XWord Muggles Forum

I was playing with that also.

and I had STELMO and stared at it for a few hours, wondering what the heck was a "stelmo". My wife said "what is that ... oh, it's St. Elmo" and I had a "Homer Simpson" moment.

MajordomoTom wrote: ↑Mon Nov 04, 2019 10:26 am I was playing with that also.

and I had STELMO and stared at it for a few hours, wondering what the heck was a "stelmo". My wife said "what is that ... oh, it's St. Elmo" and I had a "Homer Simpson" moment.

You must have filled in 22A by working the down clues.

I had a similar moment when I ended up with THU for 56D. Before realizing "Cal." in the clue stood for calendar, and THU was short for Thursday, I was trying to see how that made sense by searching online for the names/nicknames of Civil War leaders of the California Column.

Wow, so clever and so many rabbit holes for me. I took "backdrops" to mean drop the S from the second word which worked great for Green flash but not for the rest. Couldn't​ quite make the leap after that.

juliet wrote: ↑Mon Nov 04, 2019 12:07 pm

MajordomoTom wrote: ↑Mon Nov 04, 2019 10:26 am I was playing with that also.

and I had STELMO and stared at it for a few hours, wondering what the heck was a "stelmo". My wife said "what is that ... oh, it's St. Elmo" and I had a "Homer Simpson" moment.

You must have filled in 22A by working the down clues.

I had a similar moment when I ended up with THU for 56D. Before realizing "Cal." in the clue stood for calendar, and THU was short for Thursday, I was trying to see how that made sense by searching online for the names/nicknames of Civil War leaders of the California Column.

On Sunday I also stared at STELMO in the grid, wondering what the heck it was, and because it caught my eye, I stumbled into the right rabbit hole. Explaining my brilliance later to my wife, I said "see "STELMO", must be some artist I back filled" (having forgotten that on Thursday I actually solved it as "St. Elmo"), she of course also said "oh, you mean St. Elmo"... an AHA moment footnoted with a DUH moment...

Hmmmm - I get the published answer now, but must have thought my rabbit hole was moderately palatable, save for that the final answer didn't jive as well as expected with the puzzle title at the end of the day.

Each starred answer appears to have a form of commonly used "drops" in them, and spelled backwards, with one distinct letter changed:
GREENFLASH ---> SALINE (Change the F to I)
TEASERRATE ---> EAR (Change the T to E)
TAXYEAR ---> EYE (Change the X to E)
LOSANGELES ---> EGG (Change the N to G)
HAMOMELETS ---> LEMON (Change the M to N)

The new letters used anagram to GENIE. Perhaps my recent viewings of Aladdin had me confused here (?)

THU was also a strange answer for me until 2 hours later I realized who/what "Cal." meant.

and having Rex for Rey made getting "STAGE" a bit messy. Once I had the other 4 letters, I realized the error in that answer.

but ... always do what Simon says (I also laughed out loud when I figured that one out)

RDaleHall wrote: ↑Mon Nov 04, 2019 2:48 pm Hmmmm - I get the published answer now, but must have thought my rabbit hole was moderately palatable, save for that the final answer didn't jive as well as expected with the puzzle title at the end of the day.

Each starred answer appears to have a form of commonly used "drops" in them, and spelled backwards, with one distinct letter changed:
GREENFLASH ---> SALINE (Change the F to I)
TEASERRATE ---> EAR (Change the T to E)
TAXYEAR ---> EYE (Change the X to E)
LOSANGELES ---> EGG (Change the N to G)
HAMOMELETS ---> LEMON (Change the M to N)

The new letters used anagram to GENIE. Perhaps my recent viewings of Aladdin had me confused here (?)

ouch - find and kill that rabbit, I can follow why you went there. Painful.

Lots of rabbit holes in this one. But lots of successful solvers too. We had 870 entries, about 85% correct. The wrong bets were all over the map, including FORAY (16, why so many?), SCENE (7), STATE (5), MOONS (4), SHORE (3), and many many one-offs including SWEAT, VISTA, CREST, SLIME, SHEET and SMOCK.

Congrats to this week's winner: Kathy Webb of Cincinnati, Ohio!

Lots of rabbit holes in this one. But lots of successful solvers too. We had 870 entries, about 85% correct. The wrong bets were all over the map, including FORAY (16, why so many?), SCENE (7), STATE (5), MOONS (4), SHORE (3), and many many one-offs including SWEAT, VISTA, CREST, SLIME, SHEET and SMOCK.

Congrats to this week's winner: Kathy Webb of Cincinnati, Ohio!

[quote=MikeMillerwsj post_id=8919 time=1572899244 user_id=56]
The wrong bets were all over the map, including FORAY (16, why so many?)

The first letters of the 2nd words spell out "foray." ... it just doesn't have anything to do with
"backdrops" or "drops" or "back"

My first inclination after filling in the grid on Saturday was to go 'back' one word from each of the five starred answers and 'drop' to letters below those words to see if anything meaningful appeared. Nothing did. I had to put aside the puzzle until Sunday afternoon when the thought occurred to me to see what the starred words read when spelled backwards. Luckily for me, the first entry I looked at was 53A where I quickly saw "STEL[E]MO". I remembered that StElmo was the answer (22A) to another clue. That answer often appears in crossword puzzles in response to a clue such as patron saint of sailors. The somewhat otherwise rare name of Elmo also resonates with me since that was the first name of the murderer in PA in a sensational case around 1960. Elmo Smith was the last person electrocuted in PA (1962).
Once I saw the method to be used, the remaining 'dropped' letters were teased out of the other starred answers, yielding "STAGE" that tied nicely to the title "Backdrops."
I am always impressed by two things about these meta puzzles: 1) the seemingly boundless ingenuity of the puzzle makers and 2) how some Muggles can solve the grid and meta so quickly.

MikeMillerwsj wrote: ↑Mon Nov 04, 2019 3:27 pm Congrats to this week's winner: Kathy Webb of Cincinnati, Ohio!

At least I know it's not a geographical bias.

Wait. On what side of Vine Street does Kathy live?

My rabbit holes were:

1) Dropping the back of TeaserRate and seeing TEASER + S = TESSERA. Dead end
2) Dropping the back of LosAngeles and seeing LOS transposes to LOA. Ooh... TaxYear transposes TAX to TAP, but now it's a dead end.
3) Finally made the connection between STELMO and OMELETS, but didn't notice the backward ordering. Dropped the Y in Year to find EAR, and got stuck with RATE. But RATE also reduces to EAR? Ah... REY reduces from YEAR, and that's when I noticed they all spelled backwards. <Click>

I sympathize hugely with RDaleHall who has an internally consistent answer. If I had seen this possible answer, I think I would have been less than 100% certain because I didn't the get the "Oh Yeah" reaction to Genie related to Backdrops. (and from my earlier post, when I am less than 100% certain, my answer is always wrong.) I followed one additional rabbit hole that I haven't seen anyone else mention: that a word could be found be starting at anypoint in the special clue answers and going backward and then down (so in Ham Omelets, starting with the L going LEM and then down to ON -- yielding LEMON). But the other words than can be formed using this approach are lame : SAY, LEGS, ALF, etc., and I can't get anything from Taxyear. This post is in the spirit of admiring the construction which contained so many false ways to go. How much time did I spend on Tessera. I even googled to see if I had misspelled it.

taxyear (being a tax attorney & CPA) was the ONE that I was almost certain was THE key to the puzzle. The others are all 10 letters long, and it's 7, and in the exact middle of the grid.

Then ... it wasn't.

I think my recent forays into cryptics are already paying off, and helped with the meta this week! Backdrops - back in cryptic often means to reverse the order of the letters in one of the words, and drop is self-explanatory. Got a late start, but did not take too long to get to the right shore.

Several people mentioned the Valley of Tears variety puzzle by Patrick Berry. I enjoyed that one too, and go it without too much trouble. Then this past weekend along comes another Cox/Rathvon cryptic Hexed. Uh oh. Well, in my ongoing cryptic studies, started beating my head against the wall on Saturday. Could not get any foothold on how/where to put anything into the hexagonal grid until late Sunday. And finally cracked 2 of the witchy hexad that night. Got one more late Monday. Then the last 3 this morning. MUCH REJOICING!!! I finally solved my first Cox/Rathvon cryptic!!! Similar or even greater feeling to cracking a meta! Either this one was easier or I’m getting a little better at them. Maybe a good one for other novices. I really enjoyed it, probably because I was able to get it. Maybe witches are more in my wheelhouse than the other puzzles were.

My stance on getting or giving hints - everyone else can do what they want. I never want to get a hint and be deprived of the extra mental gymnastics of trying to figure it out for myself!

Nice to see the MUG go to Cincinnati! Nice the Bearcats managed to pull out a win last weekend. Sorry I can’t make it to homecoming this coming weekend.