"Deal Breaker" - March 18, 2022

[Abide]

SALVAGES is the only grid answer that anagrams to something that answers "CARD PROS PLAY HERE".

It would have been a nice Easter egg to have HIP and OXEN in the grid.

[Bob cruise director]

I had tears running from my eyes in laughter when I read @ReB and @femullen posts. We have all been there and the head slaps, AHA moments and DUH's are the reason that the KAS scale comes into being. We have all been on the wrong side of hints and directions from Mike especially.

Conceiving that this could even be done, then executing it without having an inadvertent Reno or Casino anagram in there and throwing in the direction in the middle for good measure is brilliant construction.

[femullen]

After two years of doing (or, rather, mostly not) these things, you'd think I'd see it when the puzzleers give me operating instructions ("skip two"). Nah.

I learned this the hard way some time back. I knew what to do with a puzzle (Richard III) but spent like what seemed forever trying to figure out where to start. Finally I saw a grid entry that said START. The lesson: When the constructors' tell us stuff, listen.

I remember a meta that required you to trace a contour through the grid, and the big question was where to start. Well, there was in the grid this answer: SQUARE ONE. Sad thing is, I got that one. I think I've just invented retrograde learning.

[Streroto]

Fortunately the COVID fog did not keep me from seeing SKIP TWO (after a brief Cuban Bread=peso rabbit hole) and I was off to the far end of the beach. Feeling better now and hoping my beloved wife does not have it. Thanks for the well wishes.

Stay well

[DrTom]

Well, I'm going to say I loved that puzzle! That is probably a case of me happening to hit the right mechanism by chance and not being led down the multitude of bunny domiciles there appeared to be. It always amazes me that we can find so many ways to go astray. I almost think that there is a sweet spot in Metas where you have been solving long enough to see mechanisms, but not so long that you see mechanisms where they do not exist. That is no doubt what happens to me because I find these Rube Goldberg things that take me cascading like an errant pinball through the bumpers of the Meta. Luckily this time I saw SKIP TWO and thought, "huh, I wonder"! Nobody was more surprised than I was that I chose the right place to start and got CARD PROS PLAY HERE, bada boom bada bing.

I do echo the comments on construction. I mean I can see how he started, but to fit them all and not end up with REALLY odd fills is a talent - it is almost like he does this for a living!

Nice job Mike.

[Ergcat]

I first found that by using first letters of long clues, CB, PR, PA, HD. Those all kinds of media and aimed was an anagram of it, but somehow the title Deal breaker did not fit… not elegant like most metas. So I kept looking. Wasn’t sure what todo about middle clue, skip two…but then it hit me in the middle of the night…strange how the mind works….

When my DD ( Regfish7) and I finally sat down to figure out the meta I said “SKIP TWO” is right in the middle, it must mean something! Then I promptly veered off to find broken “DEAL” words which I found 4. But it led nowhere. Luckily DD ignored my jump into the “broken deal” rabbit hole and quietly (and correctly) applied the “skip two” to the 4 long grid answers …. Duh!

[ship4u]

Then our snow melted, so the lovely Mrs. M determined that it was a good weekend for planting, pruning, and other activities featuring mud. Can't wait till I retire and can spend all of Friday planting. I mean solving the meta.

I'm fortunate that my wife enjoys working on the metas as much as I do. She reminds me every Thursday, "It's 4 o'clock."

[whimsy]

[...] Break bread, break records, break away, but break drive did not work [...]

I was on the same wavelength. Break bread, etc. seemed too obvious to pass up.

Grease monkey nonpareil that I am, I decided that brake drive did mean something, and so I proceeded to an alternative answer via a method that @Joe Ross has assured me is a worthy tribute to @DrTom's usual convolutions.

Using the first letters of the words following "break" I got BR_AD; had to be BREAD to anagram to DEBAR, of course. (Yes, I know, BREAD was in the grid but I wasn't going to let a little thing like that get in my way.)

SKIPTWO would lead me to that necessary E -- I skipped two of the letters in 9D AVEENO (the A and the O) and anagrammed the remaining four so I could BREAK EVEN. Ta-dah.

Bread, as in $$ is certainly something that could make or break a deal, and just look at that 8D SODA. What else would we be served on 3/17 but Irish Soda BREAD?

OK, I'll admit -- I'm doing a lot of mixing of apples and oranges so make that a fruit cake!

[Limerick Savant]

Re: Bleak Read

From the answers I found on these pages
Seems the meta was dealt out in stages
Couldn’t handle the debt
So I passed on the bet
All I’d probably get is lost wages

I did not make it ashore this week because of a bad rear keel and far too many distractions. Solved the grid Friday night per my usual pattern and had a few insights right away but I never found time after that to settle in to some serious tinkering. The puzzle title and the appearance of “ante” and “I bet” in the grid had me thinking of games of chance. Unfortunately the mention of an anagram solution led me down a rabbit hole where the broken “deal” in “pulled away” beckoned. I also guessed that there was likely significance in the grid answer “skip two” but again I never quite figured out how to make use of it.

In the end, it was a deficit of time this weekend that caused me to fold my hand and cash in my chips until I had time to check in today. It was a very clever and satisfying construction and like most gamblers I believe if I only had a few more chances or a little more time I could have won big.

[MikeMillerwsj]

The contest answer is LAS VEGAS. In each of the four long Across answers, if you start with the first letter, then skip two (as suggested by 39-Across), take the next letter, and so on, you’ll get a fourletter word. Those four words, CARD PROS PLAY HERE, suggest the contest answer, an anagram of SALVAGES at 38-Down.

Hello--we thought this was a tough one! And thus we were impressed by the turnout: 1,473 entries, 80% correct. The other 20% went on fishing expeditions for anagrams in the grid, including PASS (24, relevant to card games though not quite on the nose), AVERSE (15), COPPER RODS (8, perhaps just for the shear elegance of that one), EDISON (6) and several others.

Congrats to this week's winner: John Baatz of Charleston, S.C.!

[mkmf]

I took a shortcut. Saw “pulled away” and “skip two” and was mostly looking for an entry that could be anagrammed.

But there are dozens of entries that can be anagrammed. DEBAR to BREAD, TUCSON to COUNTS, TACIT to ATTIC, AIMED to MEDIA, USHERS to RUSHES (which is a punny synonym for Hyper-Drive(s))AGES to SAGE, UNTIE to UNITE, ALP to PAL, PULLED AWAY to DEAL UP Y'AWL.

That's just the nature of English.

Stuck in the break bread rabbit hole, and trying but misapplying SKIP TWO, I stubbornly went the brute force backsolve anagram route.

The wording of the prompt strongly implied that the answer could be two words, so i only looked at longer entries. When Las Vegas popped out 10 minutes before the deadline, it became my hail mary because of the "deal" connection, but I had no idea why or how. I was so surprised it was right, and happy to later see the cool construction that explained it all.

[woozy]

Bread, as in $$ is certainly something that could make or break a deal, and just look at that 8D SODA. What else would we be served on 3/17 but Irish Soda BREAD?

SODA POP RECORDS maybe?

[Limerick Savant]

After solving the grid there was the temptation to use an anagram generator to come up with a plausible meta by brute force but that seemed like playing with a marked deck. What I hoped would be carnival kismet just became an atavism clinker.

[Annabelle]

I wrote out the four long answers, used the "Skip Two" clue and wrote out the corresponding letters, and STILL did not figure this one out. Argggh! CARD PROS PLAY HERE was staring me right in the face!

I was looking for CASINO and didn't find it and kept looking for a long time - this one was not easy!

I thought of casino, too, but none of the six-letter words in the grid was an anagram. Argh. Then thought a little broader about where there are casinos, and got to Las Vegas via salvages. Unfortunately, it was Monday morning at the time, so I'm sailing on to the next port.

[Streroto]

Is it 4 yet?

[Joe Ross]

Is it 4 yet?