"The Five W's" - November 12, 2021

[BarbaraK]

I just want to say thanks to everyone on the Saturday zoom. In addition to the return of the rest of my weekend, it was really interesting and educational to hear how others approach a meta. We get that in print here of course, but it was just more fun in real time. The collective Aha! was one for the ages. Would be interesting to know if this was an all time low for correct submissions. Mike?

Stay well, all

It's not the lowest number of correct answers; it's fifth on that list.

03/01/2019 "Puzzle People" (Yma Sumac).....94
10/27/2017 "One Question, Three Answers" (Hubert H Humphrey)..95
12/01/2017 "Toy Box" (Clue)....................98
09/02/2016 "That's Why!" (New York Times).109
11/12/2021 "The Five W's" (Scoop)...........119

But the number of participants has been increasing over the years, especially this year. That's pretty hard to measure, but if you take the maximum number of submissions for any contest as a gauge, there were

2016 - 1457 max submissions
2017 - 1863
2018 - 2161
2019 - 2844
2020 - 2626
2021 - 4554

So looking at correct entries as a percentage of total participants has
Yma Sumac with 94/ 2844 = 3.31% successful solvers
Humphrey 95/1863 = 5.10%
Clue 98/1863 = 5.26%
New York Times 109/1457 = 7.48%
Scoop 119/4554 = 2.61%

And by that measure, this was the hardest ever, and the previous two would have also been near the top

[Al Sisti]

This one totally eluded me and I am starting to think I am not cut out for this puzzle solving gig.

Don't give up just yet. The last three were among the toughest yet, and certainly the toughest three-in-a-row.

[ship4u]

As I look at my pages and pages of documented leads,....um, er, pages of rabbit holes,.... it is embarrassing to see the actual solution displayed as the highlighting of 10 squares on the grid!
And then I take solace in Joe Ross's advice: it's SAD, Simple And Difficult. Thanks, Joe!

[Tom Wilson]

My hat had nothin' but rabbits - no real clue, no substantive vision and ultimately no solution. I really thought I had it when I started finding near-synonyms in the grid. "Editorials" led to "oped," which was just one letter away from "sped" at 19A ... and a press agent is a "flak," maybe? That's mighty close to "flap" at 1A, I reasoned. (O, reason not the need.) Ironic that, 43 years ago this month, Penn State saw fit to award me a bachelor's in journalism; one month later, I'd start chasing that elusive "scoop." Since I failed to honor my academic roots last week, I suspect they'll be wanting that diploma back.