XWord Muggles Forum

Hector wrote: ↑Tue Aug 10, 2021 1:27 pm

RPardoe wrote: ↑Tue Aug 10, 2021 1:16 pm

mheverson wrote: ↑Tue Aug 10, 2021 1:11 pm As an aside, I didn't understand 52 down – "One of Cicero's two"... I got SOFTS. Can someone explain to me? Google isn't helping much.

Cicero has two SOFT Cs. Check 67A (ALEC Guinness) to confirm the C (instead of the S)

Word on the street is that it was pronounce Keekiroe.

I am the walrus...

Hector wrote: ↑Tue Aug 10, 2021 1:27 pm Word on the street is that it was pronounce Keekiroe.

Hawaii had caviar?

What a weird first week to join the MGWCC! I ended up submitting AMC with absolute certainty that I was incorrect. Did anyone else notice the red herrings of NBCUniversal channels: BRAVO, USA, ON E!, and SNL (airs on NBC). I was going to guess a movie channel owned by NBCUniversal, but alas nothing seems to exist. My next best guess was PEACOCK .. but also not a cable channel.

Anyway, beam me up on the B puzzle! Huge thanks to Matt for the redo!

Was I the only one who incorrectly picked VUDU as the cable channel? After much searching it was the only channel I could find that offered all five of the films in the puzzle.

I came up with AMC - American Movie Classics because the word 'movie' is exactly in the center.

Very nice of Matt to give us a do-over!

Guffman wrote: ↑Tue Aug 10, 2021 2:15 pm Was I the only one who incorrectly picked VUDU as the cable channel? After much searching it was the only channel I could find that offered all five of the films in the puzzle.

Is Vudu a cable channel or a streaming service? I thought it was the latter. I also looked for a channel where they were playing, but no luck with three of the five.

I'm not familiar with US cable channels at all so I had to rely on Google.
I saw the name of the puzzle was 'Heart of the Matter' which has 'A' 'TT' in the heart of the matter. I googled for AT&T cable channels that show movies, and it seems that Cinemax is ultimately owned by AT&T and it could show all of those movies (I think) based on the channel's library as it's described in Wikipedia.
Though after googling the cable channels I'm not sure if they themselves know who owns who anymore.

Thanks for the second chance - beamed up!

TMart wrote: ↑Tue Aug 10, 2021 1:22 pm I had guessed The Movie Channel, then thought maybe it was American Movie Classics (although I'm not sure any of them are classics). Glad that one got tossed.

If I recall correctly, "Elf" is shown on AMC (it's no longer known by the full 21 letters) approximately 471 times during the month of December....

I eventually backed off to 'it must be guessable just from the 5 answers' the way JAPAN was from SAKE/WASABI/SOBA/BENTO/FUGU in #683. So then I was like The Movie Channel? But yeah, what about AMC/TMC/etc. Only when nudged that I just hadn't hit the right channel yet did I scan a list, and only when I spotted CC did it immediately click (it did take me two scans to spot CC on the wiki list).

I should have been looking for more of a common link that just 'movies' in retrospect, and ELF and BORAT both seem like obvious comedies to me so it seems like I should have seen it. But I definitely wouldn't have if not for looking at the options.

Hector wrote: ↑Tue Aug 10, 2021 1:27 pm

RPardoe wrote: ↑Tue Aug 10, 2021 1:16 pm

mheverson wrote: ↑Tue Aug 10, 2021 1:11 pm As an aside, I didn't understand 52 down – "One of Cicero's two"... I got SOFTS. Can someone explain to me? Google isn't helping much.

Cicero has two SOFT Cs. Check 67A (ALEC Guinness) to confirm the C (instead of the S)

Word on the street is that it was pronounce Keekiroe.

Two of my kids studied Latin and I can't tell you how often I got corrected!
I went on to study Classical Greek just to get back at them

I had the right idea and was looking for something like "Movie Center" in a list of cable channels. I finally hit Comedy Central and had a moment of wait, are those all comedies? I looked up the genre for each of the movies and they did all include Comedy, so I went with it. But I have to say that Diner looks fairly unfunny, especially when viewed from a 2021 perspective...

Kind of surprised it played so difficult, but I can see it. Besides the unclear movie genres, cable channels just aren't ubiquitous any more. I used to watch Comedy Central all the time 20 years ago, but since then I'd forgotten it existed!

One thing that unnerved me was that all five films were made in years after the advent of cable (which was just coincidence). Only by happenstance did I realize they were all right at the center and was like, "Oh, okay."

But super-nice of Matt for the mulligan!! He's the best in the biz.

Did nobody else want THEWEATHERCHANNEL with "Her" exactly in the middle? And……..all 5 are Turner Classic Movies. I didn’t submit either, but I seriously considered them. At this point I hadn’t considered genre as a relevant factor.

MeTV could also have been the meta answer. ME is right in the middle of comedy.

No clear click on this one at all.

Meg wrote: ↑Tue Aug 10, 2021 4:48 pm Did nobody else want THEWEATHERCHANNEL with "Her" exactly in the middle? And……..all 5 are Turner Classic Movies. I didn’t submit either, but I seriously considered them. At this point I hadn’t considered genre as a relevant factor.

That’s a really smart answer and if this wasn’t such a mess I’d say that’s a really strong alternate answer.

As it was until your nudge I was completely lost at sea. I agree with some of the other posters that these movies arent really pure comedies. Until you told me to check Wikipedia again for similarities I had looked a number of times for same actors, directors, etc. and skipped over “comedy.”

If he was able to make this work with theme movies that were known as comedies, I think this would have been a stellar week 1-1.5.

On Friday I tried scrolling through the cable guide on my TV for inspiration and noticed that ESPN 2 was showing corgi races! Turns out it was ESPN the Ocho day so they were showing fun sports all day like grocery bagging contests, cow chip throwing, air guitar championship, and lawn mower racing. I didn't get the meta but at least I had some entertaining TV to watch while working from home. Beam me up on the take 2 meta.

EmilyW wrote: ↑Tue Aug 10, 2021 10:27 pm On Friday I tried scrolling through the cable guide on my TV for inspiration and noticed that ESPN 2 was showing corgi races! Turns out it was ESPN the Ocho day so they were showing fun sports all day like grocery bagging contests, cow chip throwing, air guitar championship, and lawn mower racing. I didn't get the meta but at least I had some entertaining TV to watch while working from home. Beam me up on the take 2 meta.

Wait, ESPN the Ocho is real? I just thought it was a joke from Dodgeball!

SusieG wrote: ↑Wed Aug 11, 2021 2:46 pm

EmilyW wrote: ↑Tue Aug 10, 2021 10:27 pm On Friday I tried scrolling through the cable guide on my TV for inspiration and noticed that ESPN 2 was showing corgi races! Turns out it was ESPN the Ocho day so they were showing fun sports all day like grocery bagging contests, cow chip throwing, air guitar championship, and lawn mower racing. I didn't get the meta but at least I had some entertaining TV to watch while working from home. Beam me up on the take 2 meta.

Wait, ESPN the Ocho is real? I just thought it was a joke from Dodgeball!

They do it for one day each year on August 8 (8/8) as an homage to both the Dodgeball movie joke and the stuff they showed in their early days before they had a lot of big-league contracts. Probably helps that baseball is the only major-league thing they show/cover taking place on that date.