"Golden Years" - January 14, 2022

[MatthewL]

Like virtually everyone else, I figured it had to be Betty White from the title. Took a minute to get there. Got stuck in a rabbit hole for a while that led me to the name OBAMA -- if you look at the answers in down clues that reveal proper names (1D, 5D, and 36D) and then see where they cross the long across names, you get the letters O, B, A, M and A reading from the top and left to right). But couldn't get a first name that really fit (would've had to have been one of the daughters, and while they are often crosswordese, they don't strike me as celebrities recently in the news). Ultimately discarded that and found the opposites thing, and just went with Betty. I guess we'll see.

[phykos]

So here is my convoluted path to BETTY (without any actual justification) - arrange the first names of the two-name entries alphabetically (Bowen, Charlie, Dottie, Martin, Neil), take the 1st letter of the 1st, 2nd letter of the 2nd, etc. (by the time you get to #5, you need the Y from Young). That gives you B,H,T,T,Y and ‘H’ is the Greek Eta (of course, ‘Y’is the Greek Upsilon - but it’s the best I could do). Definitely looking forward to the ’official’ answer this afternoon…

[Deb F]

I'm in the camp of having known it had to be Betty White. How to get there was another issue. 14 Across led me down the rabbit hole of circling all the y's then trying to figure out how they connected. Also looked at estar and beast and tried to find other comparisons. Looked for answers that led to "gold" like Magi, Tater (yukon gold), Korn (golden corn)--a stretch, to be sure. Then finally lit on the last names of the long clues and, voila. Got to Black, couldn't find Betty (my high school coach was named Betty Black, by the way, but doubt Mike Shenk knew her!!!). Decided it had to be Betty White even without finding the first name.

Good luck, Muggles!

[martimeryard]

So here is my convoluted path to BETTY (without any actual justification) - arrange the first names of the two-name entries alphabetically (Bowen, Charlie, Dottie, Martin, Neil), take the 1st letter of the 1st, 2nd letter of the 2nd, etc. (by the time you get to #5, you need the Y from Young). That gives you B,H,T,T,Y and ‘H’ is the Greek Eta (of course, ‘Y’is the Greek Upsilon - but it’s the best I could do). Definitely looking forward to the ’official’ answer this afternoon…

I think I read in an earlier post that we won't find out the official answer until tomorrow with it being MLK Day.

[KscX]

Am I the only one who got stuck on the last name Black? I had it narrowed down to Clint and Lewis, when I realized they really weren’t “in the news”… then had my D’oh moment and went with my initial second guess- Betty White, finding my way there through the mechanism. So wanted it to be David Bowie when I first read the title!

[MarkWoychick]

I found BLACK from the last names in the theme answers and submitted BETTY WHITE - like many, I thought this was 50% of the answer and I’d find the first name eventually (spoiler alert: I didn’t). I kept looking for some connection to Years from the title - there were three year-related clues (23A, 8D, 14D), two answers that ended in AGE (37D, 44D) and also a couple of answers that were sort of related to years (Wilt Chamberlain/76ers and DBACKS/diamond anniversary). I really thought I had something with DBACKS - using the missing letters to find answers that had an extra letter at the back (spoiler alert: I didn’t). I wondered if all of the last names might pair with the name Betty, and was very excited to learn Betty Short was connected to the Black Dahlia case, but that’s where the excitement ended. And if that’s not enough contortions for you, I looked for other Bettys - Crocker, Grable, and even Davis (I know, that’s Bette, not Betty, but there was DAY+VISA, so….no). I also found the letters to spell WHITE in the first names of the theme answers but no path to get there. I was pleased that during all of this I remembered the advice from @Bob cruise director that the solution has to be written in just a few words and abandoned these rabbit holes pretty quickly. What’s the old phrase? When you’re in a hole, put down the shovel!

When I set it aside, I was satisfied with my answer and that I’d found a mechanism to get to it (and, of course, prepared to be amazed at where/how I’d missed BETTY). Turns out, maybe I haven’t missed it at all!

[Barney]

First you get it, then you find the why. Sweetly done, Matt.

When I first read this post I wondered if it was an unintentional reference to 14 across, but decided not to say anything.

Unintentional. The only rabbit hole I briefly contemplated was wondering if there were any connection between Golden Girls and Wonder Years.

[Limerick Savant]

My immediate thought after reading the puzzle title and the description was “Betty White.” After all Novak Djokovic has too many letters. So the challenge was figuring out how to get there from the grid.

I was struck by the sudden insight
That Password, the game, had it right
In order to play
If Betty would say
The word “Black?…” The response would be “White!”

[C=64]

The game show channel BUZZR ran a Betty White marathon over the weekend: Match Game all Saturday, Password all Sunday. TOOMUCHTV

[Bayside Bomber]

Hello all. Long time Muggles Forum lurker. First time poster.

Like many of you, I immediately thought of Betty White and figured out the meta for Black/White fairly quickly. I also failed to find a justification for Betty, other than the puzzle title. And then I read that Shaun White had made the podium in an event for the first time in a year or more. He is probably the best known Winter Olympian and is definitely a celebrity. So I began looking for a connection to the Olympics. There were the obvious (Picabo Street and Gail Devers) and the not so obvious (was "Oh No" a reference to Anton Apolo Ono?) Perhaps Golden Years referenced the years that Shaun White won medals. All dead ends.

Unable to choose between Shaun and Betty White, we felt that we were still a bit offshore and we chose not to submit either. (I suggested I submit one and she submit the other, but her scruples are far higher than mine!)

It gave us comfort this morning to read that everyone else was as stuck as we were!

[BarbaraK]

I'm new at this, and this solution may be farfetched. 14 across interested me. So I found the Y's and looked at the letters adjacent to them. I came up with ENROS, an anagram for Rose N, Betty White's character on The Golden Girls. BTW, how could I have made the attachment smaller? It's huge!


Screen Shot 2022-01-17 at 7.12.05 AM.png

This is very clever, and I could see "Find Y" being a mechanism some day. But if it were, I'd expect the letters to use to all be in the same position relative to the Y.

One thing I keep in mind when I find myself down some rabbit hole is that Matt and Mike are really good at this. If Matt wanted us to use a letter by each Y, he would not have to make us arbitrarily choose one of the 4 neighbors of each. He'd have no problem putting them all in the same place and also putting them in order. (Now if I were trying to make a puzzle, I'd be lucky to get them all in the same grid:)

As for resizing images, Brian has a great write-up at viewtopic.php?t=20

[Dennis]

Does the inclusion of at least three Olympic gold medal winners in the grid, (Picabo (Street), Gail (Devers) and (Apolo) Ohno, point to the answer being Shaun White? Or are they just clever diversions?

[PhantomPhan]

We submitted Shaun White. Found the Black/White mechanism easily, but thought Betty White was too easy and looked for the road less traveled. We liked Golden Years and the Olympian references, but of course ran into brick walls with the years. Yin/Yang is two opposites make a whole, or two halves (half pipe?). Shaun White has ties to TATER and BEAST. We saw IVS (4's- Shaun's 4th) LAST IO (international Olympics). I know! I know! Sometimes once you bite your teeth into an answer, you shake the grid until you bleed out the clues you want present themselves. You know it's a stretch, but you feel a bit rabid so you don't care.

In the end, we could not yield a second mechanism for Shaun, nor Betty. Feeling grid-locked, submitted the snowboarder for better or worse.

[ZooAnimalsOnWheels]

Ooh! Spill, please. From what I see, you might have a different "first name" mechanism.

I see that ESTAR sits right on top of OILY, and when I think of 'Getty', I think 'Getty Oil' (well, right after the Getty Museum anyway). So that may be a pointer to Estelle Getty.

We also have ASHE in the grid, which was clued as 'Queens stadium eponym', but we know the stadium was named for Arthur Ashe. So there's your Arthur to go along with BEA in BEAST, even though those two answers aren't physically connected.

It's still missing any Rue McClanahan, so it seems like a stretch. I'll be interested to see what the other Muggle came up with.

[Inca]

I am feeling like a real newbie...like I never solved one of these before, but I have to ask: Is there anything in the puzzle that would suggest looking for the opposite words in the grid other than meta brain?

[Barney]

I am feeling like a real newbie...like I never solved one of these before, but I have to ask: Is there anything in the puzzle that would suggest looking for the opposite words in the grid other than meta brain?

[woozy]

Does the inclusion of at least three Olympic gold medal winners in the grid, (Picabo (Street), Gail (Devers) and (Apolo) Ohno, point to the answer being Shaun White? Or are they just clever diversions?

My feeling/experience is they can be hints but not mechanisms (unless they are prominent as theme entries). But... yes, they certainly *are* hints. And this is a winter olympic year.

I can accept (although I feel unsatisfied) that it can be BETTY without any further mechanism, I don't think it can be SHAUN without a mechanism (more than hints) to distinguish it from BETTY. There sure doesn't seem to be a mechanism for BETTY but maybe there is one for SHAUN (I haven't looked as hard).

[Dplass]

Does the inclusion of at least three Olympic gold medal winners in the grid, (Picabo (Street), Gail (Devers) and (Apolo) Ohno, point to the answer being Shaun White? Or are they just clever diversions?

My feeling/experience is they can be hints but not mechanisms (unless they are prominent as theme entries). But... yes, they certainly *are* hints. And this is a winter olympic year.

I can accept (although I feel unsatisfied) that it can be BETTY without any further mechanism, I don't think it can be SHAUN without a mechanism (more than hints) to distinguish it from BETTY. There sure doesn't seem to be a mechanism for BETTY but maybe there is one for SHAUN (I haven't looked as hard).

Well, there are 3 other Olympians mentioned (see above) and also GOLDen year implied Shaun will win another GOLD medal this YEAR.

Shrug I submitted Betty White too.

[Belle]

Rue is the French word for street, as in 1D. Might be where to find a reference to Rue McClanahan.

[woozy]

I am feeling like a real newbie...like I never solved one of these before, but I have to ask: Is there anything in the puzzle that would suggest looking for the opposite words in the grid other than meta brain?

Well, I figured all the "themers" were celebrities whose last names were words and fairly specific words at that (well, YANG didn't strike me as a word but 4 out of 5 is worth pursuing). I couldn't find any (significant and clear) letter combinations so I looked at the words and tried to see if there was any references or anything similar to them in the words or clues. Saw utterly nothing at first, but the physical proximity of MARTIN SHORT to AT ALL (aTALL) struck me. This is the type of thing that is very likely a coincidence but the start of any meta is grasping at things and the opposite of YOUNG is OLD so maybe if I could find an entry containing OLD it could be verification (and if I can't than that can tell me it was a coincidence after all). Well there is cOLD and that weird entry of LYIN has YIN as in YIN-YANG... DAY and kNIGHT was next although I had a temporary bout of dyslexia that confused me and made it hard to see that. Oddly finding a word of the form -EAST was extremely difficult for me.... oh well, I guess we all have blind spots.

From there those additional letter spell, in order, BLACK and and the simplicity of that makes it an absolute certainty in is intended. (Had the letters been in arbitrary positions in the opposites, of if some of the opposites were stretches, or the order required anagrams, or if I had to use entries that weren't of readily identified as "the five entries that are celebrity first and last names" then this could have been the mind grasping for connections that aren't there but as this is precise programming instruction ["find the entries that are first and last names of people; for each one find another word in the grid that is the opposite of the last name plus an additional first letter; read the first letters in order that the five first and last name entries occur; the result spells a word" is very specific and precise and involves no iffy "does that count" worries, don't you think?] I could give to a stranger and the outcome word be unambiguously derived, it is almost certainly the mechanism.)