"Eton Must Change" January 10, 2025

[lxpeterson]

Maybe there’s a meta meta here. I’m going back to the ship.

[chopkins828]

I submitted SpaceX Friday with full confidence, since you need to do the puzzle to get there. Oh well! Still counting it as a solve for my own 2025 stats.

[Katiedid]

SPACE-X is a name!
The title was my starting point. I was staring at the themers forever until I realized they were two four letter words just like in the title ETON MUST where one letter could be changed. Then I finished and got SpaceX which was confirmed by the title.
I agree with Barbara 100%

[LadyBird]

SpaceX camp here! I went to bed last night seeing just one comment--the excellent one by @BarbaraK. And wake up this morning to 3+more pages of comments! I think Matt (and Mike) have some explaining to do. But I'm not ready to grab the pitchforks and torches*, because it IS just a fun little puzzle--and a mug that I'm never going to win anyway. If there were only two correct answers (and I was one of them), then I can guarantee that the mug would go to the other gal or guy!

And now we can bond over this wonderful discussion. And decide what new term will enter the meta lexicon.

For my personal record-keeping, this is a solve and my streak continues!

*And I don't think any of our wonderful Muggles are prone to that method anyway!

[SingleMalt]

DOGE
Debate over Gaffney’s Excogitation

Deceptively Obvious Gaffney Eureka

[Barfy]

Put me squarely in the BarbaraK camp.
It takes all of 2 seconds to see Elon Musk can be derived from Eton Must. So you look to switch a couple letters in some grid answers, find them and deal what to do with them. Not a gimme by any means but if you do get to SpaceX, you see it is a name, not the ubiquitous "famous person" answer.
Then you note SpaceX ties BACK to the changed title Elon Musk. Game over.
Suppose as part of the meta submission it was required to give a brief explanation of how you got the answer. This would weed out the guessers from the solvers. Would "I saw Eton Must could be changed to Elon Musk" be accepted?
Or would it be denied entry into the pool of solvers because
"you didn't go through the torturous process of finding SpaceX and relating it to Elon Musk as confirmation.
To me, Elon Musk is a trivial answer. It is not even necessary to solve the grid or even know what a meta is.
To those who got to SpaceX and still submiited Elon Musk I would say "great job" We can discuss our different submissions. To those that didn't get to SpaceX, no shame, it was tough, and sent in Elon Musk, well sometimes everyone gets a chance at a trophy.
I am changing my original thoughts on the puzzle from " Wow, that was a clever puzzle to " that puzzle was too clever by a half".

[girubato1]

Reminded me of Minute Cryptic. Didn’t need the grid, just work the title like a cryptic puzzle. I’m still counting SpaceX as a real answer

[Abide]

In honor of this back and forth controversy, there is an excellent meta puzzle at the MMM forum here
Meta-Morphosis

Early reviews have been very positive.

[zacmoretz]

That is some BS!!!!!!

[eagle1279]

I'm one of the simpletons who briefly tried finding the six changed letters elsewhere in the grid but failing that, submitted ELON MUSK given the "names" in the grid. I understand those who found SPACE-X to be a possible answer with one quibble: When a company, corporation, or organization is the meta answer, it is always indicated more specifically than a "name" even though all of those answers were "names." E.g., in November the meta sought "a well-known chain of stores" (Kohl's). In October we were looking for "a professional sports team" (Florida Panthers). And so on: 7-Eleven was "a well-known retail chain (2023), Toyota was "a well-known company" (2021). if Space-X had been the meta answer, I would have expected "a well-known company" to be the clue. If I'd contemplated the choice between Space-X and Elon Musk, I would have chosen Musk as a "name."

Given that, "name" is vague and I agree that it would be been clearer to have us looking for a "famous person" or "mogul" or whatever. But then Elon Musk would have been way too obvious and the hard work of putting the three-letter clues in the grid would have been wasted.

[Saraplus5]

Holy crap, I was right. But I skipped the 3-letter answers part. Still. Count it!

My thoughts exactly!! I couldn't find any confirmation of my answer but had no more energy to spend on it...sorta felt like Elon Musk was a Hail Mary! (Which is also a 4-4 word pair! Ha!)

[michaelm]

I got to SPACEX through the required metanism, submitted ELON MUSK because of the "name" issue, then sat back and thought maybe the pageant could be ELTON, another famous rocketman, given instruction in title that ETON must change and ONEL sticking out in the grid.

Fun discussion everyone!

[mommyX4]

Seems like a lot of us were Musked! Better than being pageanted?

[zacmoretz]

If what’s his name Russell who won a best supporting actor Oscar back in the 1940s was deemed a proper answer last week, then SpaceX should be deemed a proper answer this week.

[Mister Squawk]

I think this puzzle would have been better with a different title (STAR SEARCH) and prompt ("A notable enterprise." if the desired answer was SPACEX " or "A famous entrepreneur" for ELON MUSK).

[Katiedid]

It doesn't make sense to me that the mechanism to get to the confirmation is way more involved than the one for getting the intended answer.

Since I began with Elon Musk as the pointer to get started, it never occurred to me to send that in for an answer.

[Susan Goldberg]

Hello everyone

This has been a tough week for the cruise director determining ship or shore location or just being somewhere in between. For clarity, if you declare that you are anything but, on the ship, whether it is in the water, on the wrong beach or anything else, I put you on the shore. And if you go back to the ship, I probably miss the comment and leave you on the shore.

Also when we have the vast majority of muggles on the shore, my brain stops processing and my fingers type "shore".

We appreciate it all! Ship, shore and in between!

[Susan Goldberg]

It's been a long time since I've stayed up to midnight to post about a meta. But, this one...

My solving process went thus.

• Notice the weird title; it must be important

• Based on that, play with anagrams, that didn't work

• Notice that Eton Must is a one letter "change" to Elon Musk

• Try that in the grid and see that it works for all the theme entries (with varying degrees of difficulty in recognizing them)

• Look at the changed letters, both the ones in the grid and the ones in the names, to see if any combination spells anything, nope

• Look at the other grid entries to try to find some consistent set of those letters plus an extra

• Find the 3 letter entries that lead to SpaceX

• Aha, that's the answer

• And look at that call back to the title, that's an elegant touch

• And now I understand why the prompt said a "famous name" instead of a "famous person"

• Submit SpaceX with 100% confidence

When I started to realize that some people thought the answer was Elon Musk, I first assumed that they missed the whole spell out the answer part and, getting stuck after the other six names, could only think of going back to the title. And I'm sure there are some like that.

But then I learned there were people, lots of people, smart people, long time solvers, who'd seen the entire mechanism and still thought the answer was the person's name instead of the company name; I was stunned.

I never for a moment considered Elon Musk as an answer. On a very few occasions, there have been puzzles where the entire meta was in the clues. You could solve it without even bothering to fill the grid. These get complaints that it defeats the purpose of a crossword contest if the crossword itself is not part of it, which is no doubt why this approach is so rare. But a meta that you don't need the clues or the grid for? That the whole thing is in the title? That's nuts!

And yet, as I'm typing us this draft, there's a poll on Discord about which is the intended answer, and the replies are split exactly 50-50.

This is fascinating! Usually when there are two possibilities, once people see both of them there's a consensus as to which is right. The only time I remember people being unsure about which of two options was right was the map one, and in that case there were two totally different possible metanisms, not as in this case, a single metanism with confusion about the correct end point.

I wonder if the discussion has changed or will change anyone's mind. I'm still firmly in camp SpaceX. I just can't see finding an answer spelled out that fits the prompt and instead of using it, going back to the title. (And it would have been easy enough to change to prompt to require a person or an 8 letter name if that's what they were going for.) But it's been fun hearing why people think that Elon Musk is right, and I look forward to any more explanations - from WSJ and muggles.

I am 100 percent with you in Camp Space X. Makes no sense otherwise because you don’t have to do part two of the Meta. Grrr.

[Scoopdave]

Put me down for chicken****ism. If I can get it, it’s too easy.

BTW, this is borderline political delving , can’t be going there people

[Dickie_Dunn]

(I say this without reading all the other explanations of others yet, so if repeated, my apologies.)

The first name I found was Elon Musk, so I figured if you could get the answer by not reading past the title, it couldn’t be the answer! All the other names appeared quickly after I saw the mechanism in the title, which led me to the three word answers and SPACEX. Seemed so tidy. So I guess shame on me for my incorrect order of seeing the light.

Although I am now just remembering a similar puzzle where the answer was Rolls Royce. Probably some subtle differences, that I can’t recall without looking. Here I was laughing to myself about the possibility of another answer. Oh well, I’ll be okay. Still fun!

Now that I think more, without finding SPACEX, one wouldn’t have confirmation of the correct answer, but I didn’t think that far ahead. Simply finding a name in the title isn’t a sure answer. Oops!

I’ve convinced myself I was wrong in one post.