XWord Muggles Forum

Well, there goes the old “Hail Mary”…!

Yep, much like Wimsey, booked the-return-to-original-port leg of the trip yesterday. Curious to see what tomorrow brings.

I'm on ship still as well. Very busy weekend, barely had time to fill the grid. Took a one last look at it tonight, but yeah, I got nothin'. My guess based on the forum chatter is that when I see the solution I will be glad I didn't spend too much time on it. Many times I think, "Yep, I was never gonna get there," but hopefully I learn from the losses too

Well, I think I half expected a pageant.

Oh, well. Truly disappointing.

*groan*

Got it, with the help of a hint from Wendy Walker, and my daughter getting the key element.

But alas, we got it too late to submit, I’m afraid.

Why repeat CRASH? Surely something could have been done with ARGO. For example, LONGTIMEAGO would fit in 60 across (clue: "A ___ in a galaxy far, far, away...."). It would mean moving the meta hint from 54 down to 69 across (changing it to OSCARS). But that would have worked fine!

Now I admit I only go back to 2019 but I do not think I have ever seen Mike recycle an entry? The hardest thing for me here was not picking GIGI (yes different mechanism) when I knew CRASH had already been used. I had to check with someone who was cognizant of what others were submitting when I submitted ACTOR because I was certian it would be incorrect even though it fit every parameter.

XWord is probably going to have to take on a secretary this week; best picture movies within the "themers (BIGmary), best picture movies arrived at by editing theme answers (GIGItalcash), best picture movies that are close to a theme answer ATLANTIC - TITANIC, answers that could be alternates to a best picture movie Uranus Moon OBERON but also TITANIA, actors in best pictures, actors that starred in other best pictures....yeesh.

No deep rabbit holes for me this week. I realized the abundance of film related clues might make my free associations go off the chart, but was mostly able to rein them in.

My first instinct was that I would have to look up films that won the academy award for editing. Or maybe for all the films in the clues. But I didn't pursue it.

I did try to associate the long clues with other movies. ATLANTICCOD led me to 'A Perfect Storm'; DIAPERRASH led to 'Three Men and a Baby'; GOOSELIVER led to either 'Top Gun' or 'Silence of the Lambs'; and DIGITALCASH kind of led to either 'Tron' or 'Pixels'.

Fortunately, I noticed what looked like 'Oliver!' and 'Marty'. Had to look up past winners to get the other movies I had never heard of.

Difficult puzzle to construct. Very few choices of movies that would fit the metanism. I found a few more, but still hard to generate another movie name from them, especially without repeat usage. I finally came up with WINGS dropping the G to become WINS. That would allow ARGO to be a possible meta and would have been nice, as 'Argo' did win the academy award for editing.

Another neat possible metanism could have used THE STING to become TESTING. But being two words instead of one might be deemed inelegant.

In the Zoom meeting, I bowed to Don's rabbit hole, and hope he writes it up.

I’m having difficulties with across lite…. Unable to validate app…. Any ideas on how to fix? I’m on an iPad.. I rebooted and tried to download app again to no avail!

Jeanrosz wrote: Mon Mar 06, 2023 12:22 am I’m having difficulties with across lite…. Unable to validate app…. Any ideas on how to fix? I’m on an iPad.. I rebooted and tried to download app again to no avail!

Be careful, there's a high probability of CRASH tonight.

benchen71 wrote: Mon Mar 06, 2023 12:11 am Why repeat CRASH? Surely something could have been done with ARGO. For example, LONGTIMEAGO would fit in 60 across. It would mean moving the meta hint from 54 down to 69 across (changing it to OSCARS). But that would have worked fine!

Almost exactly the comment I made to someone else, ARGO would have been a natural, to keep it as a two word themer where only the last word is changed you'd have to have something like LIFETIMEAGO. I suppose it might have been difficult to clue though. Ah well, they cannot all be masterpieces, that is a lesson I learned early on - heck I'm still waiting for mine (masterpiece that is)!

Abide wrote: Mon Mar 06, 2023 12:24 am

Jeanrosz wrote: Mon Mar 06, 2023 12:22 am I’m having difficulties with across lite…. Unable to validate app…. Any ideas on how to fix? I’m on an iPad.. I rebooted and tried to download app again to no avail!

Be careful, there's a high probability of CRASH tonight.

Yeah, at least twice as much as usual.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Long,_Long_Ago

Any limitation of "theme entry should have two words only" should not be the reason to duplicate a theme entry. One of the other entries could have had more than two words if there was a need to balance AGO.

DBMiller wrote: Mon Mar 06, 2023 12:17 am That would allow ARGO to be a possible meta and would have been nice, as 'Argo' did win the academy award for editing.

ARGO won Best Picture, just like the movies generated from the other themers.

I agree with what others are saying. I would have thought that Mike was too polished to do something like this. My guess is that there is a story behind this one and it would be great to hear it.

Oh, well, never made it to shore. Had the right idea, but tried to make the missing letter be somewhere else in the word. Didn't know what to do with the two CRASHes. Dismissed what we were doing because CRASH twice didn't seem plausible. Sigh. Maybe next week!

Although kind of confusing with using CRASH twice, I half expected something to be duplicated. Why else the consecutive MOONLIGHT clues if something else wasn't being duplicated. I was confused at first with CASH and RASH, but then thought about what he had done. Don't know if it was intentional or not.

I had a great rabbit hole story to submit, but since I solved I shall leave that to someone who missed out on a chance for the other mug.

I found the answer ACTOR but never solved the letters using the META in the solution. Every rabbit hole I went down led to nowhere. So I finally looked at the the theme and the last across answer SEX (which is often the location in the puzzle where a hint is given that your answer is on the right track). I then concentrated on the title FILM EDITING and WORD RELATED TO MOVIES. I also assumed like many puzzles (Lunar New Year, Betty White, etc. that the theme may be timely. So I was trying to figure out what was timely about the movies and I realized (from watching Turner Classic Movies of 31 days of Oscar this month that the Oscars are occurring this coming weekend. So I thought the answer must be OSCARS. But when I saw OSCARS as the answer to 54 DOWN, I knew that answer would be too obvious to be the answer. So then by putting SEX and OSCARS together I realized that there are only four catagories in the Oscars related to sex. Best Actor, Best Actress, Best Supporting Actor and Best Supporting Actress. So after looking at the four long across answers and the middle answer that the answer was probably five letters. But I really fought myself over this assumption as the letter count was a big leap. But after I looked up an article on who won the most Oscars it mentioned Katherine Hepburn and referred to her as an ACTOR and not an ACTRESS. So that's what sold me on ACTOR.