#708 - “Word for Word”

[Bob cruise director]

Gee with all the sitting around I've been doing I was afraid I'd turn into a Lounge Lizard (either the person or the drink)

lounge.jpg

I do luckily weight a bit more than a duck (or even a dock) and therefore would be safe from being branded a witch or warlock (though I must say about day 2 of beating my head against the meta wall I may become warlike)

"It's a fair cop!" is a great line (they have even made a rather tacky BBC Radio show named that. But for the gold star with the maple leaf cluster - who plays the witch and what relation does she have to Lancelot/Black Knight?

And finally a question for LadyBird - What... is the air-speed velocity of an unladen swallow? (you have to know these things when you are the Queen...) [if not a Python fan this will likely fly right by you!]

Swallows fly between 30 and 40 mph depending how fast they want to get away from your puns.

African or European swallow? Careful, you'll end up off the bridge!

Neither - tree swalow

[DrTom]

Swallows fly between 30 and 40 mph depending how fast they want to get away from your puns.

African or European swallow? Careful, you'll end up off the bridge!

Neither - tree swalow

I am terribly sorry but that is wrong and you must be thrown off the bridge of death. Nobody wants to know what the velocity of tree swallows is, you were asked only about one - where you got the other two is of no consequence and shows you are trying to average. Oh, and your spelling could use some work as well, the correct spelling is THREE swallows, not TREE swallows. For a more in depth discussion on swallows and velocity see: http://style.org/unladenswallow/

[rjy]

On the board with 57 minutes to spare, thanks to a gentle nudge that confirmed we were in the right rabbit hole.

[rexthree]

finally solved. kept coming back to it but didn't see it until now! luckily before the deadline.

[MikeM000]

[cbarbee002]

Reminds me of the “Palimpsest” puzzle where book titles were similarly used. Brilliant construction.

[woozy]

But does he weigh as much as a duck?

Always appreciate a good Monty Python reference.

The scale's chocks are knocked clear, proving she weighs as much as a duck and, therefore, is a witch. Then she delivers one of my favorite lines of this rich script:

"It's a fair cop."

You can't argue with everyone screaming, "SCIENCE!"

And her line is quiet and subtle, easy to miss. But it is the perfect punchline to that scene.

If you thought that was subtle and easy to miss, what about the panaway panaway beginning of the scene where in the crowd of peasant one is attempting to tie coconuts to the feet of a swallow and looking frustrated when the coconuts weigh it down.

[Bird Lives]

[Bird Lives]

Reminds me of the “Palimpsest” puzzle where book titles were similarly used. Brilliant construction.

I think of "construction" as involving the placement of letters in the grid. So as I was trying to solve this one and I read comments here about the '"construction," I kept looking for things only in the grid. I had even remembered a MG puzzle where the one-word clues were special. But I looked at those clues, and when their initial letters and the initial letters of their entries didn't spell anything, I dropped that Idea and went back to looking for how PASTA PRIMAVERA might be broken down into other entries in the grid, e.g., RIM. I needed a nudge to get me on the right track.

[woozy]

Yeah, I got stuck a bit on the RIM in pRIMavera a bit. But mostly I wondered if the OVER=PAST in OVERpar and PASTaprimavera might lead to a CHAR=???? or a TORN=???? in CHARacteristic or in TORNado might lead to anything. (It didn't.)

I didn't realize the deadline was so soon. Good thing I asked for a nudge. Getting it with a nudge is better than missing it entirely.

[HunterX]

"It's a fair cop."

And her line is quiet and subtle, easy to miss. But it is the perfect punchline to that scene.

If you thought that was subtle and easy to miss, what about the panaway panaway beginning of the scene where in the crowd of peasant one is attempting to tie coconuts to the feet of a swallow and looking frustrated when the coconuts weigh it down.

That is a good nugget. But it's not one of the peasants. It's Terry Jones as Sir Bedevere The Wise who has tied a coconut to the foot of a swallow. Another choice bit of "Did you see it?" in the film is right at the beginning, during the part where Eric Idle is going through the muddy village yelling "Bring out your dead!" In the background, an old woman (possibly Terry Jones?) is flinging a (fake) cat against a wall with the sound of the cat screeching with each hit. Probably not a scene you'd see today.

[TeaJenny]

Oh, man! I was on the right track. I spotted the single word clues and even wrote the answers out next to the clues. And then I got stuck. Masterful meta, indeed.

[burghman]

Anyone know the significance of Roman numerals for “2026” but the use of digits for all other years? Wasted lots of time, figuring Matt did that intentionally to remove 2026 as a meta clue…