"Winter Fall" - December 17, 2021

[SewYoung]

I took longest on BODice and CORNice, which to me seem a bit archaic.

Seamstresses of Muggledom unite! Bodice was my first, as it’s still labeled thus on patterns as the top part of a dress.
And those of us living in old houses probably had cornice covered.
I love these metas that have a treasure map to interpret.
And happy winter solstICE to all tomorrow!

Right there with you, Marge. Bodice jumped right out at me for that very reason. The house I grew up in had a cornice in the living room and I made one for my parents' house years ago, so that one was a gimme, too.

[drbockel2]

OFFice was giving me trouble until I brainfarted on the Post Office clue and had a major d'uh moment.

[LadyBird]

I thought the answer was going to be AVALANCHE. Seeing IVE going down in the second column briefly reinforced that idea of substituting letters to make the word ICE going down. Of course, I quickly had trouble finding any other ways to make ICE. I was looking over on the right side of the grid for the letter C (still trying to make AVALANCHE work), when I saw CORN and thought CORNICE. I got caught up in the ordering of the words. Since these were all words going down, I thought they would be in order from left to right, but that was gobbledygook. So then I tried top to bottom.

[otlaolap]

Very lucky, me, on this puzzle. Got the ICE words, tried various things but made no progress, then noticed a synonym or two (e,g, rookie and novice) and got some more, and then noticed a clue-connected pairing (e.g. dome and cornice). Eventually found nine corresponding pairs of words, many dead certain, other not such a lock. At the end of all of this I wrote down the first letters of the corresponding words: REDOVASPE. That's the order I picked, for some reason: in columns, left to right, and within each column from top to bottom. REDOVASPE. Got me nowhere. In a fit of true brilliance I thought "anagram" (at which I stink), and an internet anagram generator gave me one and only one anagram: eavesdrop. So I was lucky that I had all nine letters properly picked.

On Monday, when the solution finally arrived, I did the ritual banging of the head against the wall when the obvious natural order of the letters was revealed. And then I went and looked at my worksheet and its list of corresponding words. They read, from top to bottom, eavesdrop. I'll go back and do another banging against the wall, now. In any case, the gods have evaluated the purity of my effort, found it lacking, and sent their mugging message elsewhere.

[whimsy]

I thought the answer was going to be AVALANCHE. Seeing IVE going down in the second column briefly reinforced that idea of substituting letters to make the word ICE going down. Of course, I quickly had trouble finding any other ways to make ICE. I was looking over on the right side of the grid for the letter C (still trying to make AVALANCHE work), when I saw CORN and thought CORNICE. I got caught up in the ordering of the words. Since these were all words going down, I thought they would be in order from left to right, but that was gobbledygook. So then I tried top to bottom.

And I got goobledygook for a bird name from this post.
Just kidding, Not everything you write.....

[Glorfindel]

Some weeks, it just all comes together, and the process as well as the feeling at the end of it is a thing of joy and beauty..
Some weeks, it doesn't all (or at all) come together, and there's the ritual banging of head against wall around Sunday 9pm when the solution is revealed (here on W. Coast time) ..
And then, there are those weeks (too many in my case), where there's a fog all around, and when the solution comes out Sunday night, just a reverent shake of the head in wonder at the folks who got it ...
I assume that's the Kas scoring levels!

[hoover]

I am slowly being trained in the way Matt Gaffney's evil mind works. After getting the -ICE words and seeing that they didn't spell anything, I then looked for synonyms or other words close in meaning. When I realized that some of them weren't synonyms, I thought (thanks to training from previous metas) to look at the clues as Matt intended.

[hcbirker]

My hot chocolate peppermint fudge. Wish I could send it to all of you!

[ky-mike]

My hot chocolate peppermint fudge. Wish I could send it to all of you!

Next best thing might be sharing your recipe

[iggystan]

I finished the grid Friday, found the “ice” words and put the puzzle down to look at later. Overnight, my mind was working and for some reason “eavesdrop” came into my head. When I went back to the puzzle, I just didn’t see the other words and therefore didn’t get the answer. I should have submitted my Hail Mary, but didn’t. Doh!

(This kind of thing probably contributes to my insomnia.)

(Muggling while sleeping.)

[hcbirker]

My hot chocolate peppermint fudge. Wish I could send it to all of you!

Next best thing might be sharing your recipe

Peppermint Hot Chocolate Fudge

3 cups of sugar
3/4 cup of butter
2/3 cup evaporated milk
10 oz. bag of bittersweet chocolate chips
1 (7 oz.) jar marshmallow creme
1 teas. vanilla extract
1 teas. peppermint extract
2 cups mini marshmallows, divided
8-10 crushed candy canes (or if you're lucky, the already crushed kind)

Line a 13x9 inch pan with foil, leaving a few inches hanging over the pan. Grease the foil.
In a saucepan, combine the sugar, butter and evaporated milk. Over medium heat, bring the mixture to a roiling boil, stirring constantly. continue to boil for 5 minutes while stirring.

Remove from heat, and stir in the chocolate chips until melted. Add the marshmallow creme, vanilla and peppermint extract, stirring well Gently fold in about a cup of the mini marshmallows.

Pour into the prepared pan and spread out evenly. Top with more mini marshmallows and crushed peppermint candy, and gently press into the fudge.

Set aside until cool and set. Cut into squares. Store in an airtight container.

[Glorfindel]

I saw no earlier mention of this, so here goes: Another connection that solidified 'Eavesdrop' was this additional link with title and themes in the puzzle:
ICEicles drop from eaves in winter - i.e. Winter Falls ...

eavesdrop etymology: early 17th century: back-formation from eavesdropper (late Middle English)‘a person who listens from under the eaves’, from the obsolete noun eavesdrop ‘the ground on to which water drips from the eaves’,

(bonus connection between cornice and eaves as well). Cute, I thought.

[escapeartist]

No winner announced today - back to checking my email every 5 minutes.

[OGuyDave]

The gnawing glitch that I mentioned in Post 256 was for "notice." Even backsolving, none of the clues with answers starting with "a" made sense to me. Feeling somewhat vindicated by CrosswordNexus:

Shepherd's: Very seldom, but liked it each time.

[802puzzler]

I never got back to the puzzle after my 'On the Ship' post, so thankfully didn't spend any more time trying to figure out this extremely elegant mechanism! Bravo to all who solved!

[minimuggle]

OK, I'm curious if anyone else went with "hardJ" for justice??? That lead to "overheads".....oops. I was so excited to get the mechanism so quickly too.

[Nlobb]

Another definition of cornice is an overhanging mass of snow at an edge of a mountain precipace.
That gave me the (wrong) idea that a match for cornice could be ice 69d…
A quiet moment before the storm aka the arrival of 3 preschool grandkids for 2 weeks!!

[woozy]

OK, I'm curious if anyone else went with "hardJ" for justice??? That lead to "overheads".....oops. I was so excited to get the mechanism so quickly too.

I briefly thought "hard justice" was a phrase and I thought all the clues would be right-angle bends. It was easy to see while looking for the rest of the clues that they were not.

[DrTom]

Laughed out loud when Jay sent me this

[MikeMillerwsj]

The contest answer is EAVESDROP. From the clue at 69-Down, nine Down answers can take -ICE to form another word: JUST, NOT, BOD, POL, MAL, CORN, NOV, CHO, OFF. These new words satisfy clues to other answers (like “One of the cabinet departments” from 36-Across for JUSTICE). In order they are EDUCATION, ATTENTION, VEST, EMTS, SPITE, DOME, ROOKIE, OPTION and POST. Their first letters spell the contest answer.

Hello and apologies for the delay this week. Our solvers had a very successful week! We had 1717 entries with about 86% correct, even better than our usual level around 75%. Lots of guesses of other 9-letter winter-fallinng words, starting with SNOWFLAKE (59) plus AVALANCHE (46), SNOWSTORM (17), PRECIPICE (8) and MISTLETOE (2). Also VAPORISED (5) which was on the trail with almost all the right letters....

Congrats to this week's winner, Pamela Liggett of Bloomfield Hills, Mich. And a safe and happy holiday to all!