"A Year to Watch" - December 31, 2021

[HunterX]

I wasn't so bothered by there not being an "A HA!" moment for the title. I thought it just meant you had to look for TV shows. And once I found the mechanism, I didn't care that 75A didn't come into play either. TV Time tracks TV shows after all. The mechanism worked perfectly, with each "half" of the themed answers (1 of the 2 words) being used entirely, as it comprised [Letter] + [Show].

The different "perspectives" I referred to in my beach-posting referred to the fact that I knew the old TV shows like "I Spy" (which I loved as a kid and feel mixed feeling about now given Cosby's role), "M.A.S.H." "Wings" and "Alf," while my kids could help identifying shows like "Arrow."

[ship4u]

The only TV program that I recognized was MASH. I also noticed that the 20A answer was "Allen" and Allen Alda was the main star in MASH. Clue 75A, was drawing attention to the number "20 and 22." So I suspected that Mr. Gaffney was cleverly linking step 2 to the first names of TV characters.

I played with that until I realized that 13A Eric Idle was leading me to the Killer Rabbit!

[Flying_Burrito]

"New heart for a New Year, always!"
Charles Dickens, The Chimes

[Franklin.Bluth]

OK, I have to ask. I am apparently not clever enough to figure out the tie-in to the Meta Title. How does that tie to NEWHART? I mean I can make a scenario where it is a NEW YEAR puzzle and therefore NEW HART but that is VERY loose. I know I am just missing something, can anyone expound?

Additionally, were we to get anything from 75A. I did finally solve but I certainly did not use 75A for anything except to confuse myself.

As far as I can tell, the Meta Title doesn't relate to the answer. But if I was to venture a guess, it would be that if you actually spent the time trying to find a connection between the show and the puzzle title, you would eventually be so frustrated you would need a New Heart. That's the best I can come up with...

I think the final across answer makes the title make sense: because Gaffney sees 2022 as the "TV year" (aka "a year to watch"), it occasioned the theme of this puzzle.

[Dplass]

Ugh. Can't believe I didn't see this.

Also, WORST series ending ever. Such a copout.

[FrankieHeck]

I submitted NEWHART, but I didn't even see all those tv shows. I wrote out the first letters of the halves of the theme answers, saw I could make Newhart with them if I took one from each and added an H from Half and Half, and I just went with it. I'd only heard of half the shows, anyway

(This was after I assigned each letter of each theme answer a number based in A=1, looked up all those squares in the grid, tried to take half of them, etc. So maybe that's why I was satisfied to just go with NEWHART.)

[KayW]

(This was after I assigned each letter of each theme answer a number based in A=1, looked up all those squares in the grid, tried to take half of them, etc. So maybe that's why I was satisfied to just go with NEWHART.)

To continue beating that dead horse…

The more I think about it, the more the title and 75A seem to be setups for an entirely different meta that uses the above method. Which I also tried … and tried, and tried…. to implement. And so odd because even a non-constructor like me can see that both those elements could be changed so easily: change the title, and clue TIME in some more conventional way to save that letter-coding mechanism for another meta. I’m curious to see if Matt addresses it in crossword fiend

[haydendog]

I too struggled with the title tie in. My strategy is to remember the title usually figures in the solution. So with 75A I put that with the title, as in “A Year to Watch TV”. As I was studying the puzzle to solve, MASH jumped out as a TV show and I quickly found the others but had to google shows because WEEDS was the only other one I vaguely thought was a show.
Then I needed some nudges to get the solution.

[RichA2]

I recognized all the TV show names except Arrow, whIch I had never heard of but found through Google. I didn’t catch Alf at first, and so had to back solve for the H. When I found it, I thought the 37A direction to use only a little of the coffee lightener meant to use only one H, not the two appearing in the two HALFs.

And I’m really glad the puzzle didn’t use current shows, or I would have never made it to shore. I saw the recent list of Golden Globe nominated shows, and didn’t recognize any of them.

[higgysue]

Glad I had a busy weekend and did not spend too much time on this puzzle. The only show I’ve seen is MASH. I think I gave up when I saw TV.

[Colin]

Well, I got it right,
No thanks to 75,
Plus title not right.

[MarkWoychick]

I got NEWHART and, like others, would like to understand if/where/how the title and 75A tie in.

On an unrelated note, I noticed an error I made in my gird - instead of BEEFRAMEN/FAVE, I had BEERRAMEN/RAVE. I’d never heard of beer ramen, but given the connection between ramen and college students, that’s got to be a thing, right?

[hcbirker]

And then there is 32 down which is also a TV show. That bothered me a bit, along with the title and 75 across, until I figured out the mechanism.

[femullen]

I saw "TV show" in the solution and said to myself, "A good week to skip." Good thing, too, because even with the solution in front of me, I don't understand the mechanism.

Happy New Year, everyone. It's winter, we have snow, and I am, appropriately, on a downhill slide.

[MatthewL]

Yeah, this one was a weird one for me. Fairly quickly I saw that if I took one letter from each themer, I could get to NEWHART, which certainly seemed logical and was going to be my Hail Mary if I couldn't figure out the mechanism. Then I noticed MASH and Wings, and was able to find the rest of the TV shows in fairly short order. But like some others above, I tried to correlate those to numbers, and focused on the year each show premiered. But that led nowhere, nor did taking the first letter of each show. Finally, I decided to try taking the letter in the grid preceding each show and sure enough, that spelled out NEWHART (confirming my prior guess). I never noticed the fact that each TV show appeared in only half of the grid answer. In any event, Happy New Year to all in this weird, nerdy little community!

[CPJohnson]

Lots of times, only one word in the title is a pointer to the solution. After solving, I assumed that "watch" just meant "watch TV" since the meta prompt asked for a TV show. Although, pookie's post #263 is an elegant observation. I'm glad I didn't observe the same thing, or I'd have spent a lot more time trying to make the original air date of the shows mean something.

[Flying_Burrito]

The mechanism was undeniable and that's why I submitted Newhart but the entire had so much potential for something more elaborate and elegant. For instance, embedded in As and Ds in the middle of the grid was the show "Two and half men" that gave me some pause.

[DianeA]

I wasn't even close to a solution. I did see "I SPY", but nothing else clicked to get me to TV shows in each clue entries.
Rabbit hole #1: many of the entries had embedded words that combined with TIME. HALF Time, JUST IN Time, Time FRAME, IN Time. Couldn't find anything with the first three.
Rabbit hole #2: Anyone notice the plethora of double letters? 15 sets, of which 7 were EE. That HAD to be of import.
Rabbit hole #3: Three letter words that were one off of another. useless.
2022 stats: WSJ Puzzle Constructors - 1, Diane - 0.

[sphorning]

Don't watch enough TV to get this one. I took the first letters of each theme answer NP, TE, etc. and found the corresponding alphabet number and then grid letter for that number (like 75A did with TV) N=14=S, P=16=O, etc. Came up with 14 gobbledygook letters. Thought I needed only HALF due to 37A, so cancelled out 7 letters...still gobbledygook. Sigh...

[Nlobb]

The only shows I had ever heard of were MASH and I spy. I had to google other possibilities and finally came up with several shows some of which were right and other shows like Path and Net were not. I realize now that if I had clued in on the fact that there was just one letter to the left of the TV show I could have googled the shows more efficiently but I don’t really enjoy having to look up so many things to get an answer!!!
Happy new year to all!!