"On Occasion" - December 10, 2021

[Relic]

Ugh, got me Mike! I had the first two steps but did not think to map the mo-day to the numbered grid.

Question: Is "it's a date" really a phrase or a sentence? Minor (sour grapes, perhaps) gripe.

Regardless, this mechanism is now in my notes. Hopefully I won't miss it next time its used.

[Bird Lives]

Ashore. It took a while. It shouldn't have. Once, long ago, I was hired to consult on a project where the other person hired for similar purposes was the guy who created an element of this meta.

You can explain that Tuesday night after Wendy talks about her cult friend getting sued.

The person in question was Julian Koenig, the legendary ad man. Well, legendary in the ad world — he was even mentioned in an episode of Mad Men. He is the one who came up with the name Earth Day. I blogged about that here (https://montclairsoci.blogspot.com/2020 ... epost.html)

In 2009, I blogged (here: https://montclairsoci.blogspot.com/2009 ... nd-me.html) about how Koenig and I wound up on the same project and how an episode of Mad Men had very much the same feel as Koenig’s shop at the time.

So now I don’t have to take up Zoom time recounting this. Besides, I really want to hear about T.S. Eliot suing that cult Wendy’s friend was in.

[SusieG]

I feel extremely dense after seeing the answer. Another one where I didn’t look at numbers. Oh well, at least I solved the grid, right?

[SusieG]

I forgot to mention that I think this was another very clever meta. They always amaze me.

[RichA2]

Shortly after submitting yesterday, I was looking through an online list of old movie titles for another reason, and saw a reference to this one. I had never heard of it.

[Colin]

Someone please tell me how to post a photo

There are two ways to post photos. To see them, you may have to click on the Full Editor & Preview button beneath the posting box, if you are using the Quick Reply:

• From a photo posted on the interwebs, using its URL & the Insert Image above the posting box

Copy & paste the URL of an image posted on the interwebs (say the beach photo, above right) into the posting box.

Highlight the URL, then click on the Insert Image button ((mountain with sun)



You can also use the phpBBCode image tag:

Code: Select all

[img]https://xword-muggles.com/right_header_image/beach_smaller.png[/img]

• As an Attachment, via the Attachments tab below the posting box

Click on the Attachments tab below the posting box,

Click on Add Files button.

Select & upload the file.

Click within the posting box where you wish the photo attachment to appear, then on the Place Inline button next to the uploaded image file


beach_smaller.png


You cannot use the phpBBCode attachment tag unless you've uploaded the file. The tag looks like this:

Code: Select all

beach_smaller.png

Wow! Is it really this easy to post a photo?

Edit: PS - Seriously, thank you Joe!

[Dennis]

But, but, what am I to do with "Goose Day?" September 29th and also known as St.Michaelmas Day. Those of us from Pennsylvania want to know.

Actually, my wife misread a number and came up with "It's a rate." She never recovered from that rabbit hole.

[femullen]

Équipe Canuck appreciate the shout-out at 60A. I wondered how many "south of the border" had even heard of it. We fly the Maple Leaf one day each year here at Chateau Shenandoah--seven years running now--and people still stop and ask, "What's the occasion?"

Call it "the First of July," if you want. I encourage everyone to celebrate, especially in 2022: with the 1st on Friday and the 4th on Monday, you'll get a four-day weekend!

[pjc]

Not even close!

I was stuck on the fact that "FLAGOFFICER" had two components, both of which fit the definition of ENSIGN. And I just couldn't let it go.

[Deb F]

Well, I didn't even approach a rabbit hole, let alone go down one on this. Nice job, Muggles. Good luck!

[ReB]

I was stuck in a rabbit hole I couldn't escape from, even with Sat and Sun next-day look-ats - searching for grid entries with a missing letter that completed the eight theme words (ex, CHRISTMAS TREE, ELLIS ISLAND).

Saw EARTH DAY which bugged me (no missing letter) but didn't think to expand that to the other three headers, which would have gotten me out of the hole. I'll never know if I would have found the last step even if I had escaped - you never know what clicks in the mind.

[whimsy]

Équipe Canuck appreciate the shout-out at 60A. I wondered how many "south of the border" had even heard of it. We fly the Maple Leaf one day each year here at Chateau Shenandoah--seven years running now--and people still stop and ask, "What's the occasion?"

Call it "the First of July," if you want. I encourage everyone to celebrate, especially in 2022: with the 1st on Friday and the 4th on Monday, you'll get a four-day weekend!

Definitely heard of it!!
The entire time I was doing the puzzle (3 days!) a line from a poem was running through my head.
When my kids were little we'd gotten a book of poems for children by a Canadian author out of the library -- sort of Shel Silverstein-ish - "Auntie's Knitting a Baby."

https://www.collectionscanada.gc.ca/epp ... auntiebaby.

As I recall, it culminated in a picture like the one below, representing how the newborn could be put to good use wearing what his mom had knitted, as well as the words (which we still bandy about today when we see a Maple Leaf flag): "Auntie's knitting a sweater. Its colors are white and red. If they don't have a flag on Canada Day they can fly the baby instead."

[Mister Squawk]

The "Day" thing was rattling around in my head as I spent hours trying to find a set of the letters OCCASION in the grid such that the letters above them formed an eight letter phrase. (ON OCCASION, get it?)

Also looked into phonetic phrases of eight letters (I C U for"I see you").

It wasn't until I looked up the dates of the four holidays that it fell into place.

[sphorning]

I was thinking "On Occasion" meant rarely, infrequently, etc. or maybe things that you turn "ON." Another KAS 4 for me!

[Georgeall]

I got lost thinking about the title ON OCCASION. "Occasion" has the same first and last letter as "On," and has a double letter sequence "CC." There are four across answers with double letter sequences too: oFFicer, aNNal, shaTTering, and gOOse. Trying to figure out how the first and last letters of those words led to an answer led me into a weekend-long rabbit hole.

[gdshort]

My first inspiration was to look for the clue corresponding to the day number for each of the four dates, The first number I tried was was 22 (for April 22nd - Earth Day). and the clue answer was APR !! I figured I had got it! Of course I had in fact discovered a grade A rabbit hole, but I am left wondering was it a red herring or a monstrous coincidence? I guess only Mike knows...

[Mugless]

I briefly pondered on "Christmas" "Canada", "Beyond" and "Day" but didn't see any path with Boxing Day. I looked at OFF in Flag Officer, AND in Christmas Island, and several ONs, going with Beyond. The letters in "Off and On" are in order in the second words in 17A,44A, and in 67A (using 66A for the first word). And that's as far as I got.

One of these days Rabbit Hole will be the solution and I may have a shot at it.

[MaineMarge]

The "Day" thing was rattling around in my head as I spent hours trying to find a set of the letters OCCASION in the grid such that the letters above them formed an eight letter phrase. (ON OCCASION, get it?)

I was with you all the way here Mr. S.
Before I latched onto the 4 holidays, I spent too long looking in the long answers for the letters contained in OCCASION, and finding the letters directly above (ON) them, disregarding the blanks.
I actually found “dates” that way, but nada.
After I saw the first words were all special days, I spent the rest of the time looking for the significance of the 2nd word in each long answer, starting with Iona for island , then sap for goose.
Hence my temper tantrum on discovering that the second word was not a part of the meta at all.
“NO FAIR!” Said I. But I know the rule about “there are no rules”.
Never thought of the 6/14 grid number mechanism.

But on a happier note, garden visiting day is always a special occasion for me

July 2011

[mntlblok]

Let's see if this worked. That "Place inline" box to click on struck me as a bit odd. Had never had to do that anywhere else. Also, had never thought to click on "Attachments", as it appeared to me to have already been "highlighted" - especially with references to that word below it. Turns out that "Options" is what is highlighted as the "default" (as one would expect, what with it being the leftward-most choice - except that "looks" {to me} un-highlighted).

(Guess I shoulds renamed my "Snip-It" files). Can't figure out how to delete the redundant one.

[mheberlingx100]

My first look on this was that each long clue had two words. First letters of each word often lead to something. In this case, that went nowhere.

Then Christmas hit me (12/25) and Canada Day (7/1). When the letters on this spaces spelled DATE I knew I was almost home.

I am very aware of Canada Day as I used to provide info for our friends to the north for monthly accounting close, and of course, the Canadian office is always closed on July 1.