"Three-Pointers" - January 7, 2022 (MMXXII)

[whimsy]

...and now a song is stuck in my mind - dang Music Man

I've had Music Man stuck in my head for nearly two years -- every time the Wells Fargo wagon, oops, make that Amazon Prime is a comin' down the street. We even ordered raisins once...

[Bob cruise director]

If you want a laugh, here is my grid, marked up in five colors, circles, arrows and notes, from before and during the Friday zoom call

And I still had to be led to the answer.

Some of the notations (colors are only which one I grabbed first)

Pink - answers with three of the same letter
Orange - long answers thought to be themes answers
Blue - first letter in each of the answers with three letters
Green - three letter words (or at least most of them)
Arrows - from the zoom call with three of the same letters pointing in the direction of something either near or from three point range
Circled 62A - NETS with an extra letter thinking that he may have NBA teams buried in there to lead to a meta answre
Orange in clues - something to do with basketball
Notes on sides are random thoughts of seeing if other rabbit holes led to something.

[vandono]

That is a daggone work of art, sir.

[tmk]

i cant decipher this, but i like the effort!
can you add the friday session to the calendar? also, are the noted meeting times in Eastern, Central, Mtn, or Pacific? (new member here) thanks!

[HunterX]

Well, this villain had no problem with it, as you can see from my avatar... um... photo. As I told that arch enemy of mine, "Valiant effort Mr. Bond. However, you neglected to look diagonally."

[Al Sisti]

I followed almost all the rabbit holes you guys did before I found it, including trying to force fit Alley Oop (think Alley Gator), POST (Post Malone, Bed Post), and the whole Scrabble thing -- this first thing I thought of when I saw the title. And speaking of Alley Oop, how could I be this many years past reading the Harry Potter series and never have noticed that Diagon Alley is essentially "diagonally"?

[LadyBird]

Never did get it, but I snuck ashore anyways. These guys, unlike the cabana boy, didn't have drinks to offer.

[Bob cruise director]

i cant decipher this, but i like the effort!
can you add the friday session to the calendar? also, are the noted meeting times in Eastern, Central, Mtn, or Pacific? (new member here) thanks!

A couple of things. In general, all times are Eastern time.

The Friday sessions have only happened twice (but they have been in the last couple of months) and reflect that a level of banging heads against walls. Most people have either 1) asked for PM's on what they have done to someone(s) who solve it, generally not before Saturday or 2) establish a relationship with another muggle and work to cosolve.

[Flying_Burrito]

Never did get it, but I snuck ashore anyways. These guys, unlike the cabana boy, didn't have drinks to offer.

20220110_044226.jpg

You must be a royalty since they all showed up in tux

[cbarbee002]

Did no one else initially come up with “Triple Double”? All of the arguable “theme entries” (of course there were none) had double or triple letters. The patterns weren’t “elegant” enough but that seemed a plausible answer for a long time.

[Bob cruise director]

Did no one else initially come up with “Triple Double”? All of the arguable “theme entries” (of course there were none) had double or triple letters. The patterns weren’t “elegant” enough but that seemed a plausible answer for a long time.

We had a lot of discussion on Triple Double on the zoom call. and went through the same logic that you went through.

More than enough red herrings.

[M and M]

My brother and I (both former high school basketballers) were stuck on Triple Double from the moment we saw the clue for 49D until our other brother who had never done a WSJ Contest before this one (and was better at football than basketball back in the day) said "Do they ever use diagonal words because there is a THREE spelled out diagonally..." He deserves a mug!

[rosiegirl]

If you want a laugh, here is my grid, marked up in five colors, circles, arrows and notes, from before and during the Friday zoom call

And I still had to be led to the answer.

IMG_20220110_0002.jpg

Some of the notations (colors are only which one I grabbed first)

Pink - answers with three of the same letter
Orange - long answers thought to be themes answers
Blue - first letter in each of the answers with three letters
Green - three letter words (or at least most of them)
Arrows - from the zoom call with three of the same letters pointing in the direction of something either near or from three point range
Circled 62A - NETS with an extra letter thinking that he may have NBA teams buried in there to lead to a meta answre
Orange in clues - something to do with basketball
Notes on sides are random thoughts of seeing if other rabbit holes led to something.

I need to invest in more colored markers...With only orange and yellow in the house, I have to resort to boxing in ink, boxing in marker and shading in pencil...how I can ever find anything is in the grid is remarkable!

[rosiegirl]

When I started going through the 'usual suspects' (one of them being combination of letters with a 3 for As or Ds) I luckily stumbled fairly quickly on the diagonal Three starting at 43. As I was filling the grid I wanted so badly for one of the answers to include one of the 3 Pointer Sisters (as in the 70s R&B group)

I googled all the names of the Pointer Sisters, also....another rabbit hole!

[haydendog]

I enjoy reading the post-answer reveal discussions! Most of my solutions have come with a nudge or two (or three or four…). I don’t always submit depending.
My true rabbit hole on this one was noticing on the intersection of TOGAS and BOGART the oga and oga intersecting at G and thinking how clever I was to notice that, looking for others - and finding them! But I couldn’t find enough to spell a word.
My motto is look at the title! It frequently figures into the answer.

[JJD]

D'oh! I didn't get it. I can't tell you how many times I try to look diagonally for words and it never works out, but of course I didn't try it this time.

I was just thinking the same thing!!

[whimsy]

I enjoy reading the post-answer reveal discussions! Most of my solutions have come with a nudge or two (or three or four…). I don’t always submit depending.
My true rabbit hole on this one was noticing on the intersection of TOGAS and BOGART the oga and oga intersecting at G and thinking how clever I was to notice that, looking for others - and finding them! But I couldn’t find enough to spell a word.
My motto is look at the title! It frequently figures into the answer.

And TOGAS swaps an S for the R in GATOR, and BOGART is GATOR plus a B; and don't even get me started on EVENS and SVEN!

[JJD]

If you want a laugh, here is my grid, marked up in five colors, circles, arrows and notes, from before and during the Friday zoom call

And I still had to be led to the answer.

IMG_20220110_0002.jpg

Some of the notations (colors are only which one I grabbed first)

Pink - answers with three of the same letter
Orange - long answers thought to be themes answers
Blue - first letter in each of the answers with three letters
Green - three letter words (or at least most of them)
Arrows - from the zoom call with three of the same letters pointing in the direction of something either near or from three point range
Circled 62A - NETS with an extra letter thinking that he may have NBA teams buried in there to lead to a meta answre
Orange in clues - something to do with basketball
Notes on sides are random thoughts of seeing if other rabbit holes led to something.

I need to invest in more colored markers...With only orange and yellow in the house, I have to resort to boxing in ink, boxing in marker and shading in pencil...how I can ever find anything is in the grid is remarkable!

He did have teams hidden in there! There are 6 NBA teams’ official 3-letter abbreviations in the grid: TOR MIN WAS CHI POR DEN.

[31 Down]

If you want a laugh, here is my grid, marked up in five colors, circles, arrows and notes, from before and during the Friday zoom call.

That looks a lot cooler than many of paintings I saw at the Sotheby's and Christie's viewings this fall. Should be worth at least 5 mil.

This was a very neat meta even though I initially gave up on it. Picking it up again and seeing a diagonal three was an extremely satisfying aha moment. Glad to see that I fell into the same rabbit holes as did others. Misery loves company.

[Wendy Walker]

Did no one else initially come up with “Triple Double”? All of the arguable “theme entries” (of course there were none) had double or triple letters. The patterns weren’t “elegant” enough but that seemed a plausible answer for a long time.

We had a lot of discussion on Triple Double on the zoom call. and went through the same logic that you went through.

More than enough red herrings.

As I recall, that discussion on the Zoom call ended abruptly after everyone realized that if Wendy Walker had managed to solve the puzzle, "triple double" and similarly esoteric sports terms could obviously not be in play.