"Just Look at Yourself" - January 28, 2022

[Joe Ross]

Sorry, folks. My alarm didn't alarm!

I'm not the only one asleep at the switch. The WSJ solution hasn't been posted.

[Laura M]

I had SNOB instead of VAIN.

:(

Oh no, yeah, that would mess things up :-( My condolences...

[PQ63]

I originally thought it was CORD CUTTING (as in umbilical cord) but then reconsidered and landed on the correct answer.

[otlaolap]

I had SNOB instead of VAIN.

I am trying to picture nasal gazing. Not going well.

[whimsy]

My only "quibble" with the puzzle was that I couldn't find LINT anywhere in the grid.

Back to a bit of naval gazing --

[Joe Ross]

[FrancesY]

I got stuck thinking “heart thumping.” And then in clue order I had VENAL, which led me to “palm-greasing.” I was so happy til I counted 12 letters.

[eagle1279]

For a long time I was trying to find a 4-letter synonym for heart-thumping, then stared at VAIN as a possible hint for people who look at themselves. Only after seeing the letters A N L E with a V on my notepad did I see NAVEL, then back-solved to chest-thumping.

[MajordomoTom]

I wish I'd done that bit of noodling.

My 11th hour hail Mary to the WSJ was BODY SURFING.

LOL

[escapeartist]

I wish I'd done that bit of noodling.

My 11th hour hail Mary to the WSJ was BODY SURFING.

LOL

MY hail Mary would have been DOCTOR VISIT - all those parts need some looking after.

[woozy]

I also had heart-thumping (which didn't sound quite right and was too similar in meaning to spine-tingling). But with the letters NA-EL I figured it had to be something meaning Vain and ... well, I actually had to goggle phrasing with thumping and vanity to realize it was chest.

I'm surprised at the number of people saying they had never heard of the activity. Where so you all keep the salt you you are eating celery while floating on your back is a swimming pool?

[mrmd]

I worked out that heart thumping was vain when I had NA-EL in the grid - but I don’t really understand why unless it’s a play on vein/vain which seems very imprecise for Mr Gaffney….. Anyone care to enlighten me?!

[sharkicicles]

I also thought heart thumping at first. But corrected quickly.

[sharkicicles]

I worked out that heart thumping was vain when I had NA-EL in the grid - but I don’t really understand why unless it’s a play on vein/vain which seems very imprecise for Mr Gaffney….. Anyone care to enlighten me?!

The actual answer for that one was CHEST THUMPING, which is being vain. No vein/vain play here.

[woozy]

Well, one could argue CHEST THUMPING is more about being boastful than being vain. ... I won't but some-one else could.

[CopperRiver]

I had all the correct body parts and puzzle answers but how do you get GAZING? I must have missed something….looking for solution tomorrow!

[ZooAnimalsOnWheels]

I had all the correct body parts and puzzle answers but how do you get GAZING? I must have missed something….looking for solution tomorrow!

This was another one like Betty White, where only half the answer was spelled out (or in that case, the opposite spelled out) and the other half had to be inferred by following the same pattern as the theme clues. Of course that doesn't help the people that weren't familiar with the word "navel-gazing".

Like other people, I was originally looking for a synonym for HEART-THUMPING in the grid, even though I'm more used to the expression HEART-POUNDING, just because it seems like it belongs right alongside SPINE-TINGLING and JAW-DROPPING. Along with EAR-SPLITTING and MOUTH-WATERING, they are all caused by outside stimuli, unlike CHEST-THUMPING. But I eventually back-solved to VAIN and figured out they wanted CHEST-THUMPING, which matches NAVEL-GAZING as an activity instead of a response.

But the more important question of the weekend is: Is the board game Wingspan what @woozy meant by "The Bird Game"? (My friends and I also call it "the bird game".) And if so, have you and your wife agreed to remove the two ravens from the deck for being such game-breaking cards?

[florida_manatee]

Another KLUDGE of a 'puzzle'.

Why indicate a 3 letter word with '3-' while indicating a 7 letter word with '(7 letters)?'

Rube Goldberg would have been proud.

[Gman]

IMO, the numbers in parentheses weren't technically needed, but they helped me get to 99+% confidence. What drove me crazy was that the lead ins to the theme answers had only 3- and 5- as alternatives. In my case, I spent way too long thinking that Gaffney had deployed an instruction from molecular biology where polymerases (the enzymes that make copies of DNA) go exclusively in a 5' to 3' direction (usually called forward) and reverse transcription goes from the 3' end (thus called reverse). The ' and - are often paired (as in 5'-3'). Hence, I was convinced that my molecular biology ship had finally come in, and the parentheses referred to how may letters to read forward or backwards. This is another way of saying, "I'm an idiot." Anyhow, the light eventually went off that, despite being convinced that Gaffney and Schenk are WAY smarter than I'll ever be, even they would not be so evil as to use the direction of polymerization in a puzzle titled "just look at yourself."

[Bird Lives]

Another KLUDGE of a 'puzzle'.

Why indicate a 3 letter word with '3-' while indicating a 7 letter word with '(7 letters)?'

Rube Goldberg would have been proud.

The first number, the one with the hyphen after it, is the number of letters in the body part.

The number in parentheses is the number of letters in the synonym for the hyphenated phrase.

So 39A 3-________ (4 letters) is the 3-letter body part EAR; the word to be entered in the grid (SPLITTING) completes the adjective. The synonym (at 61D) is LOUD, which is four letters.

Your Rube Goldberg analogy is apt. The mechanism of a meta can involve two or three or more sequential steps leading to an answer. The point is to give the solver some delight in discovering those connections -- similar to the enjoyment that one gets in following the connections in a Rube Goldberg drawing.