Re: "Head Count" - June 12, 2020
Posted: Mon Jun 15, 2020 5:04 pm
Another forty answerer here. Forty-ers, we are on our own private island, eh? Mimosas for everyone!
A place to discuss the WSJ Weekly Crossword Contest and other "meta"-style crosswords
https://www.xword-muggles.com/
If that was seen as a spoiler, I apologize!!Liberty, biberty,
Down to wire and
Feeling as if I was
Out of the fight.
All of a sudden, and
Numerologically,
No longer floundering,
I see the light!
Or maybe I should say the lighthouse at this eleventh hour. Nothing unfair about this, but I certainly wish it hadn't taken me all weekend to figure it out! Needless to say, I didn't wait until I plodded ashore to start drinking! Rest well, everyone, on land and off!
If I get a chance and/or inspiration, I will add the constructors to the spreadsheet unless Barbara or someone else is more inspired and beats me to it.BethA wrote: ↑Mon Jun 15, 2020 4:47 pm It turns out I was on Beach Forty on Thursday. While going through the mechanics, I wrote the translated numbers both as numerals and spelled out as words. When TFSES didn’t spell anything, the next thing I thought of was adding the numbers up to get Forty. I did check out grid square 40, to see if there was anything interesting there, just an S. Thought FORTY must be the answer, but did not get that resoundingly strong CLICK. Why 40? Other than it’s a number.
So Friday morning, I decided I’d better check out the letters in the individual numbers, too. And found TALLY, which all added up! Fortunately I almost always let my initial answer percolate for awhile, not in a rush to send it in. So I did make it to Tally Beach in time.
On a different topic, someone earlier in the thread wondered about solve success rates across different constructors. I don’t have that, but am interested, too! Just in reviewing my own WSJ history, Gaffney has stumped me almost twice as many times as Shenk. And for 2020, the only ones I’ve missed have all been by Gaffney. Wrong wavelength trouble at times!
"a bit" may be an understatement, but yes I got to the point where I had B_LLY or T_LLY (thought maybe the DOS was to be used phonetically which led to douze, translating to 12 in French). Figured it HAD to be TALLY. And I even guessed that GO was likely Japanese, but for whatever reason, my first google attempt was inconclusive, so I just set it aside for a bit. As I was discussing this with my mom (fellow Muggle NaluGirl), I was complaining about the completely arbitrary nature about which language to use when 61D jumped off the page at me.BarbaraK wrote: ↑Sat Jun 13, 2020 9:43 pmI suspect you solved this much the same way I did. Noticed something that led toward a good answer (with a bit of backsolving) but had some inconsistencies and seemed to require too much assuming. Then took another look and saw something I’d gone right by at first and realized the inconsistencies were just my incorrect assumptions and there was in fact a nice clear path to a consistent solution.joequavis wrote: ↑Sat Jun 13, 2020 8:19 pm Finally managed to drift ashore. I was convinced that Mr. Shenk forgot to include the meta part of the puzzle, or attached the instructions to the wrong grid. I had a good sense of which rabbit hole to pursue and, unlike other times I've been LAS, persistence was the key this time.
I will say this was certainly not my favorite puzzle, but then saw what I had been missing all along. I dislike it a lot less now.
Your own numbers would be more interesting because Mike only reports on answers submitted. You have the tally/head count of people who remained on the ship without submitting anything.Bob cruise director wrote: ↑Mon Jun 15, 2020 6:59 pm Here is the results going back to April 12, 2019 (more to come later). I only counted Mike and Matt. And I used Mike Millers correct percentage numbers.
Matt Gaffney 61 contests with 76.5% correct answers
Mike Shenk 61 contests with 77.7% correct answers
Below is the week to week chart of correct vs time. The individual weeks are all over the place but a linear trend line over the past four years shows slight improvement
I will work on priors to that another time
And yes, we are a bunch of nerds.
It's seems that these puzzles are almost always on the level -- theme words going across. The MGWCC a few weeks ago had theme words going down, but that was because the puzzle was meant to mimic a coin-op vending machine where the letters dropped down into the meta tray below. Very clever.LadyBird wrote: ↑Mon Jun 15, 2020 3:40 pmWhat gave me great difficulty was that there were two very long and symmetrical down answers: 11D and 29D. They were much longer than three of the across theme answers. So, how do you know when you should pay attention to long down answers--or are they not usually the answers in play?Bird Lives wrote: ↑Mon Jun 15, 2020 1:15 pmUsually, they are symmetrically placed, so a word in the middle, even if it's short, will often be in the theme.
Although our numbers are self reporting, we are consistently at 10% muggles on shore compared to the total number of correct entries. So this week we had 108 on the shore so I would expect somewhere around 1100 correct submissions.BrianDavidson wrote: ↑Mon Jun 15, 2020 7:09 pmYour own numbers would be more interesting because Mike only reports on answers submitted. You have the tally/head count of people who remained on the ship without submitting anything.Bob cruise director wrote: ↑Mon Jun 15, 2020 6:59 pm Here is the results going back to April 12, 2019 (more to come later). I only counted Mike and Matt. And I used Mike Millers correct percentage numbers.
Matt Gaffney 61 contests with 76.5% correct answers
Mike Shenk 61 contests with 77.7% correct answers
Below is the week to week chart of correct vs time. The individual weeks are all over the place but a linear trend line over the past four years shows slight improvement
I will work on priors to that another time
And yes, we are a bunch of nerds.
I see PAGEANT sticking out like a sore thumb!Bob cruise director wrote: ↑Mon Jun 15, 2020 6:59 pm Here is the results going back to April 12, 2019 (more to come later). I only counted Mike and Matt. And I used Mike Millers correct percentage numbers.
Matt Gaffney 61 contests with 76.5% correct answers
Mike Shenk 61 contests with 77.7% correct answers
Below is the week to week chart of correct vs time. The individual weeks are all over the place but a linear trend line over the past four years shows slight improvement
I will work on priors to that another time
And yes, we are a bunch of nerds.
More like a stick in the eye of the muggles and everyone elseAl Sisti wrote: ↑Mon Jun 15, 2020 9:02 pmI see PAGEANT sticking out like a sore thumb!Bob cruise director wrote: ↑Mon Jun 15, 2020 6:59 pm Here is the results going back to April 12, 2019 (more to come later). I only counted Mike and Matt. And I used Mike Millers correct percentage numbers.
Matt Gaffney 61 contests with 76.5% correct answers
Mike Shenk 61 contests with 77.7% correct answers
Below is the week to week chart of correct vs time. The individual weeks are all over the place but a linear trend line over the past four years shows slight improvement
I will work on priors to that another time
And yes, we are a bunch of nerds.
Another article on the database analysis that also mentions the identity of the software engineer.Bob cruise director wrote: ↑Mon Jun 15, 2020 2:59 pmGreat article. I wonder who caught it? The publisher, other constructors or who. It seems that someone must have a database of all puzzle themes to be able to catch something like this 10 years apart in different publications.
Dave, I'm going to go out on a limb here and say that I'll bet everyone's Apache is a little rusty and if that WAS a red herring it was one that only a very few of us would get. Now if it was an Apache dance, well then maybe I'd seize the opportunity!DaveKennison wrote: ↑Mon Jun 15, 2020 8:13 pm Am I the only person to notice that the Apache word “gosts’idi” (which looks a lot like “GO STEADY”) means “seven”, and that the letter in the square numbered 7 is indeed an “A”?
As I said in an earlier post, that really can’t be coincidence! A kindly red herring, perhaps?