 pm
I tried Googling it "after the fact" with what I had decided were the "generalizations" from which I had earlier decided I wanted it boiled down from. Turns out that it made a huge difference whether I used "phrase", "quote", "idiom", or "aphorism" with my other terms. Three were useless. One brought up the meta answer as the first option.
But with what keywords? That's what would have gotten me.
GUAVA is not an anagram of VAGUE and PEPPER is not a palindrome.
TeamDoubleTow wrote: Sun Dec 05, 2021 8:53 am
I was wondering about people who haven't heard the phrase, because I am sure there are probably a fair number. I think this would be very hard to Google! Impressed that you figured it out!
I thought that familiarity with this phrase would track with age, with the "never heard of it" people being at the younger end of the axis. But Google nGrams shows that it has certainly not faded from use, at least not in books.
Meta.jpg
This is interesting but not really surprising to me. I'm sure my 20-year-old son knows it, even if he's never used it. That said, I still think it's a hard one to Google in this context! We unsuccessfully tried to use Google and we knew the phrase
We were looking at what we had discovered and trying to come up with different ways of characterizing it. I used one word in the phrase, plus something else that, let's say, plays a part in it. My 25 year old heard that and said the phrase pretty quickly. We knew that must be it, and just had to put the pieces together after that. So he clearly knew it and was triggered to remember it by a single word.
mntlblok wrote: Sun Dec 05, 2021 5:56 pm
I tried Googling it "after the fact" with what I had decided were the "generalizations" from which I had earlier decided I wanted it boiled down from. Turns out that it made a huge difference whether I used "phrase", "quote", "idiom", or "aphorism" with my other terms. Three were useless. One brought up the meta answer as the first option.
But with what keywords? That's what would have gotten me.
Well, dang! I'm trying to stay out of spoiler jail!
On shore! I did not have a lot of time this weekend, but glad I took a few minutes to look at this again. My first impression was right, but now I am sure! Fun meta.
