"Three by Three" - November 5, 2021

[Kas]

HA HA HA HA HA HA HA!!!

...By which I mean, "Hello, Isaac!"

[mheberlingx100]

1A had me trying to find two French words in each theme answer.

I had SAL (salle) and EEL (ile) to start. Which is Room and Island. Then I took SUE (sous) which Under.
Using R, I and U and placing them in R?U?I??? the answer was clearly REUNIONS. (College grads... People of letters)

I was bound and determined and stuck in that rabbit hole for awhile before I gave up trying to find other French words. I tried to turn GOT into Quatre (FOUR) but the F didn't fit my pattern. That is how desparate I was.

I also went at the French rabbit hole with pick and shovel. I tried listing all the three letter French words I could find in the grid to no avail. I thought the lower right “surrey” might be “sur riz” (on rice) or “sur ris” (on and laugh) which of course was nonsense. I also spent some time on Louis XIV (le roi soleil) trying to make SAL ATE into “soleil”. Nothing there, nor from “Apres moi, le deluge”.

[RobM]

My only complaint is that "OUR" is NOT pronounced as "R". It just isn't.

I was wondering about that too -- maybe with a New York accent? Boston?

[ship4u]

If I took your jest seriously I certainly apologize but this week there has been more than one post disdaining nudges. I also learned a long time ago that putting a smiley face on a potentially negative e-mail statement (whether it is meant that way or not) does NOT make it lighthearted.

If I say - "if only Mr. Gaffney would stop hiding under bridges and scaring Billy goats" - that might be funny

If I say - "If only Mr. Gaffney would stop trying to show his dominance over us by making impossible METAs" - that is not (oh, and PLEASE, I do not for one minute believe Mr. Gaffney is doing that, I am certainly if he did want to NONE of us would ever solve what would be the cleverest meta EVER!!!)

I thought that everyone would see the absurdity of my statement and see it as a joke. And, I always thought that one could put a smiling emoji following a joke in order to help clarify, "yes, I was joking." I never thought to use a smiley face in a passive aggressive way. Lesson learned and I was shocked to see the reaction. I hope that I am not required to change my muggle name to Personae Non Gratae.

[mheberlingx100]

My only complaint is that "OUR" is NOT pronounced as "R". It just isn't.

I was wondering about that too -- maybe with a New York accent? Boston?

I don’t think the French eau and aux really sound exactly like the American letter O. But it’s close enough to get the drift.

[Bird Lives]

My only complaint is that "OUR" is NOT pronounced as "R". It just isn't.

Yes, but once I'd gotten to that point, it was obvious what the letter had to be, and strict pronunciation seemed like a nit too small to pick given the magnitude of the mechanism.

[Colin]

1A had me trying to find two French words in each theme answer.

I had SAL (salle) and EEL (ile) to start. Which is Room and Island. Then I took SUE (sous) which Under.
Using R, I and U and placing them in R?U?I??? the answer was clearly REUNIONS. (College grads... People of letters)

I was bound and determined and stuck in that rabbit hole for awhile before I gave up trying to find other French words. I tried to turn GOT into Quatre (FOUR) but the F didn't fit my pattern. That is how desparate I was.

I also went at the French rabbit hole with pick and shovel. I tried listing all the three letter French words I could find in the grid to no avail. I thought the lower right “surrey” might be “sur riz” (on rice) or “sur ris” (on and laugh) which of course was nonsense. I also spent some time on Louis XIV (le roi soleil) trying to make SAL ATE into “soleil”. Nothing there, nor from “Apres moi, le deluge”.

Me too! Still can’t believe the blatant use of a decoy in the clue to 1A. Seemed like it had to indicate the first step of the meta and was excited to brush off my high-school French - to no avail. Tipping my hat to all who solved this sans aide!

[Franklin.Bluth]

My only complaint is that "OUR" is NOT pronounced as "R". It just isn't.

I was wondering about that too -- maybe with a New York accent? Boston?

I'd bet a plurality of muggles pronounce my home state as "FLAW-rid-a", so I was willing to concede OUR = "R".

[Omnibus]

Here’s how got there: The puzzle’s title told me straight off that words would either appear, or need to be arranged, in 3x3 boxes. Imagine my surprise that instead of long answers of three shorter words that could be stacked in a 3x3 box, there were four in each! As another Muggle pointed out, many of those shorter words had low-density letters at their start or end, like X or G, and it dawned on me they could be arranged in a 3x3 grid with a donut hole in the middle (there is only one way to do this for each set). Now what? Back to the hint at One Across, I needed to look for three-letter French words created by filling the “donut holes” (As a German-Czech speaker, I don’t parlay voo tray byen) The one that jumped out was “eau”, which even I knew was pronounced “oh!” and it dawned that each donut hole had to be filled with a letter that created two words that sounded like letters and corresponded to the order suggested in the brackets. The grid normally takes me about 15 minutes, so all told it was about an hour and I submitted just after 5 pm.

[RobM]

I thought this would be a good clue, if we were allowed to give clues:

[JJD]

Wow. Just wow. I never know how you all figure out which rabbit hole is right. I spent an hour trying to find the right combination of 3 grid entries to subtract from the theme answers, never knowing if if should be combining all 4 answers or something.

[RDaleHall]

Well... was strongly in Isaac's camp on this one even after giving a good effort; don't think I would have gravitated to the boxing that produced the answer.

Did look at other "letters" and 3x3 items: Thought at first that the box of ADD - HEE - URR box was a start towards "ADHERE" and some other path.

A lot of other three letter pairs, even in French, that ran me down my rabbit hole. I thought for sure the 3 letter French words would be "EST" and "DIT" which pronounce as "A" and "D" in French. And then the grid also has herrings like "ARR", "YOU", "BEE". and "VIS".

Congrats to solvers. This was a high star puzzle worthy of the initial Gaffney Gulp.

[mheberlingx100]

1A had me trying to find two French words in each theme answer.

I had SAL (salle) and EEL (ile) to start. Which is Room and Island. Then I took SUE (sous) which Under.
Using R, I and U and placing them in R?U?I??? the answer was clearly REUNIONS. (College grads... People of letters)

I was bound and determined and stuck in that rabbit hole for awhile before I gave up trying to find other French words. I tried to turn GOT into Quatre (FOUR) but the F didn't fit my pattern. That is how desparate I was.

I also went at the French rabbit hole with pick and shovel. I tried listing all the three letter French words I could find in the grid to no avail. I thought the lower right “surrey” might be “sur riz” (on rice) or “sur ris” (on and laugh) which of course was nonsense. I also spent some time on Louis XIV (le roi soleil) trying to make SAL ATE into “soleil”. Nothing there, nor from “Apres moi, le deluge”.

Me too! Still can’t believe the blatant use of a decoy in the clue to 1A. Seemed like it had to indicate the first step of the meta and was excited to brush off my high-school French - to no avail. Tipping my hat to all who solved this sans aide!

C’etait tres difficile!. I also poked around the ooh la la rabbit hole given all the la’s.

[Gman]

Part of what makes the meta so fun, but also frustrating, is that the puzzle masters often use clues that are true (eau and aux were required to get the final answer), but which can make the solver fixate on the wrong thing. I tortured the heck out of my hazy French memories all weekend. I even created a little program to cross reference which letters could fill the center of my 3 by 3 box to make two real French words! It was only in my sleep that I thought, B and T must be part of BOOK TOUR, where I slapped my groggy forehead to look at letters that make the three letter word sound like a single letter (OUR being a debatable choice). Truly amazing how much fixating can make you miss the obvious.

[Joe Ross]

I also went at the _______ rabbit hole with pick and shovel.

I am going to steal this much sooner than is appropriate and will act as if I coined it. Well-turned!

[Joe Ross]

I hope that I am not required to change my muggle name to Personae Non Gratae.

May I suggest Personae Mui Very Tres Bon Gratae?

[TeaJenny]

I'm rather embarrassed to say that I submitted an educated guess Hail Mary at about 11:40 last night, and it was correct!

I never did figure out the actual mechanism, but instead crossed out duplicate letters in each theme answer and the results kind of looked like BOOK TOUR, if I squinted and ignored the X and Y. The pic is just a small fraction of my scribblings throughout the weekend.

Kudos to everyone who figured it out! This was a doozy.

[femullen]

Picked a good week to miss. Another in the Never-Woulda-Got-It folder.

[HeadinHome]

And then there're those prepositions which use a "clause" for their objects, just to keep us on our toes. . .

Yes!! and in those cases we were taught to make the pronoun case agree within the clause rather than in the phrase that contains the clause:

“Give that cash to who/whom?”
A: Give that cash to HIM — so answer = WHOM

BUT when clauses are involved you get:

“Give that cash to [ whoever/whomever needs it most.] “
A: “___ needs it most” (the clause) calls for subject case (as in “HE needs it most.”) So answer = WHOEVER

OR

Give that cash to [ whoever/whomever you choose] “
A: “___ you choose” (the clause) calls for object case (as in “I choose HIM.”) So answer = WHOMEVER

Ain’t grammar fun??

[ksbfl]

I'm rather embarrassed to say that I submitted an educated guess Hail Mary at about 11:40 last night, and it was correct!

I never did figure out the actual mechanism, but instead crossed out duplicate letters in each theme answer and the results kind of looked like BOOK TOUR, if I squinted and ignored the X and Y. The pic is just a small fraction of my scribblings throughout the weekend.

Kudos to everyone who figured it out! This was a doozy.

Looks exactly like mine. Right down to the squint.