XWord Muggles Forum

Schmeel wrote: ↑Mon Oct 18, 2021 7:32 am

Dplass wrote: ↑Mon Oct 18, 2021 7:05 am

Schmeel wrote: ↑Mon Oct 18, 2021 12:17 am It was pointed out to me that as a Hebrew speaker, I may have had a slight advantage solving this puzzle - I'm used to seeing vowels that aren't indicated!

ההה

Exactly!
But in Hebrew that would be "חחח" these days - that's what my children reply to my corny dad jokes. Similar to LOL and its variants. It isn't necessarily pronounced with vowels, though - more like an extended gutteral 'ch'.

תודה העברית שלי רעב מאוד

Plymouthrock wrote: ↑Mon Oct 18, 2021 2:27 am Won’t you stop and take
A little time out with me…

Did anyone else go down a hole with that
Dave Brubeck classic Take Five? HALT nowhere to be
Found in the song! Good job, to you smarties who got it.

I've heard of Dave Brubeck, but am not familiar with his oeuvre. I have no ear for music and little interest in pop culture, which is an obvious handicap in doing crosswords. (Remember the well-known sci-fi writer? Neither do I.) But the great blessing is that I rarely suffer from earworms.

I got buster, tither, dither, blotch

I also noted the jazz song take five

I was towed to shore so I didn’t submit an answer

fun nevertheless!

I am kicking myself a bit. I figured the 5 letter string of consonants in each long answer had to mean something (given 1D), and I actually got "mobster", but then I couldn't make anything out of the other 4, so discarded that path as a rabbit hole and moved on. Should've stuck with that one a bit longer and perhaps I would've succeeded. Oh well -- the Braves got 2 walk-off wins this weekend, UVA crushed Duke and the 5 Stripes won (and the Falcons were on a bye, so at least they didn't lose), so on balance, a winning weekend.

MatthewL wrote: ↑Mon Oct 18, 2021 9:54 am I am kicking myself a bit. I figured the 5 letter string of consonants in each long answer had to mean something (given 1D), and I actually got "mobster", but then I couldn't make anything out of the other 4, so discarded that path as a rabbit hole and moved on. Should've stuck with that one a bit longer and perhaps I would've succeeded. Oh well -- the Braves got 2 walk-off wins this weekend, UVA crushed Duke and the 5 Stripes won (and the Falcons were on a bye, so at least they didn't lose), so on balance, a winning weekend.

Of like mind! Go Hoos, Braves, Falcons!

Found mobster and touchable quickly. Did anyone else use NoT THeRe instead of untether and NeeD To HeaR instead of in a dither? It is not as clean but it but it worked for me. If it’s “loose” it’s not there and if i really need to hear something it is a form of agitation.

I find this answer to be impossible and I am glad I gave up quickly. Congrats to those who proved me wrong.

Calling this one a Meta Scale KAS 4. And reminded (a frequent occurrence) that these puzzles are so oddly impossible to predict--I fell over the solution to this one quickly--a much less frequent occurrence--but the "A-Ha Moment" was top notch!

femullen wrote: ↑Mon Oct 18, 2021 9:34 am

Plymouthrock wrote: ↑Mon Oct 18, 2021 2:27 am Won’t you stop and take
A little time out with me…

Did anyone else go down a hole with that
Dave Brubeck classic Take Five? HALT nowhere to be
Found in the song! Good job, to you smarties who got it.

I've heard of Dave Brubeck, but am not familiar with his oeuvre. I have no ear for music and little interest in pop culture, which is an obvious handicap in doing crosswords. (Remember the well-known sci-fi writer? Neither do I.) But the great blessing is that I rarely suffer from earworms.

I would say jazzist Dave Brubeck is orders of magnitude more well known than N. Jemison. You may not recognize the name of the song, but unless you have limited your entire life's musical listening experience to whatever Spotify feeds you, you probably have heard the theme at least once. It's famously in five/four and I'm pretty sure it has been used in more than one TV/radio commercial.

Give a 30-45 second listen to this, or the whole thing if it floats your boat:

hoover wrote: ↑Mon Oct 18, 2021 11:30 am

femullen wrote: ↑Mon Oct 18, 2021 9:34 am

Plymouthrock wrote: ↑Mon Oct 18, 2021 2:27 am Won’t you stop and take
A little time out with me…

Did anyone else go down a hole with that
Dave Brubeck classic Take Five? HALT nowhere to be
Found in the song! Good job, to you smarties who got it.

I've heard of Dave Brubeck, but am not familiar with his oeuvre. I have no ear for music and little interest in pop culture, which is an obvious handicap in doing crosswords. (Remember the well-known sci-fi writer? Neither do I.) But the great blessing is that I rarely suffer from earworms.

I would say jazzist Dave Brubeck is orders of magnitude more well known than N. Jemison. You may not recognize the name of the song, but unless you have limited your entire life's musical listening experience to whatever Spotify feeds you, you probably have heard the theme at least once. It's famously in five/four and I'm pretty sure it has been used in more than one TV/radio commercial.

Give a 30-45 second listen to this, or the whole thing if it floats your boat:

Beautiful.

Speaking of boats, I stayed on the ship throughout this cruise, although the method to the answer was handed to me, and I shared it with a few muggles requesting a nudge.

8:18 on the wsj monday puzzle! my personal best to date!

What time does the mug winner get emailed PST? Would love to know when to stop inbox refreshing

Just registered, but made it onto the beach Saturday afternoon after getting tossed by waves for a while Friday night. I think this is the first true A-HA moment I've ever had since starting 1.5 months ago with "Interstate Travel"! Needless to say, I think I'm hooked

In my quest to crack the elusive "This puzzle's fives", I spent all of Saturday morning learning to hold the number 5 in deepest respect. We have 5 fingers, 5 toes and 5 senses. Looking at the face of a clock, each numeral represents 5 minutes of time. The list goes on........

Finally, after some guidance by a friendly muggle, I got down to the important business and focused on the grid. Wow, it turned out to be great fun. In retrospect, I am awed by Mr. Berry's ingenuity in creating, what I would call, a 3 tier meta. This was the first time I ever experienced such a journey. The best part was the travel with this group!

Rated a 3????? You gotta' be kiddin'. I'd give it a 6! But, heck, I'm a newbie.

I traveled through many a rabbit hole this weekend: those 3 grid answers without vowels; all of the 5-letter words; the letters/grid answers starting on the various "5's"; all of the words where you removed the vowels and were left with just one consonant; Take Five = Rest (and it's in the grid). The one thing they all had in common was "but what do I do with this?".

Then I googled "Take Five" and was taken to the jazz classic already mentioned. It's in 5/4 time--so I started looking at all of the 5-word answers followed by 4-word answers.

Then I decided to listen to "Take Five" while I looked at the grid for the hundredth time (OK, that MIGHT be an exaggeration). Maybe the music loosened up my brain but I saw that each long answer had 5 consonants in a row. The first one was MBSTR and I remembered Mobster as being a clue (at least I hoped that it was in this puzzle and not the Sunday puzzle that I had been doing earlier). And then I FINALLY saw it all come together.

Im surprised this one ranked lower in difficulty to thorough enough, I thought this one was much more confusing. Did anyone get tunnel vision on the duplicate 'Radio feature' clues?

In response to questions on the puzzle’s star rating: I would be curious to hear how many rate on the Kas scale rather than on pure difficulty, even though difficulty is the quality we are supposed to rate. Personally I rate based on Kas. Difficulty is part of the Kas analysis, of course, but I find the Kas scale so much more informative than just a rating on difficulty. A 3—the perfect combination of challenge and solvability—is nirvana.

Not pleading poverty, but some of my coffee mugs are chipped and nasty. Sure would be nice to have a new coffee mug from which to drink…

kimberlysg wrote: ↑Mon Oct 18, 2021 7:36 am Well, I got halfway there, and even figured out Mobster and Touchable. I don't think I would have ever made it to the end, though. Tricky puzzle!

Yes, Mobster and Touchable revealed themselves first to me (although initially I thought Teachable). I then quickly recalled seeing HOOD in the grid. What about Teachable? Found TACTILE, and that gave me Touchable. From there, I shifted to look at the clues for those two entries, and then Whoosh!

I have now adopted a versatile tool in the solving tool box. Phrases and compound words are a resource for the constructor seeking specific, unusual sequences of letters, because phrases and compound words can contain atypical letter combinations around the “joins” of the words. Seeing themed entries which are phrases or compound words will henceforth trigger scrutiny of those joins in particular, which in this case focused my attention on those five-letter sequences. For me, it sometimes helps to envision the constructor's journey from a blank page to a finished product. In that regard, the Muller-Gaffney Zoom video is quite useful in picturing the design process -- highly recommended and with big thanks to Joe, Brian and the Cruise Director for setting that up and making it available.

PHOFER wrote: ↑Mon Oct 18, 2021 3:40 pm In response to questions on the puzzle’s star rating: I would be curious to hear how many rate on the Kas scale rather than on pure difficulty, even though difficulty is the quality we are supposed to rate. Personally I rate based on Kas. Difficulty is part of the Kas analysis, of course, but I find the Kas scale so much more informative than just a rating on difficulty. A 3—the perfect combination of challenge and solvability—is nirvana.

What is Kas scale