"Trick or Treat" - October 29, 2021

[BarbaraK]

I’m surprised Mike didn’t star the theme answers and wonder if that was an oversight or planned all along. It certainly made it much harder. Yes, they’re all across and symmetrical, but not the longest and have no other obvious indications.

I think the solving experience would be cleaner if you looked at those first, saw all the icks, then went looking for the eats.

Like others, I found them randomly and then matched them up. I also had cheat/chick on my initial list, but the symmetry as well as the two initial letters made me ok with not using that one.

[jenirvin]

Like Jack, I never made it to shore. Kudos to the solvers! This one was just not going to happen for me.

[RDaleHall]

Great puzzle this week - only nit is wishing the title had been TRICK(S) OR TREAT(S). I had all the ICK and EAT combinations, including the plurals, but was thinking the plurals would have to be one step too far. So took M(ICK/EAT), N(ICK/EAT), S(ICK/EAT) and TR(ICK/EAT) and went with MONSTER. It felt a little contrived, especially with MONSTER being part of one of the clues... and turned out to be a red herring. Is this called being... CLOWNed?

[FatJack]

Lost at sea and chasing herrings, e.g. YOKELS to YODELS and ORES to OREO and was sure the fraudSTER must match up with MON somewhere to make a monster. Despite my drowning, great meta!

[CPJohnson]

I feel obtuse.

[Flying_Burrito]

Had the first part of the mechanism right (but missed hicks). Then I decided to reroute and got completely lost with 15A (Answers after two rings?) which to me equated to Rooms and Boots since 2 rings = OO. Spent quite a bit of time looking for alternative answers ending in MS and TS per wrong clue; then i decided to look at the answer below Rooms (isle) as again misled by clue. well Kielbasas contains Elba (an islan) and Mile is tricking us by saying that 49A is not a clue0; then...I could go on for a while. All of this to tell you that my answer was Hershey Kiss and I did have a little girl yesterday coming to my door dressed like a Hershey Kiss. "yes the meta gods have sent me a divine message" only to find out that it was divine tease. Kudos to solvers who got it right: you brains and minds must be one heck of a place

[Colin]

Great meta but I was miles away. Submitted my best solution after being underground in the warren much of the weekend but was a mile from shore. Ignoring the pairs of almost identical words, adding letters to words, references to witches, other Halloween themes and more (all of which went nowhere)… I saw that only two clues contain the letters to spell either TRICK or TREAT (10D and 32D). The answers to those are ANGOLA and CHAD which point to Africa and the late, great Chadwick Boseman, who was the BLACK PANTHER. Not good enough for a mug, but at least I got a great idea for my Halloween 2022 costume - providing it comes with one of those muscle shells!

[Zagman49]

Never in a million years! Got stuck on MALLOCUP for SMALLCUT and drifted away.

[minimuggle]

Oh wow, I thought of the "ick" "eat" mechanism but just couldn't figure out how to apply it. I love seeing all of your impressive work sheets. I am humbled. Congrats to the solvers. That mug was well earned.

[cbarbee002]

Had the pieces but would not have put it together - - awesome construction, despite some singular to plural change ups. Good one Mike!

[RobM]

I started the right way -- found the five -ICK and _EAT pairs, but got hung up on two red herrings -- SLEET for HAIL and CHEAT for FRAUDSTER.

Since it was specified that KIELBASA was not part of the solution, I inferred that its symmetrical counterpart, FRAUDSTER, _was_ part of the solution.
Since I couldn't find corresponding grid entries that SLICK and CHICK could be alternatives for, I thought those must be the answer. Is slick chick a halloween costume? According to Costumes 4 Less, it is.

https://www.costumes4less.com/Slick-Chi ... _Prod.aspx

This is the textbook definition of tenuous.

[HunterX]

I fell into all the same rabbit holes as so many others here--YOKELS->YODELS; CHEAT/CHICK; all the word pairs; even clue-answer combos like oSCAR winner and SCAR.

It was brilliant daughter who finally made the connection between the ICK's and the EAT's using the same replacement for the TR's. Though I at least got to backsolve for KEATS/ODIST.

Closest I've come to not solving while pulling it off in the end. Thanks to michaelm for very gently helping steer me away from my dead ends so we could focus on more fruitful paths. Dang if there weren't a lot of them!

[michaelm]

Few other rabbit holes:

Mick or Keith?

Found all the clues with OR in the them (there were a lot).
Anagrammed first letters of:
clue words with OR;
first letters of clues;
first letters of corresponding grid answers;
Some interesting anagrams, but nothing definitive.

There were a number of grid entries with OR in them.
Take letters before and/or after and anagram.
Thought for sure was going to get "Mask or No Mask" or something similar from that, but a no go of course.

Bottom right, all you have to do is add EC to SCAR and ROW and the easy obvious answer is SCARECROW!

All "HAIL" and "HALE" Mike Shenk.
Please don't try to outdo, at least this Thursday, Matt!

[femullen]

This solution was so obscure that, if this week's puzzle used the identical method, I still don't think I'd get it. My hat's off to the feverish minds that can follow this. KAS 10^zillion.

[femullen]

Few other rabbit holes:

Mick or Keith?

Found all the clues with OR in the them (there were a lot).
Anagrammed first letters of:
clue words with OR;
first letters of clues;
first letters of corresponding grid answers;
Some interesting anagrams, but nothing definitive.

There were a number of grid entries with OR in them.
Take letters before and/or after and anagram.
Thought for sure was going to get "Mask or No Mask" or something similar from that, but a no go of course.

Bottom right, all you have to do is add EC to SCAR and ROW and the easy obvious answer is SCARECROW!

All "HAIL" and "HALE" Mike Shenk.
Please don't try to outdo, at least this Thursday, Matt!

I did just this, came up with some words in Klingon, I think.

[Jim and Anita]

Our profile picture shows Anita clowning the night before our son's wedding in Bangalore India 8 years ago. The mother of the bride is beside her. This was the first time the relatives had met.

Wanted to share a poem that Anita used in her Christian clowning- it's from Richard Snowberg's classic book "The Caring Clowns: How Humor, Smiles and Laughter Overcome Pain, Suffering and Loneliness."

"The value, the worth and the power of mirth
Can help each of us to get through
When the going is rough and incredibly tough
And even the sunshine looks blue
For once you give in to a chuckle or grin
Your spirits just natur'ly lift
And life is worthwhile each time that you smile
For a laugh is a God given gift."

[boharr]

For me, the way in was 29D. No Ice? Nah. Who says that? It's gotta be Neat, which rhymes with Treat. So all these years sitting at bars did finally amount to something.

[MatthewL]

I must have been on Mike's wavelength this week, because I happened on the right mechanism almost immediately. Filling out the grid before dinner Thursday, I was struck by the oddity of SMALL CUT and thought it should be NICK (which momentarily made me think of devil costumes). I put the puzzle down to make dinner, and then while cleaning up afterward the idea of rhymes for trick and treat flashed into my mind. I quickly found 6 pairs and was sure I had it, but was stuck for a while because one of my pairs was CHICK/CHEAT. I was absolutely convinced that FRAUDSTER had to be in there for a reason, although the WARBLER/CHICK part wasn't ideal. Eventually saw that 5 of the 6 letters would make CLOWN and realized that CHEAT/CHICK must be wrong since it was the only pair that involved adding two letters before ICK and EAT instead of one. Great puzzle!

I went down the exact path as Leslie (right down to Small Cut being the first thing I spotted as being odd). Got the ick/eat thing very quickly, and then just got hung up because I couldn't make any sense of the CH words. Finally, after banging my head for 2 days, I got a very helpful tip which was to write everything I thought I had found on a blank piece of paper, in the most logical order I could think of. So I did. I wrote: Feverish/Sick Chair/Seat, and continued from there in number order. CLOWN then pretty much jumped out (as did the mistake of trying to include Chick/Cheat).

[Wendy Walker]

I was slightly confused over the wording of the prompt: doesn't a "choice" comprise two options, like, oh, say, one from the -ICK words and one from the -EAT words? With help I found CLOWN but spent much time trying to make a similar anagram from the -ICK words. Here are my worksheets:

[Deb F]

Nope. Never connected. Didn't even have a single rabbit hole. I went as the Mad Hatter!
Have a good week, Muggles.