#715 - “A City of Puzzles”

[jhseeman]

Beamed up....waiting for confirmation, but it's a solid answer.

Thanks for the great hint Meg

While I'm beamed up, I'd love to hear the hint afterward!

@MikeyG

The nudge I got that worked for me

The key is the title.

"A City of Puzzels" gives you the infromation you need
"A Puzzle of Cities" does not.

[Joe Ross]

But didn't I warn all you guys? C'mon, you don't remember in the thread for MGWCC #622, when I mentioned that Samuel F. B. Morse married a girl from my hometown, "crossword-friendly Utica"??

DOH!

[MikeyG]

Beamed up....waiting for confirmation, but it's a solid answer.

Thanks for the great hint Meg

While I'm beamed up, I'd love to hear the hint afterward!

@MikeyG

The nudge I got that worked for me

The key is the title.

"A City of Puzzels" gives you the infromation you need
"A Puzzle of Cities" does not.

Excellent hint - I love it! I didn't notice that until several hours later, I was like, "Ohhhh, okay."

[woozy]

I'm not sure I'm getting the "when you see the mechanism it's a week two" comments. The puzzle is getting to see the mechanism. And although this mechanism is straightforward it is so natural seeming that it is exceedingly difficult see and I still maintain seeing and noticing it is firmly in week 4 territory.
Saying "once you see the mechanism, it's a week 2" is like saying "once you know the answer, it's a week 0".

On the other hand, maybe I should have gotten it. I did write Sundance Wyoming and Buckley Washington on people but the other three I just ran through and visualized them in my head. It never occurred to me that Connecticut only has one O and only one E, or that Kentucky has only one E. If you had asked my to list states with no repeat vowels I'd have left those two off until you told me I was missing two.

[rjy]

I got stuck by a few items:

• Am I the only one in grade school who was taught the vowels are "AEIOU and sometimes Y and W"? "I Suspect Vowel Play" had the W, "A City of Puzzles" did not.

• The new title had two Es in it, so I didn't lean into the notion of one of each vowel. It was eminently easier to identify the lone valid state if you assumed one of each vowel.

• On a minor note, Granby is technically not a city, so other rabbit holes - of which there were many! - were more difficult not knowing if we were to only consider cities vs any named points on a map

So... not my favorite, but I fully appreciate any of these that stretch the concept and push the bounds (and my buttons) a bit. Seems it was fruitful in inspiring @benchen71 so we have that to look forward to And just 68 hours until the next MGWCC

[JennyByrd]

I am on vacation, and did not solve this one. After reading the solution I’m confident that I would have never solved this puzzle. Starting a new streak on Friday, I hope.

[benchen71]

My rabbit hole was seeing SUNDANCE and (I)KID in the grid. I went looking for other combinations, but could only find BUCKLEY (S)LOG (after a lot of Googling, it should be said). So I knew it wasn't the way to the solution, but I definitely had trouble looking past it.

[KayW]

I didn't get a solid start on this one until quite late in the weekend. And then I tripped myself up with some bad geography. As I solved, I looked up every single one of the theme clue and grid entry locations. EXCEPT for MARION/PADUCAH. I had been to Marion, ILLINOIS several years ago and "knew" it wasn't that far north of Paducah, KY. It turns out it's actually North and slightly WEST of Paducah, not NorthEAST, but... details, schmetails.

I thought it was a bit odd that all the other clue and entry pairs were located in the same state but it never occurred to me to check and see if there was also a Marion in KY, or a Paducah in IL.

That possibly delayed my solve a bit, but I eventually spotted the mechanism with GRANBY CONNECTICUT. And by the time I worked my way down the list to MARION, I just figured we were supposed to use the state of the clue location and not the grid entry, and that THAT was the reason Matt included a separate reference location within the clue of each theme entry. Not as elegant, but it worked.

It wasn't until after I submitted and compared with another solver that it was pointed out to me that there's a MARION KY that is NORTHEAST of PADUCAH. Ah well, no harm, no vowel.

I thought this was much tougher than a typical week 2, even with the hint. And that's fine by me - especially since I did get it, eventually I always like a new twist in a meta. What both annoyed and amused me was: UTICA was my immediate WAG as soon as I read the meta prompt. It just took me a looong time to figure out why it was right.

[sharkicicles]

I didn't get a solid start on this one until quite late in the weekend. And then I tripped myself up with some bad geography. As I solved, I looked up every single one of the theme clue and grid entry locations. EXCEPT for MARION/PADUCAH. I had been to Marion, ILLINOIS several years ago and "knew" it wasn't that far north of Paducah, KY. It turns out it's actually North and slightly WEST of Paducah, not NorthEAST, but... details, schmetails.

I thought it was a bit odd that all the other clue and entry pairs were located in the same state but it never occurred to me to check and see if there was also a Marion in KY, or a Paducah in IL.

I did this same exact thing with Marion, IL. No Idea there was also one in Kentucky.

Ended up running out of time and tossed OMAHA in as a WAG.

[Bird Lives]

In the Zoom call tonight, I learned that there are many Marions in many states. The one I was familiar with is in Massachusetts and was the inspiration for this song.

[Al Sisti]

Okay, I can come out of hiding now. Thank you all for not torturing me about not getting this one until #247. Here's truth #1: I *could* have been the first one on the leaderboard, before the puzzle came out... but I knew if I did that, you all would instantly know it had to be Utica, so I deliberately held back. Here's Truth #2: Truth #1 is a bold-faced lie. I mean, I thought it could be Utica... I hoped it would be Utica... but I had no luck in backsolving. And here's another irony: As I told a few people in the Zoom call a couple weeks ago, I was -- for reasons I still can't even fathom -- selected to be the Grand Marshal of the 2022 Utica St. Patrick's Day parade.

[Joe Ross]

Methinks a road trip may be in the offing.

- J. P. O'Gallagher Ross

[auee89]

Methinks a road trip may be in the offing.

- J. P. O'Gallagher Ross

Want me to pick you up on my way through Cincy?

[Joe Ross]

Methinks a road trip may be in the offing.

- J. P. O'Gallagher Ross

Want me to pick you up on my way through Cincy?

ROAD TRIP!

[rogerf4]

Don't know if anyone's still reading (or if anyone cares), but I got the right answer in the entirely wrong way (and gave a few nudges based on my faulty solve). For me, the "tip-off" was Sundance, which I knew had a counterpart (sometimes listed as just a resort, but others as its own city) in Utah.
Googling, I found the other cities in the puzzle in states that started with T, I, C, and A.
Not a very elegant solution, but it worked. Sorry to anyone who I nudged down this awkward path with me (unless it worked for you too, in which case, cool).

[BrianMac]

Don't know if anyone's still reading (or if anyone cares), but I got the right answer in the entirely wrong way (and gave a few nudges based on my faulty solve). For me, the "tip-off" was Sundance, which I knew had a counterpart (sometimes listed as just a resort, but others as its own city) in Utah.
Googling, I found the other cities in the puzzle in states that started with T, I, C, and A.
Not a very elegant solution, but it worked. Sorry to anyone who I nudged down this awkward path with me (unless it worked for you too, in which case, cool).

This was my [lucky and inelegant] solution as well:

Sundance, Utah
Marion, Texas
Buckley, Illinois
Granby, Colorado
Mulberry, Arkansas

[Al Sisti]

Don't know if anyone's still reading (or if anyone cares), but I got the right answer in the entirely wrong way (and gave a few nudges based on my faulty solve). For me, the "tip-off" was Sundance, which I knew had a counterpart (sometimes listed as just a resort, but others as its own city) in Utah.
Googling, I found the other cities in the puzzle in states that started with T, I, C, and A.
Not a very elegant solution, but it worked. Sorry to anyone who I nudged down this awkward path with me (unless it worked for you too, in which case, cool).

This was my [lucky and inelegant] solution as well:

Sundance, Utah
Marion, Texas
Buckley, Illinois
Granby, Colorado
Mulberry, Arkansas

Mine too, and the title "A City..." is UTICA spelled backwards (changing the Y to U, an example of "vowel play"), and Utica was recently described as the Comeback City...

[EDIT from BrianMac: Adding Joe's solution image here]