"Tight Spots" January 17, 2025

[KayW]

My notepad app suffered through this - now you can too!

Thursday:

1. Tight Spots - 1-syllable part of the body

2. I thought this was going to be a "Zip in, Zip Out" with the themer: HOSPITAL CORNERS. Surely ER would be involved?

...

13. "H" and "L" are the "corners" of the word HOSPITAL. Maybe that has something to do with it, who knows. (HIGH and LOW?)

...

17. Well, we had a breakthrough last night after about 1:45 more - but the breakthrough did not give us the answer right away.

The only instance of the letter "H" is in the upper quadrant of the grid, five times. Any time we have something like that, that makes the constrained fill make a bit more sense (I would've preferred OTOH instead of OSSA to get rid of LAIS, but that adds the "H," so that takes care of that. Of course, you'd think ENARBOR and RETROVERT still could be something else.)

So, that's the beginning but not the end. It does help answer Q1, and we assume that ER/OR is a dead end for the time being. (Q3 and the 2-by-2 squares are still up in the air.)

18. But, the next step is, "How is that relevant? What does that give us?"

My initial thought last night was to let the "H"s be markers and "move" that part of the grid to various other parts. Nothing really developed - taking symmetric letters on a 180-degree rotation (but how is that related to "tight spot") gives us LEUSD, which is nothing.

19. And, obviously, it isn't just that there are a set number of Hs; it's the fact that they are very specifically lodged in the upper-left quadrant. Why? Why would that be necessary instead of having just five random Hs scattered through the grid? (Or in a set of themers?)

And even if we look at the "corners" of the "H"s, again, that wouldn't necessitate them being clustered in the NW.

...

21. I mean...the "H"s look like the five fingers of a HAND? With W being the wrist? There is only one "W" in the grid as well. That...can't be it, can it?

It's clever, but is there a reason that had to be relegated to the upper quadrant? That really makes me doubt it and almost implies that 75% of the grid is doing nothing, other than not providing any "H"s.

So, we'd guess HAND now, and people were talking about there possibly being two answers, so I'd guess WRIST was the other (and the one-syllable might be there to negate FINGER).

Is this really it? I would like a bit more of a click, but if something else were relevant, I'd like to think it'd've come out in the wash by now.

HAND [4:18.32]

...



Mikey G

Wow. That makes a very elaborate and elegant Easter Egg for those in the HAND camp this week. And it even provides a reason for WRIST to be the alternate answer! I think I see a rabbit hole nomination in the offing here.

I was in the WRIST camp. As soon as I saw HOSPITAL CORNERS, I was lucky to spot WHERET in the corners on the first row as I was completing the grid. So I kept my eye out for other potential corners as I filled the grid.

From the "easy for the non-constructor to say" department, I thought the word HOSPITAL in the long theme entry did more harm than good and I think that CORNERS alone would have been a more direct hint. Clued as something like "Puts into a tight spot". The only purpose I can see for including HOSPITAL is to give a medical/anatomical twist to the puzzle so that the answer ties into the metanism. Because as @Joe Ross points out, hospital corners are only at the foot of the bed... oh, hey! FOOT would have been a pretty cool answer had that been possible to finagle.

Oh and BTW my own left ulna - and its pal radius - are bionic as of this summer. A literal crash course in anatomy for me:

[Joe Ross]

...it'd've...

Not to discount The Whole World Championship Contest Crossword Solver and Creator mind which can note and retell this Golden Rabbit Hole Award contending entry with pure genius and to great effect, but this exceptional nugget is worth the admission price several times over.

Bravo, Mikey!

[mheberlingx100]

I had brief dalliances with HEAD (inside corners of corner acrosses) and HEART (one letter in from the corners spells true, which made me think of true heart). Both were based on how you would fold the sheet to make a hospital corner.

But then I saw the top and bottom row corners. With the set of letters wheretnaends, I backsolved to find the heul in the middle.

[Zobo3737]

Shout out to Joe Ross who was ashore at 4:05 pm on Friday. He did all this in 5 minutes.


“Exactly as @MikeyG laid out, except I started off solving across entries in the NW corner then thought. "Wait, there's a big, fat Indicator Clue running down the middle!"

I then switched to the bottom of the grid, saw ULNA DS from the corner entries, realized that I needed 65 Across, also. Depending on perspective, the ulna ends at the elbow or the wrist, the wrist being of one syllable.

Hence: WRIST”

[Steve M]

The 1x3 squares are little beds. The locations where we grab letters are where the hospital corners are located.

[altosax]

I found another answer, TOE. There are 3 instances in the grid where a double letter has the same letter on both sides: 14-Across OTTO, 30-Across TOOT, and 44-Down LESSEES. The double letters that are in a "tight spot", are T, O, and E to spell TOE. They are even in the right order in the grid. Does that get me a rabbit hole prize?

[woozy]

The 1x3 squares are little beds. The locations where we grab letters are where the hospital corners are located.

Except there aren't any at the foots of the beds and there the four corners of the entire grid are not explained.

I think it is more likely intended the 1x3 are lines we fold against and the letters we grap are they key points where we crease. I kind of a had a hard time with this and wondered if there is some bed making diagrom where it indicates you have twopoints one on each side of a pleat-- that is the E in Ether goes to the top left corner but against the headboard and is distinguished from the H in WASH which goes to top left corner but against the side while the black line runs up and down the vertical edge of the mattress at the corner (meanwhile was pull the W to make a crease and fold it down the side to meet against the H in WOLFISH.

Still I'd preferred a clearer-cut picture-image in mind. It was easier to just fudge "yeah the corners of the general blocks".

[Dickie_Dunn]

Didn't everyone see it this way?!

[OohLaAHA]

Well, I got short-sheeted.

Apparently Mike and I do not make our beds in the same manner.

zzhosp.png

Anyone else hunt in vain to include diagonals?

Oh well, I've made my bed so now I'll lie in it.

Yep.

[woozy]

Like so.... sorta....

Thing is... as much as I see it. I equally don't see it.

[mikeB]

The CORNERS in Entry 7D and Tight Spots in the title steered me to looking for letters in the “tight spots” formed at the grid’s edges. However, that sketch of the bed lured me into settling on HEAD. Early on I noticed that every one of the empty (black) shapes was a rectangle free of any doglegs or recesses – no tight spots formed by black squares alone. I've never seen a grid with such a dearth of concavity in the black shapes. This imbued me with an undue focus on the shapes within the grid. That focus was a fatal flaw. Not only did I see a bed whose corners spelled a one-syllable part of the body, but (as one who experienced general anesthesia in 1950) I also observed the ETHER being dispensed at one end of the bed. Not only was this a bed, but it was a hospital bed to boot. So those are hospital corners, and I’m done. Oops. One big advantage of very clever mechanisms that are missed is that the lesson learned is a gift that keeps on giving. This was a valuable, hands-on course in clickology, developing the sense of when an answer isn’t quite clicky enough and further scrutiny is warranted. What more can a solver ask than to become a better solver in the process of trying?

[whimsy]

{...back after shoveling snow...}

I imagine other solvers besides myself were intrigued by these three wonderful "clumps" of entries producing prominent bunny trails -- that also made some nice tight corners.

Schro(e)dinger -- (I checked -- the name can be spelled with an E in the first syllable.) He with the famous BOX (with or without cats.)

Restaurant -- The corner restaurant, where if you ordered more than you could eat, you could take the rest home in a BOX. (BTW -Whatever happened to doggie bags?)

Poets'Corner -- Yeah, that's in Westminster Abbey but there's the not-too-far-away Speakers' Corner in Hyde Park, where you could get up on your SoapBOX.

I very much wanted there to be a way to get a letter from each of those instances, specifically an E, an A, and an R.
Thus the body part would be EAR, and you can get your Ears BOXed.

I think I get more out of these puzzles when I don't solve!

[MikeyG]

...it'd've...

Not to discount The Whole World Championship Contest Crossword Solver and Creator mind which can note and retell this Golden Rabbit Hole Award contending entry with pure genius and to great effect, but this exceptional nugget is worth the admission price several times over.

Bravo, Mikey!

Bravo to you for that incredible 5-minute solve!

You gave it your ulna and ulna.

(These puns are humerus.)

[HunterX]

I saw the first and last three columns had 7 letters down with no breaks, related that to HOSPITAL CORNERS and thought they were somewhat bed-shaped. Thus I quickly found WHERE THE, and continued on.

My father, who was in the Navy in WWII, taught me how to make hospital corners, and would even do the "drop a quarter and see if it bounces" test, for fun. So I am a big fan of those corners, and am the bed maker in our house. My wife has thus decided there's no reason for her to learn how to do corners properly.

Since I saw the 7x4 corners of the grid as, in effect, beds, I wondered: why would you do hospital corners on both the WasH side and the H or the HONOR end? How do you get into a bed when the top sheet is tucked in at both ends???

[Darth]

Well, I was surprised because I saw the four corners of a hospital bed... and the answer is clearly HEAD, right? :P

Can I get partial credit, Mr. Shenk? (I mean, I had the same sort of idea...)

P.S. Be sure to check out this week's SSS for more meta fun! ;)

[Joe Ross]

[woozy]

20250117-WSJCC-TightSpots-WSJ-reveal.png

Well okay...

But I'd have thought/hoped more explanation as to what is or isn't a "grid corner" would have been more explicitly explained. (Why "hospital corners" as opposed to "street corners"?)

[Kas]

Drat. I very much had the right idea in mind, I just failed to connect with the concept of the whole grid being a single sheet. Therefore, it would be fair to say that I am...sheet out of luck. Eh heh.

[The XWord Rabbit]

Okay, Muggles, let’s get this out of the way first.

Now let us consider Mr. Shenk’s “Tight Spots” puzzle, the method of which has already been more than adequately explained in Posts #204 (thanks, Heidi) and #236 (thanks, Joe.)

An honorable mention first: Your Rabbit dedicates this week’s review to zach (Post #217) for having his ulna shortened. Just the thought of that sets his nose a-twitching.

As to nominees …

Tolstoy would have been proud of MikeyG’s epic Post #206. Yes, it’s “stream-of-consciousness” and yes, it’s definitely LITFTATT (That’s “Lost in the Forest, Touching All the Trees” for all you newbie Muggles out there), but it’s also a masterwork of the thought process involved in unravelling a meta. Your Rabbit bows to your dedication to the lost art of … well, being lost.

Although it pales by comparison by word length, whimsy also deserves a nomination, connecting a trio of across and down entries, getting BOXed in. (Post #232)

And lest you think your Rabbit is immune from rabbit holes himself, consider this: He was convinced that the black squares in the puzzle made up an incomplete stick figure drawing. With the addition of half a dozen “tight spots” he searched – in vain, of course -- for axilla (those are armpits for the technically challenged) as well as other body parts. Pretty good entry, wouldn’t you say? If only someone else had suggested it…

Next week will be the final puzzle up for review during this 6-month cycle. Expect the naming of the finalists and the dispensing of a few mugs the first Friday in February. Until then, enjoy this “Nobody Puts Baby in a Corner” montage and see you next week.

[WC50]

Convinced that the answer somehow lurked in folding the grid in the manner of a bedsheet, I misspent several hours in YouTube’s pedagogical embrace. No mug this week, but I can now bounce a quarter on my bed and emerged with an origami platypus.