XWord Muggles Forum

Emmaa wrote: Mon Aug 05, 2019 7:41 am Here’s where one can wind up after being LAS for 3-4 days with Isaac, listening to Sam Cooke, on what began to feel like a never ending journey. Chefs never entered my mind, though the food industry sure did! It’s Monday AM now and time to wake up and smell the coffee. I’m still looking for answers, feeling oddly like I’m lost somewhere in O Brother, Where Art Thou, with someone hitting the FF and RR buttons when we’re in play mode.

Forgive me, if I sound disappointed, but the loads of M & M I chewed on all weekend is having a backfiring, or BILE effect on me. There’s an unexplained GAP here. The last ORR and ORE you threw me - well I must’ve missed the safety drill, so I was unsure how to use them. I’m having a little weekend sailing remorse and unsure how the TAGAMET, YARN, and ACA are supposed to help either. Maybe it’s time for one of those, whatchacall, ER... uh...Spirit-chiefs...to come on board and give me a morale boost. Anyone else catching my drift, or feeling my PAYNE?

Using the idea of a chain being dropped on the grid, I found fascinating, if not helpful, clues.
All letters of the name CHRISTOPHER on row 3 and PAYNE in the 25 squares of the right upper quadrant (columns 9-14). That is the name of the DOORDASH COO who is reported in the WSJ 7/15 & 16/19 to have worked out the food delivery industry-changing deal with McDonald’s. DOORDASH (rows 13 & 14) was recently valued at $13B in the booming 1 million subscribers food delivery service in Houston - with plans to go National soon if Houston is a success - to do DELIVERIES (column 13, 14, 15) of McDonalds through a $9.99 subscription service - $12 minimum order, starting July 29, a blow to UBER EATS (columns 1, 2, & 3). The McD founder RAY CROC (columns 6, 7, & 8 - note a misspelling of actual name Crok). MCDONALDS can be found in a series of North to South diagonals on the grid.

JAMES ELY, a brilliant Vanderbilt PhD/employment and property rights lawyer can be found squeezily on row 7. I bet he’d be useful with the ins and outs of all those $25/hr. taxi/delivery drivers.

WAITR, competitor to Doordash and UBER, can be found on row 12.
ARISTA, one of the largest data cloud computing companies, capable of tracking all of this, is also on row 12.

WHERE’S MY ORDER (rows 13 & 14), BURGER (rows 1, 2, & 3), FRIES (row 5), and SHAKE (row 11). STORE, DELI, CELL PHONE, EMAIL, RTE and ETA are all there. No kidding.
On row 15, you can ROGER DAT TOO!

BTW, (Row 8) SPEAR’s CELLAR is listed on Google as a restaurant on E 17th and Gramercy, next to NYU (Row 9) in Manhattan. It is no food chain.

In case you care to join me, I’ll return now to listening to the sounds of Pink Floyd/Money and The Beatles/Yellow Submarine (forward, instead of backwards this time) to drown out the sounds and the memories of working on the Chain Gang, and dream of one day solving a meta.


Sent from my iPad

BethA wrote: Mon Aug 05, 2019 12:34 am I thought the Guy names hidden were pretty diverse, to give a sporting chance to many! For fun, I thought about some other Guys...

Clue: Hebrew greeting to La Vérité’s Brigitte.

And I can never remember the name of this tennis player Guy...

Eric Porter wrote: Mon Aug 05, 2019 9:24 am Of the 5 Guys, I was most familiar with Guy Fawkes because of his mask and the movie V for Vendetta. I wasn't familiar with Guy Pearce or Smiley and Guy Fieri only rings a bell if I hear his whole name. I'd heard of Guy Ritchie, but only barely.

I did a Google search for "fawkes ritchie pearce" because I knew these had to be answers and saw this result. Once I saw they were named Guy, I immediately thought of 5 Guys. It's sort of cheating, but I would have figured it out eventually.

Jim and Anita wrote: Mon Aug 05, 2019 8:25 am Though our efforts wound up as 3 down—“failed”—we want to assure Matt that we faithfully fed the many rabbit colonies he started throughout the grid, learning much about food chains in the process. We thought Pearce was John Ed Pearce who wrote the biography of Colonel Sanders and that Ritchie was either the bassist Brian Ritchie who was involved in the Wendy’s commercial controversy or the food writer Tori Ritchie. Smiley we took to be Pulitzer Prize Winning author Jane Smiley who has written about the corporatization of food. And while we saw Guy Fawkes we thought the name Kesha was so unusual in 53 across that it led us to author Kesha Ratliff. We also explored homophones because of the “hoo” in 55 down, the “aah” in 7 down and the two “says” in 18 down and 52 down, leading us to the chain gang lyrics “say hooh aah.” You left us with much food for thought and fingers well exercised from Google searches but no meta solve. Bon Appetit!

steveb wrote: Mon Aug 05, 2019 12:44 am Because of the food connection, I first thought that the hidden names would be famous chefs, and indeed they are: Graeme Ritchie, Guy Fieri, Andrew Pearce, Kevin Fawkes and Chef Smiley (aka Lamont Moses). I spent some time in that rabbit hole, which of course led nowhere. Since there are no coincidences in these puzzles, I credit Matt Gaffney with a clever bit of misdirection there.

Eventually, clued in by Guy Fawkes, the only other name that rang a bell with me (yeah, I'm old and I don't watch much TV), I figured out the real connection.

Bird Lives wrote: Sun Aug 04, 2019 8:35 am

BarbaraK wrote: Fri Aug 02, 2019 10:50 pm

Joe Ross wrote: Fri Aug 02, 2019 10:35 pm

In 8x10 color glossy pictures, we hope!

With circles and arrows and a paragraph on the back of each one

Kids today – they won’t get this reference. Too busy with their damn Instagram, Cardi B, and Fortnite. Ya got trouble my friends.

FrankH wrote: Mon Aug 05, 2019 2:48 am

Bob cruise director wrote: Mon Aug 05, 2019 12:29 am For the benefit of someone who has barely heard of the chain Five Guys, much less been there, who are Richie, Fieri, Pearce, Fawkes and Smiley? I saw Guy Fawkes but had no idea what he had to do with a fast food chain. At least a 5 on the Kas scale.

None of those names by themselves have anything to do with any fast food chain. It is just that those are five "famous" people with first name Guy.