XWord Muggles Forum

I have never seen schmo without the c.

As posted, I was sure of the answer I had to back into to satisfy a worldwideinterwebsnet search, but was uneasy with its wobbly structure and with my ignorance of this 'celebrity'. I asked my 25 y.o. son if he'd heard of "Marie Kondo". "An organization guru. I think she's big on YouTube. [Girlfriend] talks about her all the time", was his immediate reply.

I listened to my brain & bones creak the rest of the weekend, but felt more assured of the answer.

oldjudge wrote: ↑Mon Sep 16, 2019 1:13 am The elegant solution I was looking for apparently does not exist. For some of the blanks there was only one choice. For others there were multiple choices. Getting the right answer was not difficult, but there should have been an elegant way of getting there. There should have been a reason contained in the puzzle that made you choose PAIN rather than PAWN, or TIME rather than TIDE or TILE. I think this was an unusually poor job by Matt.

Concur. Someone here suggested it was the first alphabetical letter of the choices. But what about the word PAAN instead of PAIN.

Normally it seems like the meta requires a system that maps to only one solution.

The gibberish downs left this unsatisfying. Sure, you can say you don’t really need these extra down letters per the theme, but I’ve never personally encountered a crossword where across and down didn’t mesh.

Glad it’s over.

Here's my unexciting solve. I got the blanks, and spent a few minutes wondering if it was the across or down words or both that should have a letter added. But based on the title and the clues, I thought "I wonder if it's Marie Kondo?" Which is miraculous, because I live in a cave, but I had looked her up not long ago when someone mentioned her, and since then had heard several references to her. It was the right number of letters, so I penciled them in. And all the acrosses worked. And that was that. I also wanted to know why those letters. I felt I was missing something. Mostly because of the blanks that could have taken a different letter, I guess, but I'm not sure I would have liked it that much more if it had been tighter. Maybe it's because I totally backsolved? This one just wasn't my cuppa. (Were I to win the mug, though, this would obviously be my favorite puzzle ever!)

My Experience with the grid this week:

1. Read that the answer is a celebrity and groan, because that is definitely a week area.
2. Complete the grid except for those 10 pesky holes.
3. Think of 2 possible answers; Ron Popeil, the guy partially responsible for us having to much stuff we don't need; or Marie Kondo, whose goal is to get us to get rid of it through her book and Netflix show.
4. Count the letters in their names, and since Marie Kondo has 10, am convinced she is the right answer.
5. Spend too much time trying to double up letters from the across or down answers to get to Marie Kondo, but realize those methods are not going to give me a K.
6. Raise the white flag. Decide I don't have the patience until Monday am to find out the answer and download an app on my phone that automatically fills in the grid.
7. See the answer is Marie Kondo. Chuckle a bit because I feel Matt is trolling us with 43A. Assume the clues are cryptic-like in some way to get the added letters. (delete the app from my phone)
8. Spend the rest of the weekend trying to figure out the mechanism. Still amused because I am a purger; I've read Marie Kondo's book (it's changed my t-shirt drawer for the better and justified my purging tendencies), and I no longer submit my answer to be part of the drawing because I do have too many mugs, and I don't want another one.
9. Read the explanation on Monday's puzzle and am disappointed because it's really just add random letters to make new words?!
10. Feel cranky.

P.S. This weekend I was looking for new podcasts to listen to and discovered that Margaret Cho launched a new one this summer.

Bob cruise director wrote: ↑Mon Sep 16, 2019 1:08 am By the way, can someone explain to me what a "tidiness celebrity" is or does. Is it kind of like your mother yelling at you to clean up your room?

Marie has built an empire telling people how to declutter their living spaces.

DrTom wrote: ↑Mon Sep 16, 2019 1:01 am OK, I'll agree the construction was clever, but wouldn't it have been even better if the clues had hinted at the word that you had to come up with?

Yes, and then the answers shouting "I really don't need this" would have been the downs, which had the extra, cluttering meta-answering letter.

hcbirker wrote: ↑Mon Sep 16, 2019 12:22 am As I was filling in the blank squares, I got to Marie K and thought wouldn't it be funny if it was Marie Kelly?

I was very tempted to submit Marie Kelly!

When I first looked at the blank squares, I wanted to color them black and look for a pattern. This led to several T patterns in the grid, so I was hopeful the answer would be Mr. T. But then there was no title or hint for, "I pity the fool!"

BethA wrote: ↑Mon Sep 16, 2019 12:13 am

Tony S wrote: ↑Mon Sep 16, 2019 12:08 am Marie Kondo? Celebrity? Who knew? I bet Margaret Cho did!

Anyone using the wsj app on iPad. It filled in all of the blank letters for you. Disappointing.

You mean the M-A-R-I-E-K-O-N-D-O letters?! That would spark a lot of SOMETHING, but certainly no joy!

CPJohnson wrote: ↑Sat Sep 14, 2019 7:39 pm

FrancesY wrote: ↑Sat Sep 14, 2019 5:36 pm

CPJohnson wrote: ↑Sat Sep 14, 2019 10:24 am I am stuck, seeing nothing except the first step.

I don't know...to me there is just one step. I can imagine people not recognizing this celebrity.

What I meant is....this meta-solving method, or strategy, is one that gives me difficulty, and sometimes I don't even think of it until after I see the answer and then think, "Oh, yeah, I should've tried that." More explanation after the deadline.

I call this type meta "change one letter or add one letter or drop one letter." This type gives me more trouble than any other; I have trouble visualizing the changes needed. (My second-most-troubling metas are those that require a knowledge of French.)

BrianDavidson wrote: ↑Mon Sep 16, 2019 7:16 am The gibberish downs left this unsatisfying. Sure, you can say you don’t really need these extra down letters per the theme, but I’ve never personally encountered a crossword where across and down didn’t mesh.

Glad it’s over.

I’ve done at least one puzzle where I had to put two letters in the intersecting square - one to use when reading across and one to use when reading down. So when I couldn’t come up with just one letter for this puzzle that worked in both directions, I tried this idea to get two letters, but didn’t get far with that either! Finally decided that the wording of the across clues meant that only those were important in coming up with the letter.

Sorry, but the taste this particular meta has left, is like eating at a top-notch restaurant when the executive chef has taken the night off.
(Not that I eat at top notch restaurants much!)

CPJohnson wrote: ↑Mon Sep 16, 2019 7:57 am

Bob cruise director wrote: ↑Mon Sep 16, 2019 1:08 am By the way, can someone explain to me what a "tidiness celebrity" is or does. Is it kind of like your mother yelling at you to clean up your room?

Marie has built an empire telling people how to declutter their living spaces.

My question is why you need someone to tell you how to clean up.

This is why I disagree with critics of this week's meta.

There are ten blanks in the completed grid, each one interrupting an across entry. My first impulse was to explore letters that could go into those blanks and create new real words for those across entries. Absent extremely arcane terms (which I assumed Matt wouldn't use, based on history), I made the insertions that seemed inevitable and it yielded:

__ __ R I E K O N __ O.

At this point, suspecting that the answer was MARIE KONDO (of whom I had heard only because my long-suffering wife bought her book for me a couple of years ago), I inserted the remaining missing letters and every one of them worked, subject to one comment.

As an earlier poster remarked, I too didn't recall ever having seen "shmo" in print without a "c." However, because MARIE KONDO had to be the answer and because I knew Matt would never think of using an undocumented spelling, I submitted the answer to WSJ, followed by Googling "shmo."

BrianDavidson wrote: ↑Mon Sep 16, 2019 7:16 am The gibberish downs left this unsatisfying. Sure, you can say you don’t really need these extra down letters per the theme, but I’ve never personally encountered a crossword where across and down didn’t mesh.

Glad it’s over.

The NYT puzzle in my paper on Sunday had a similar structure - down and across didn’t mesh.
Once I figured out the method, I stopped solving. I’d already had enough of that with the WSJ.

At https://crosswordfiend.com/, the Across Lite file they post (herbach.dnsalias.com/wsj/wsj190913.puz) also contained the answer when revealing the grid solution. I was only curious how Across Lite would treat the blank squares (blank, black, asterisk, some type of rebus...), and there was Marie Kondo.

FWIW ... VANNA WHITE (don't laugh, ten letters in total and hidden letters involved) crossed my mind during a walk with the dog, but not meant to be.

Seeing the ten blank squares, I made an Across column and a Down column, then placed the possible fill-in letter(s) in the appropriate space. The answer revealed itself quickly when taken in conjunction with the title and mechanism. However, that was only after accepting SHMOE (sans C; although there was, apparently, a Three Stooges episode using SHMOE in the title, per Mr G.) and BROOKLET as possible steps to a solution.

I support the construction since there were not any illogical steps. Yes, there were some options to consider but sleuthing the solution was fairly straight-forward.

PS - Even the spell checker here questions SHMOE!!

TMart wrote: ↑Sat Sep 14, 2019 7:41 pm I take back my "Meh" - I just got this. Boy, do I feel stupid. I knew Matt wouldn't let me down with a bad meta, so I'm glad I kept looking before submitting. This was a pretty good one - it all makes sense now.

What was it that you almost submitted?