"Ball Control" - November 26, 2021

[Bob cruise director]

thanks. been out to sea for the last 4 or 5 weeks...need to break that dry spell. (Nice to find this forum. Used to participate in the WSJ comments.) Ridiculously avid NFL fan, so tough not to get this one correctly. Cheers!

@KWStein As an FYI - When I make the list of who is on the ship and the shore, I check both the forum and the WSJ comments so you have been a muggle for a while

Now the real issue - I hope that you are a Patriots' fan - although we have die hards for both college and pro teams from everywhere in the country.

[RichA2]

Even when I get an answer that looks obviously right, like HANDLER here, I find reason to doubt myself. To me, a "ball handler" is a basketball player, so the solution seemed incongruous in a football-themed puzzle. Fortunately I didn't see the alternate answers others have described and so submitted the only one I found.

[auee89]

Saw Fourth Down and thought of the Ball Control title and went searching for each punter, kicker and QB on these NFL teams. And then the owners of each - they certainly control the ball, don't they? These were all after looking at each city and state for the teams.

[woozy]

Was there anything in the puzzle that clued the left-to-right ordering? I was troubled because "usually" the letters in this type of meta are taken in grid order. The absence of any anagram other than HANDLER made the question moot, I suppose.

Left to right is very common (I personally dislike it and it seems unnatural... but it is done frequently) and is my standard go to when I get what looks like an anagram of reasonable letters. Grid order is usual with the theme answers are all acrosses. If so left to right row by row is natural reading order. But if the clues are down or mixed there is nothing natural or intrinsically "correct" about left to right row by row.

[Jeffrey]

After feeling like Y.A.Tittle, pictured below, for the past few weeks, a reacquaintance with the meta end zone sure is soothing.

Hope everyone had a great Thanksgiving!

Jeffrey

[Mugless]

Ignored one of the standard hints for solving, and focused on punting on fourth down. Figured a snapper was equivalent to a long snapper. 54 Across seemed to ice it - what's a sub for tuna? Last night I related my theory to my SO (who only plays Sudoku) and then told her I was sure I went down some rabbit hole. And so it goes.

[femullen]

I found Seahawks, Ravens, and Eagles, and spent several minutes looking for other large birds in the grid. By and by, I saw RAIDERS in the middle of the grid, and I wondered, "Is there a bird called the 'raider'?" Then the "Doh!" moment when I saw PATRIOTS nearby. Then I was troubled by the asymmetry of the theme answers until I looked it up and found that there's a football team called the TEXANS. Who knew!

At that point, I was confident that 62A, FOURTH DOWN, was the mechanism, but the resulting HELDNRA sent me in search of team cities, stadium names, actual towns where the stadia are located, and on and on through the anti-pageanting techniques until the Smarter Half set me straight.

It was not a glorious return to the Win column. The best that can be said is that it arrested the plunge. From here I can try to claw my way back above 50%.

[John77]

After feeling like Y.A.Tittle, pictured below, for the past few weeks, a reacquaintance with the meta end zone sure is soothing.

Hope everyone had a great Thanksgiving!

Jeffrey

Photo taken after the 1961 NFL Championship game perhaps?

[Streroto]

Found a different answer and couldn't back out, even though I suspected that fourthdown was a probable clue. (Did not solve the anagram, so gave up on that.)

The seven teams listed represent 7 of the 8 divisions in the NFL. Only the NFC North did not have a team in the grid. Of the 4 teams in that division, the Packers and Vikings each contain 7 letters. And only the VIKINGS can be spelled by taking one letter from each of other teams in the Grid.
V from Ravens - AFC North
I from Patriots - AFC East
K from Seahawks - NFC West
I from Raiders - AFC West
N from Texans - AFC South
G from Eagles - NFC East
S from Saints - NFC South

V, K , and G are not common, so I figured that this could not be a coincidence. Oh well.

I saw this as well but could not make Vikings mesh with the title. Plus it’s a plural noun and maybe proper noun? OTOH Vikings were also raiders which would fit in the middle. But I then went back to my rabbit canyon.

[cheryl w]

Even when I get an answer that looks obviously right, like HANDLER here, I find reason to doubt myself. To me, a "ball handler" is a basketball player, so the solution seemed incongruous in a football-themed puzzle. Fortunately I didn't see the alternate answers others have described and so submitted the only one I found.

This was the same reaction I had!

[flyingMoose]

... the resulting HELDNRA ...

This tool was posted by someone in March of last year and is useful for anagrams.

quinapalus.com/cgi-bin/match

With the oft-given advice that "If you need to anagram, then you probably have something wrong" rattling in my brain, I used the tool anyway. After it yielded the meta, I went back to my paper puzzle and wrote those letters in red. I quickly saw that I simply needed to read the grid better and did not need the tool.

[femullen]

More confessions: Even before I recognized the NFL team names, I saw OTTO GRAHAM at 49A and 6D. I had also incorrectly filled in 37A as ACADEMY. How could the solution be anything else, then, but "sailors," because Otto Graham was head football coach at the Coast Guard Academy when I was a Swab there. A shallow rabbit hole that was, but for a few exhilarating moments I thought I was on to a bit of arcana that might snag me The Mug. Alas.

[Kris Zacharias]

Despite my previously-mentioned brother trying to familiarize me with football terms, the lesson did not stick and I went down a non-football rabbit hole. "Aves" intersects "Ravens," "aerie" intersects "Eagles," "fowl" intersects "Seahawks." I thought I was on a roll!! "Raiders" intersects "airwar" as well as "malevolent." (Raiders are not benevolent, I think. They might be soldiers as well.)"Title" intersects "Saints." (Hm--I guess Saint is a title, though one granted only after death. No matter.) But what about "Texans?" "Etext" intersects, "tunasub," does too. Uh-oh, not looking good. And nothing works for "Patriots," unless there was some important soldier in the Revolutionary War named "Otto," a Hessian? But they fought for the British--or is this a clever piece of deception? The letters that resulted from the intersections didn't spell anything, of course. When I finally got "handler, " for me, unlike for some of you, my ignorance of football-ese and all other sports languages allowed me to be comfortable with it.

[Wendy Walker]

OMG, all those football terms in the clues: snap, goal, Cardinals, back, jets, Browns, punt, game, draft, Bears, divisions, carriers, passed, coins, standard, ground, catch!

[MikeMillerwsj]

The contest answer is HANDLER. Seven Down answers are names of NFL teams. As suggested by 66-Across (FOURTH DOWN), the fourth letters down in each of those answers, in left-to-right order, spell the contest answer.

Well, after a string of real brainbusters, we had a bigger turnout this week for this brilliant puzzle (7 symmetrical teams with fourth letters that spell out a related word? Plus two other matching hint entries? That's a black-belt contest.). We had 1884 entries with about 88% correct, well above our usual rate of 75%. Incorrect guesses included RAIDERS (25, pro tip: the answer is usually not a word in the grid itself) and some sporting guesses: OFFENSE (23), DRIBBLE (5), DEFENSE (4), QUARTER (3), among others.

Congrats to this week's winner: Alice Hoff of Toledo, Ohio!

[JRS51]

This one reminded me of "Variety Show" of March 20, 2020 (answer MULTIMEDIA). In that one, one of the theme answers was "THIRDPLACE" (the clue was "Show") and the answer consisted of the 3rd letter of each word in the 5 two word theme answers.

[Eric Porter]

This puzzle reminded me of Mike Shenk's "The Fourth Man", where you had to take the 4th letter in every row to spell Francis Scott Key. Unlike that puzzle, "Fourth Down" was a more clear instruction, especially when the team names were all vertical.

[hoover]

I looked it up and found that there's a football team called the TEXANS. Who knew!

Not really, but concerts and international futbol matches don't completely pay for the stadium upkeep, and there was a time slot open on Sunday afternoons, so... Besides, *somebody* has to hold down the bottom of the league. We can't expect Cleveland and Buffalo (look at those Bills this year!) to do it forever.

[KWStein]

Bob, Impressed by the Pat's run for the last 20 years, but I'm a Cowboy fan since before their first Super Bowl win. Thought Mac Jones was the best QB in the last draft...wouldn't be surprised by another long run of success for NE. Good Luck.

NCAA: Texas A&M Aggies

Kerry

[SReh26]

Hope everyone had a lovely Thanksgiving weekend!!