"How Hard Can It Be?" - July 22, 2022

[Limerick Savant]

Make mine on the rocks

I’m ashore now and raising a toast
To the clues that were deftly enclosed
My solution was rocky
But I don’t think it cocky
To say that I gave it the Mohs’t

[Limerick Savant]

Of course all weekend I couldn’t get this earworm from Hair out of my head!

[Deb F]

For some inexplicable reason, I arrived at the appropriate minerals, used their number on the MOHS scale to correspond to Answer numbers and arrived at ROAKY. Huh? Anyway, then spent eons trying every conceivable combination of those numbers to find an adjective. With a little confirmation from Wendy, looked again and immediately saw my really dumb mistake. It's the same feeling I get when I reuse a an invalid letter in WORDLE. That's my tale of woe for a Monday morning. At least I got to shore.

Have a great week and good luck, Muggles.

[Wendy Walker]

@Guffman , I hereby nominate #333 by mydogsam for this week's Rabbit Hole Award. "YO! Adrian!"

[Wendy Walker]

I spent this hot weekend taking photographs for our forthcoming Primitive Hall book. Here is one of the beautiful 15-over-15 ground-floor windows. Taken, of course, from INSIDE the air-conditioned Hall.

Can't be that primitive of a hall if it has air-conditioning!

That is actually part of my tour-guide spiel: "We have a state-of-the-art geothermal heating and air-conditioning system -- AND a modern bathroom!"

[kurtalert]

I spotted the hidden minerals/gems very quickly and went right to the Mohs Scale to get their hardness ratings... and, then, my stupid computer scientist brain took over and SORTED the freaking hardness ratings, because that's what programmers do, we sort things, because a programmer's life is vastly easier and more efficient when you're working with sorted data sets... and I did not budge from the sorted list when I started trying to translate 10/8/5/2/1 or 1/2/5/8/10 into words. I blew right past ROCKY because I was looking at it as KYRCO / OCRYK.

The rabbit hole that REALLY had me questioning my brain was chasing AMPLE, though... if you keep everything in that sorted hardness order, and you take the # letter of the answer for each of those words, you get A from mediamondAy, M from stopazoMbie, P from pitaPatitem, L from cLingypsumascot, and... C from Coastalcase. But, that's AMPLC... not AMPLE... so, then I went into overdrive "how can I get an E out of this?" mode, because CLEARLY ample was going to be the answer. The LAST letter is E... so I tried to find a way to logic my way into rationalizing using the last letter from that answer... and I also noticed that the only other clue with a ? at the end was EGGS, so perhaps EGGS- notoriously soft & breakable EGGS- maybe THAT E being letter 1 was my golden ticket?

Had I not given up and gone to sleep, I never would have escaped this rabbit hole... the answer didn't come to me in my sleep, but when I woke up and started using a fresh set of eyes and a brain that was not so fixated on yesterday's rabbit hole, I hit upon ROCKY immediately, and realized the stupidity of seeing KYRCO and not just immediately freaking anagramming it to ROCKY... grrrrrrrr.

[Al Laubenstein]

Where is CORKY on the Mohs scale?

[Guffman]

@Guffman , I hereby nominate #333 by mydogsam for this week's Rabbit Hole Award. "YO! Adrian!"

I think somebody is trying to pull the poor rabbit's leg.
On the other hand, #346 seems quite deserving.

[0842sw]

Would someone be kind enough to explain 16A? "Racing Heart, say?" = Pitapat Item? Pitapatitem?

[Joe Ross]

Would someone be kind enough to explain 16A? "Racing Heart, say?" = Pitapat Item? Pitapatitem?

A racing heart can "go PIT-A-PAT".

[cbarbee002]

Well, solved this today without looking - - reminds me of a puzzle I posted on MMM last year (Table Talk) which referenced the periodic table. Anyway, nice, straightforward puzzle. Will now see if I can get to MGWCC, and actually prior to the deadline. . . .

[DBMiller]

Would someone be kind enough to explain 16A? "Racing Heart, say?" = Pitapat Item? Pitapatitem?

A racing heart can "go PIT-A-PAT".

I originally tried to put PIT-A-PATTER there, which didn't quite fit, and had PITAPATATER there while I completed the rest of the grid. Saw 4 minerals and knew the Mohs scale, had to look it up to see APATITE, which got me to finish the grid correctly and immediately got my ROCKY answer to submit.

Only semi-spoiler I saw this week was someone mentioning silica[te?] instead of sand. But the minerals were pretty obvious, so no biggie. I'm sure a lot of people were tempted to say they got the meta after a rocky start. And yeah, that was me saying "Yo!" in my best Sly impersonation during Friday's zoom session after all the non-solvers said they had now gotten it.

And thanks to all the well wishers from my eye surgery. One week follow up tomorrow. Definitely a ways to go before recovery.

[hoover]

Did I miss the announcement of the winner?

[mheberlingx100]

Did I miss the announcement of the winner?

I don’t think so. I’ve been checking my emails every 10 minutes but alas, I fear this will be another week without winning the Mug.

[Bonnibel]

I sure wish the announcement of the winner was set up on a predictable basis. Online the conversation for this puzzle has been closed, so I guess we have to wait for an announcement on this forum.

This is why I refer to the mug as the ghost mug, because I'm beginning to wonder if it really does exist!

At any rate, I too would love knowing when the winner will be announced. (Sigh)

That mug would sure look great on my kitchen table.

[Scott M]

I sure wish the announcement of the winner was set up on a predictable basis. Online the conversation for this puzzle has been closed, so I guess we have to wait for an announcement on this forum.

This is why I refer to the mug as the ghost mug, because I'm beginning to wonder if it really does exist!

At any rate, I too would love knowing when the winner will be announced. (Sigh)

That mug would sure look great on my kitchen table.

I believe the delay is generally waiting for the winner to reply. When I won, I had the email from Mike before 11AM Monday. I imagine if his email gets caught in a spam filter, or goes to someone who doesn't spend much time online, it can take a while. The rules state, "The potential winner forfeits the prize if not claimed within seven days of first attempted notification." So it could potentially come out while we're solving next week's puzzle.

[hoover]

I sure wish the announcement of the winner was set up on a predictable basis. Online the conversation for this puzzle has been closed, so I guess we have to wait for an announcement on this forum.

This is why I refer to the mug as the ghost mug, because I'm beginning to wonder if it really does exist!

At any rate, I too would love knowing when the winner will be announced. (Sigh)

That mug would sure look great on my kitchen table.

I believe the delay is generally waiting for the winner to reply. When I won, I had the email from Mike before 11AM Monday. I imagine if his email gets caught in a spam filter, or goes to someone who doesn't spend much time online, it can take a while. The rules state, "The potential winner forfeits the prize if not claimed within seven days of first attempted notification." So it could potentially come out while we're solving next week's puzzle.

I don't see the email in my inbox or spam filter. Does anyone have Mike's contact info?

[hcbirker]

GENERAL ANNOUNCEMENT

The XWord Muggles server space is running low until more can be added, which should be within the next 24 hours, or so.

In the meantime, no new Topics can be added, such as tomorrow's MEOW #88 - MINE SWEEPER, by DrTom. Thursday's WSJCC might also be affected.

In the meantime, please allow time for Brian to contact the technicians who can fix this issue. DO NOT POST IMAGES. Try to limit your posts until the "all clear" announcement is posted.

THANK YOU FOR YOUR PATIENCE!

Thank YOU for your diligence! We love you Joe! And appreciate you!

[JeffK]

I sure wish the announcement of the winner was set up on a predictable basis. Online the conversation for this puzzle has been closed, so I guess we have to wait for an announcement on this forum.

This is why I refer to the mug as the ghost mug, because I'm beginning to wonder if it really does exist!

At any rate, I too would love knowing when the winner will be announced. (Sigh)

That mug would sure look great on my kitchen table.

I believe the delay is generally waiting for the winner to reply. When I won, I had the email from Mike before 11AM Monday. I imagine if his email gets caught in a spam filter, or goes to someone who doesn't spend much time online, it can take a while. The rules state, "The potential winner forfeits the prize if not claimed within seven days of first attempted notification." So it could potentially come out while we're solving next week's puzzle.

I don't see the email in my inbox or spam filter. Does anyone have Mike's contact info?

Is there a way to find out how many correct answers are submitted each week? I’ve always been curious as to why I have never won
JefgK

[hcbirker]

I believe the delay is generally waiting for the winner to reply. When I won, I had the email from Mike before 11AM Monday. I imagine if his email gets caught in a spam filter, or goes to someone who doesn't spend much time online, it can take a while. The rules state, "The potential winner forfeits the prize if not claimed within seven days of first attempted notification." So it could potentially come out while we're solving next week's puzzle.

I don't see the email in my inbox or spam filter. Does anyone have Mike's contact info?

Is there a way to find out how many correct answers are submitted each week? I’ve always been curious as to why I have never won
JefgK

I’ve been doing these for seven years and have never won a mug. Mike Miller or someone from WSJ posts after the deadline with the number of submissions and the percentage who solved here on the forum. They’re just late this week.