"Water You Looking For?" - June 17, 2022

[femullen]

The wife and I went walking by
The stream beside our house.
I wished I'd brought a rod and fly;
She, quiet as a mouse,

Without a word snuck up on me--
For this I'll not forgive her--
She pushed me in and called with glee,
"I long to see you shiver!"

For reasons I wish I could reproduce, I solved this one before Isaac had even opened.

Forgive me, Isaac, old friend, and please reserve my usual stool for next week.

[31 Down]

I submitted LOKI MOTION for ATLANTIC OCEAN.

My baby does the Loki Motion..........

[Joe Ross]

My only quibble with this is ARCTIC means northern. We have an "Antarctic", which is the opposite of arctic, but is also cold. But I have come to terms with the reality that arctic is also now a synonym for cold. I also saw IDLE MOTION as a possibility but had to concede that COLD MOTION was the better answer. And I spent some time looking for a second lake to go with ACHE (Lake Placid?) before I even noticed MOTION.

Still, it was a fun one. I initially wanted to fill in AMAZON when I saw the clue for 25A, and I was saying to myself "communist and verdant, hey that's red and green! Too bad the other themers don't have colors." before I twigged to the full mechanism.

ARCTIC is rooted in the Greek ARKTOS, which means BEAR. The Arctic was named after the two URSA (Latin form of ARKTOS) constellations (MAJOR & MINOR) above the north pole. A long, long time ago (documented to the mid-16th century), ARCTIC came to mean both NORTHERN & COLD, by virtue of the geography & climate of the region.

Fun fact: ANTARCTICA is rooted in the Greek for NO BEARS or WITHOUT BEARS. Coincidentally, the Arctic has (polar) bears & Antarctica does not.

Not that it comes into play in this contest, but I would think that IDLE MOTION would be more fun to clue, due to its paradox.

IDLE is not always pejorative. IDLE to CALM to PACIFIC is not a terrible stretch, IMO. COLD MOTION is the intended answer, of course.

[TeaJenny]

I submitted LOKI MOTION for ATLANTIC OCEAN.

My baby does the Loki Motion..........

Exactly

[MikeM000]

Me for an hour on Thursday:

(searching the grid) IDLE? Really? That's the best it can do?

Then...

Oh. 1 Across. How did I miss that?

Speaking of things it makes me miss:

[JJD]

I was never close to seeing this one, partly because I spent the weekend finding a leaky water main in my house, then tracking down a plumber, and hauling jugs of water from a neighbor’s house.
“Water you looking for?”
Yes, yes, I was.

[Richard]

I got the mechanism pretty quickly but then focused on spoon and lagoon. Found nothing that worked and was told that was the wrong path.

I have to believe that Arctic Ocean from cold motion is the better answer and it is what I submitted.

[minimuggle]

I only see one solution and it's a lock. Looking forward to the actual solution, said the person who confidently submitted LANA two weeks ago...

Oh wow, I thought I was the only one who was 100% sure of LANA. I still like that answer. At least I was in good company

[Annabelle]

The double action mechanism was interesting: half of each answer was a rhyme, the other half a synonym. It helped when I sorted the grid words by length: the answer had to be a 7 + 3, a 6 + 4, or two 5s. Got it from motion in the list of 6-letter words. And happily, cold was 1A, at the top of the long list of 4s. Thanks, Matt!

[woozy]

Mrs. woozy says IDLE and PACIFIC are not synonyms while ARCTIC and COLD are. But she also says COMMUNIST and RED are not synonyms either.

But I, woozy-woozy, says ARCTIC is subset of COLD (a kind of cold) and COMMUNIST is a subset of RED, but IDLE and PACIFIC are both examples of lack of turmoil, motion, or agitation they are not examples of each other.

[mlvilv]

So is there an official answer or are both of those correct? Not that I got either of them. I was trying to do something with verdant=green and communist=red but I was thrown that the other two weren't colors and it never occurred to me to convert them to bodies of water. This just ended my longest streak ever of seven correct puzzles in a row. But I'm curious anyway what the official answer is supposed to be.

[Joe Ross]

So is there an official answer or are both of those correct? Not that I got either of them. I was trying to do something with verdant=green and communist=red but I was thrown that the other two weren't colors and it never occurred to me to convert them to bodies of water. This just ended my longest streak ever of seven correct puzzles in a row. But I'm curious anyway what the official answer is supposed to be.

The Wall Street Journal is not being published today, due to the holiday. The official answer will be posted with tomorrow's crossword's PDF. In the past, the crossword for the day following a holiday has been posted at 4 PM ET. However, last holiday's puzzle wasn't published until midnight.

[MajordomoTom]

It's not really whether the other answer is a synonym, it's also whether it would "fit" the clue (or clue part) ...

Marx and Lenin were REDS (then turn PREE into Sea)
the tall lady of legend is an AMAZON
improve is SUPERIOR
donkey's not-ready lunch is GREEN

and BRRR Evoking is ARCTIC
no way is unproductive ... PACIFIC

[OGuyDave]

Done, Friday; and done, Saturday. As happens just about every time, the two 'aha' moments came with great glee. Two solves in a row after a long dry spell, but don't get a big head, Dave! Thursday's not far away.

Comic of the day:

[SusieG]

I knew I was on the wrong shore. I got the rhyming parts but not the substitute parts, which is why my answer was so whacky. SPRAYS LOGS. LOGS rhymes with Bogs and sprays was the only six letter word that made sense to me. Ocean Spray cranberries grow in bogs…water is sprayed…yeah, I was underwhelmed also. Congratulations to those of you who solved!

[Polar Star]

Wait, nobody but me got hung up on Giant Squid?

[hcbirker]

Wait, nobody but me got hung up on Giant Squid?

I saw it. Nothing else similar, so I discarded it.

[LadyBird]

I saw GREEN BAY pretty quickly and then RED SEA but was initially thrown off by the lack of color in the other long answers. That and the fact that I spelled barbeCue and not barbeQue. My husband, who was driving and therefore not looking at the grid, realized that QUIVER should be the answer for arrow holder, so I corrected my spelling error. So we had our 4 bodies of water. I was intrigued with LOGS/BOGS but couldn't get anywhere with that. Then we just started naming other bodies of water: pond, stream, rill, ocean (hey MOTION!). Fortunately, there are only a handful of oceans, so it didn't take long to get to Arctic.

[iggystan]

I deleted my post, because I didn't want to possibly come across as rude.

[iggystan]

That and the fact that I spelled barbeCue and not barbeQue.

In fifth grade, we had a spelling bee during class. Nearly 3/4 of the class was lost to the word "Barbecue" until I spelled it correctly. I realize that "Barbeque" is a recognized variation and many companies spell things that way, but it always brings to mind that spelling bee when I see it spelled that way. (Fifth grade was a lonnnnnnng time ago it seems.)