#712 - “Which Side Are You On?”

[ajk]

Yeah, I never look at the PDFs so spotting something unusual with this one would have been nigh impossible for me. Very cool idea though.

[HunterX]

Never would have gotten this one. Congrats to those who solved this! I found the title to be no help at all, and still don't quite get what it means, or how it relates to the answer.

Well, the last line of the 5 clues that were broken across columns joined up with the next clues. That could be one thing.

And if you are in the car with someone who is drifting across the center lane, you might ask them, "Which side are you on?" Columns are akin to lanes, so there's that too.

[KayW]

I just KNEW the clues had to play a part - 11a in particular was so unusually long, and there had to be a reason Matt didn't provide electonic versions of the puzzles. I thought the long clues themselves might have precluded that, but that meant there had to be a reason to use those particular clues.

I didn't let that stop me from getting hung up way too long in numerous other rabbit holes (or black holes, as @lbray53 more aptly described their irresistible pull). This one in particular:

WHICH SIDE ARE YOU ON? -> OPPOSITES/COMPLEMENTS
CLOSEDcaption -> OPEN + I -> OPINE
LIVEstock -> DEAD + L -> ADDLE

I wasted hours playing "mutant word search" with the grid looking for opposites of other grid entries.

I finally non-solo solved it with others in Sunday's zoom group solve (thanks again @Wendy Walker @HunterX et al)

A fiendishly clever construction.

[Streroto]

I went so far down the Paula Abdul rabbit hole. If I never hear Straight Up again in life it will be too soon. I looked into A sides and B sides, and going along with the pdf only theme I briefly thought you might have to write out all the PA lyrics on the other side of the sheet and maybe letters would match up but the numbers while close were not equal. That coupled with the 2s and 4s and 5 and 8s...oh man. But as soon as I heard it took all you brainiacs a group solve I threw in the towel and enjoyed the rest of my weekend/Monday. Glad I did, as this was a KAS5 for me. This was a week 3??????

Stay well, all-Thursday is just around the corner. Looking forward to the Excel tutorial tonight.

[BarbaraK]

I knew the missing .puz file must be important to the meta. And I assumed that .puz did not allow clues long enough for all those lyrics and the lyrics must thus have been important to the meta.

I'm sure there's some way even as a non-constructor that I could find out what the maximum clue size actually is. But the problem with assuming is that once I think I know something, it doesn't occur to me to try to look it up. (This is a problem with my life in general, not just crosswords. Being sure about something that's not actually true causes more trouble than not knowing.)

Since I typed up some thoughts to request a nudge, may as well share them for everyone's entertainment.

1) There are 5 clues that include * OR *. There are also 5 grid words with the *OR* pattern. Haven't figured out which side to use or what to do with them. Couldn't put them outside the grid or beside the lyrics

2) Those Paula Abdul lyrics! The four songs come from the same album and are on side 2,1,2,2 (or BABB if you prefer). They were all released as singles and thus considered side A, but they were from the time when records were giving way to CDs, so B sides seem a bit fuzzy and vary with country. Two of them did have "One or the Other" as a B side, which seems to fit nicely with the title. And the second was on the B side of the first somewhere; counting that would give an ABAA pattern - the inverse of the album sides pattern

3) Two or three of the sets of lyrics are missing a line break indicator. I mostly think this is just an oversight, but maybe Matt needed specific beginnings and endings of lines.

4) Rhyme patters also seem a bit too vague to use

5) VATDYE is a ridiculous entry. Reversing the words sounds like "dive at"... which doesn't particularly work for any other clue. And there are more than 4 others that can also be reversed to get real phrases, none of which seem particularly useful or relate to the lyrics.

6) Other clues with excessive numbers of examples, "and" "et al" as well as just "or" if you ignore the lyrics and those with just two items listed, there are 5 others. That seems like too mismatched a set though.

7) Haven't seen anything useful to do with the two long answers. Closed captions are also called subtitles, but none of the songs have subtitles.

8) That over sized grid must have a lot of theme material, more than I've come near finding. Three grid entries are words in the quoted lyrics, and I got all excited about STARS but that didn't go anywhere either.

9) There are 5 1-word across clues. "Track" is at lest music-adjacent. But there are also 4 1-word down clues, and it would have been easy enough to expand those if that were the mechanism

[Guffman]

I still think that the title was too misleading for a Week 3. It only led to a rash of rabbit roles. I was thinking something along the lines of "A PRETTY TALL ORDER" might have been more helpful. Matt was also elusive about the reason electronic files weren't available, making some of us think there was a technical glitch. Here, too, something more along the lines of "There's no electronic files this week because it would be a hindrance, not a help". It might have opened a few more doors.

[patpatchica]

I really don’t think the Paula Abdul clue was a total rabbit hole. The first song lyrics were from the song “Straight Up” and you literally had to go straight up to the top of the clue columns.

[Thurman8er]

I'm not overly happy about losing my streak to this puzzle.

[sharkicicles]

I knew the missing .puz file must be important to the meta. And I assumed that .puz did not allow clues long enough for all those lyrics and the lyrics must thus have been important to the meta.

I'm sure there's some way even as a non-constructor that I could find out what the maximum clue size actually is. But the problem with assuming is that once I think I know something, it doesn't occur to me to try to look it up. (This is a problem with my life in general, not just crosswords. Being sure about something that's not actually true causes more trouble than not knowing.)

Barbara, I am a programmer that spent a few years working on SA Crosswords for iOS, iPad, and Mac, as well as a number of other word games, and I also assumed the long clue was a limitation of PUZ (if not in file format at least too much for most clients to display.) So, even with some solid background knowledge I still came to the same conclusion.

[woozy]

It's funny I can't actually remember my AHA moment. I might have noticed I thought it was funny that if you read the end of one clue to get "Guinea --- Pigs" but I don't really remember the point where I thought it was more then "ha, that's funny" and "I'll pursue that". I remember pursuing it but I don't remember thinking "hey that's worth pursuing".