"Power Play" August 5, 2022

[Barney]

My math summary:

Not in a million years.

[Plymouthrock]

Why should I. Object - item
No great shakes - trifling - mere
Had a bad effect -maze (Def confused)
Square root -Colonnade tree -elm (tree in town square)

Mime of course. I knew I was on Gilligan’s Island not with the 39 (?) higher minded thinkers. This meta was great.

[mheberlingx100]

My route to solving:
After focusing on Solar and then playwrights and Shakespeare (No Great Shakes *had* to point to Much Ado About Nothing), I then noticed only one long clue had the word Power in it. So maybe square roots have something to do with it?

I had already written out the long clues and counted the number of letters in each clue word. I first noticed 64 and then 256 as perfect squares. I broke out the HP12C and all the long clues were perfect squares! Back to the grid with the square roots, and voila.

[Dplass]

I was left on the boat this week. After seeing the solution, I have no issue with the difficulty of the mechanism. But I do take issue with SOLAR being dead center in the grid, clued with “Energy choice,” given the puzzle’s title. I can’t remember a meta where this type of signpost was *not* part of the solution.

This.

Also, but, ...there was nothing pointing at the number of letters in each answer. Shrug maybe next week.

[mitchel674]

With the odd answer of 23A being "NUS" which is SUN backwards and SOLAR right in the center of the POWER PLAY puzzle, I could not escape the rabbit hole looking for more energy sources. A frustrating weekend!!

[Magistra]

Well, MATH was my Hail Mary (just an assumption that the invisible mechanism must lead to math), but I became so frustrated that I didn't bother to send it in. I was also led astray by the solar and Shakespeare bunnies: I found a "counterpart" to "solar" in "nus" (sun backwards), but that was a sad dead end

Now that I see the mechanism, it's okay, but...the teacher in me says that three hundred sixty one is a perfect square, the individual digits 3 - 6 - 1 are not. Must be the new math

[Eric Porter]

I got the answer from the Zoom call, but didn't submit. Only 15 people reported they were on shore by Thursday so this has to be one of the hardest ever.
The only way I would have gotten it is if I'd seen something like it before. Having SQUARE ROOT as a theme answer and part of the solution meant that I spent less time thinking that it was the hint, though of course I noticed the word "power".

[HunterX]

Went down some of the obvious rabbit holes mentioned already. (SOLAR/NUS, SHAKES/SPARE, etc.)

Also looked for powers. WHY has N diagonally above the Y. As does SHOULD. As does NO.

Also found a type of square root symbol shape with HOU going across as well as down from the H. Same with QUA, RER, and sort of with OT/OTE.

Also took EDEN as a hint to notice the ABLE in STABLES, with ADAM coming down off the A, and CAIN coming up in ENIAC.

Never thought to count letters and combine into numbers.

[dk letter]

SOLAR in the middle of the grid really sucks the joy out of solving for me

[Joe Ross]

I was left on the boat this week. After seeing the solution, I have no issue with the difficulty of the mechanism. But I do take issue with SOLAR being dead center in the grid, clued with “Energy choice,” given the puzzle’s title. I can’t remember a meta where this type of signpost was *not* part of the solution.

SOLAR in the middle of the grid really sucks the joy out of solving for me

I was able to get past it, but I agree. SOLAR took the puzzle from Simple And Difficult, amazingly & beautifully, to Egregious And Tyrannical, MikE.

[pjc]

After a 7-puzzle success streak, I'm on a different streak - two misses in a row!

Based on the SQUAREROOT answer, I tried to find 3x3 squares with letters in the middle that might work. No luck.

I tried piecing together answers that might join to POWER (POWER TRIP, SOLAR POWER). Nope.

Of course, I examined the long answers for hidden words or alternate definitions. Uh-uh.

Numbers of letters never occurred to me. Ah, well. Maybe a new streak starts this week!

[Ffrohbose]

Whoa!

[DBMiller]

My long winded story of rabbit holes and how one of them is how I tunneled between rabbit holes and backed solved into this one just before Friday's zoom meeting…

Grid was quickly done, and I saw two possible hints that might lead to the meta. With the title of Power Play, I saw the play within a play clue and the second power clue. As there were four theme answers, and the power clue was one, I wasn't sure if the latter was a clue and a themer or not. Could they both be clues? What about SOLAR? Time to dig in.

Play within a play. Shakespeare was fond of that. Google leads me to A Midsummer Night’s Dream, The Taming of the Shrew, Love’s Labour’s Lost, and Hamlet. Darn. I could maybe relate NO GREAT SHAKES with MUCH ADO ABOUT NOTHING, but not much else.

Square roots… interesting. I will keep an eye out for various powers of numbers. MATH does come to mind as a possible answer. A power play is also a hockey term, so maybe GOAL or PUCK could be it as well.

Roots… Trees… One answer is ELM, but I see no other trees. I scan the grid for squares of 9-letter tree names and don't see any. I look for squares of 4-letter tree names and only find DATE.

I did see NINE as a square. But nothing else.

Wait .. The play within a play answer, which coincidentally is META, has ALOG above it, an anagram of GOAL. Could it be that simple? How do I get there? Well, the exponents in numbers are often written using superscripts, so maybe I need to find the letters in META elsewhere and map them to the letters in ALOG to make GOAL. Hmmm… ATME would be the order, how do I find them?

Okay. Nothing obvious so let's go to the hint about squares and/or square roots. As a math major and computer programmer, I run through a bunch of squared numbers in my head. 2, 4, 9, 16, 25, 36, 49, 64, 81, 100, 121, 144…How do I pick just four of them? And what do I do with them?

I see TEN in the grid. Is ADUE two? Is TRIP three again? I quickly give up there.

Ooh .. MINER forty-niner. 16 OUNCEs in a pound. 100 members in the SENAT. I scour the grid for a fourth square but cannot find one.i must be missing one. Maybe I can back solve it.

100 is too big to be a grid number, so now I'm back to square roots. I have 4, 7, and 10. Could be D, G, J. Nah. Look at grid squares. Hmmm… ICL doesn't seem to help. COIL? LAIC? LICK? LICE? Doesn't look good.

Oh yeah, I was trying to spell ATME. So I need a either a 6 or 16; a 5: either a 2, 13 or 14: plus what? A 19???? Squares are 36 or 256; 25; either 4, 169 or 196; plus… 361???

Back to the theme answers. SECOND power. What about the second word of each theme? SHOULD GREAT A ROOT. Ugh. Well backwards it spells RAGS. Did counterpart mean that? What would RAGS have to do with it?

Zoom meeting was going to start soon. C'mon, you can do this. Maybe I need both first and second words. So I write down…

WHY SHOULD
NO GREAT
HAD A
SQUARE ROOT

And then I noticed the letters in each word. I saw 36, 25, 41, and 64. Three out of four squares! This could be it. But 41??? Even if I reconcile 41, they aren't in order for META. Using the square roots I have T, A, and H. Well what about MATH after all? Hmmm… 19x19 is 361, oh… "36" + "1". Wait… 361 is 19, check. 256 is 16, check. 64 is 8, check. 3136… Well I'll be. That's 56, which is a T in the grid. Click!

Just as I'm hearing the zoom discussion how people who love to count would find this one interesting. Yes, indeed. Very odd route to the answer, but I got there!

And for the real math nerds, how I got 361 and 56 without a calculator….

19*19=20*19-19=400-20-19=361
Then verified in my head, 81+90+190, yep.

(a+b)^2 = a^2+2ab+b^2
3136=2500+300+300+36, so a=50, b=6

[Flying_Burrito]

62A (A play about plays) is where this bug got zapped as I tried to force answers to the long clues that would start with the word Meta (so 'why should I' equated to metaphysics, 'no great shakes' is a metaphor, 'had a bad effect' => metastasized, could not solve for square root). I think someone else said it in a previous post, Shenk would never leave things up for interpretation as MG may, so lesson learned for me

[femullen]

SOLAR in the middle of the grid really sucks the joy out of solving for me

I spent some time looking for occurrences of WIND or NUCLEAR or other "energy" (power?) options, but gave up on that pretty quickly.

I'll tell you the thing that appealed to me most was right along the line where SQUARE ROOT appeared. 58A, "Easy as rolling off A LOG," followed by 59A SQUARE ROOT, and immediately 61D TEN. This truly is as easy as rolling of a log: take the log of the square root of 10 (10 to the one-half power).

The next question is, common logarithm or natural logarithm. Well, the common log of the square root of ten you can do in your head: it's one half, or .5000, which doesn't give you anything to work with, so it must be natural log.

Ln(10^.5)= 1.151, which, when the corresponding letter are applied, gives you NNTN. Which looks very much like NUTTIN', which is what I had before last night's Zoom.

How's that for Rabbit Hole of the Week?

8^)

[DrTom]

Why should I. Object - item
No great shakes - trifling - mere
Had a bad effect -maze (Def confused)
Square root -Colonnade tree -elm (tree in town square)

Mime of course. I knew I was on Gilligan’s Island not with the 39 (?) higher minded thinkers. This meta was great.

Well you should be allowed a silent protest at the very least! Had they been in GRID order I'd lodge a formal protest, you could do it anyway but I'm afraid you'd find it like walking against the wind.....

T

[Flying_Burrito]

My long winded story of rabbit holes and how one of them is how I tunneled between rabbit holes and backed solved into this one just before Friday's zoom meeting…

Grid was quickly done, and I saw two possible hints that might lead to the meta. With the title of Power Play, I saw the play within a play clue and the second power clue. As there were four theme answers, and the power clue was one, I wasn't sure if the latter was a clue and a themer or not. Could they both be clues? What about SOLAR? Time to dig in.

Play within a play. Shakespeare was fond of that. Google leads me to A Midsummer Night’s Dream, The Taming of the Shrew, Love’s Labour’s Lost, and Hamlet. Darn. I could maybe relate NO GREAT SHAKES with MUCH ADO ABOUT NOTHING, but not much else.

Square roots… interesting. I will keep an eye out for various powers of numbers. MATH does come to mind as a possible answer. A power play is also a hockey term, so maybe GOAL or PUCK could be it as well.

Roots… Trees… One answer is ELM, but I see no other trees. I scan the grid for squares of 9-letter tree names and don't see any. I look for squares of 4-letter tree names and only find DATE.

I did see NINE as a square. But nothing else.

Wait .. The play within a play answer, which coincidentally is META, has ALOG above it, an anagram of GOAL. Could it be that simple? How do I get there? Well, the exponents in numbers are often written using superscripts, so maybe I need to find the letters in META elsewhere and map them to the letters in ALOG to make GOAL. Hmmm… ATME would be the order, how do I find them?

Okay. Nothing obvious so let's go to the hint about squares and/or square roots. As a math major and computer programmer, I run through a bunch of squared numbers in my head. 2, 4, 9, 16, 25, 36, 49, 64, 81, 100, 121, 144…How do I pick just four of them? And what do I do with them?

I see TEN in the grid. Is ADUE two? Is TRIP three again? I quickly give up there.

Ooh .. MINER forty-niner. 16 OUNCEs in a pound. 100 members in the SENAT. I scour the grid for a fourth square but cannot find one.i must be missing one. Maybe I can back solve it.

100 is too big to be a grid number, so now I'm back to square roots. I have 4, 7, and 10. Could be D, G, J. Nah. Look at grid squares. Hmmm… ICL doesn't seem to help. COIL? LAIC? LICK? LICE? Doesn't look good.

Oh yeah, I was trying to spell ATME. So I need a either a 6 or 16; a 5: either a 2, 13 or 14: plus what? A 19???? Squares are 36 or 256; 25; either 4, 169 or 196; plus… 361???

Back to the theme answers. SECOND power. What about the second word of each theme? SHOULD GREAT A ROOT. Ugh. Well backwards it spells RAGS. Did counterpart mean that? What would RAGS have to do with it?

Zoom meeting was going to start soon. C'mon, you can do this. Maybe I need both first and second words. So I write down…

WHY SHOULD
NO GREAT
HAD A
SQUARE ROOT

And then I noticed the letters in each word. I saw 36, 25, 41, and 64. Three out of four squares! This could be it. But 41??? Even if I reconcile 41, they aren't in order for META. Using the square roots I have T, A, and H. Well what about MATH after all? Hmmm… 19x19 is 361, oh… "36" + "1". Wait… 361 is 19, check. 256 is 16, check. 64 is 8, check. 3136… Well I'll be. That's 56, which is a T in the grid. Click!

Just as I'm hearing the zoom discussion how people who love to count would find this one interesting. Yes, indeed. Very odd route to the answer, but I got there!

And for the real math nerds, how I got 361 and 56 without a calculator….

19*19=20*19-19=400-20-19=361
Then verified in my head, 81+90+190, yep.

(a+b)^2 = a^2+2ab+b^2
3136=2500+300+300+36, so a=50, b=6

Brilliant and scary at the same time

[TeaJenny]

SOLAR tripped me, too. When nothing else worked, my last minute submission was:

(Energy choice) + (4 letters) = WIND

[Wendy Walker]

This English major went the "word" route rather than the "number" route. There were just so many words that would fit with "power" beside the obvious "solar": power trip, power tool, power hour, power mad, power bar, spare power. And I had SUCH high hopes for LAMBSKIN (lambs' kin) = ewes.

[CPJohnson]

I knew 59A squareroot was important, and I was suspicious about 61D ten. I thought I needed to find perfect squares, take the square root, and match with the appropriate grid squares. But how to find perfect squares? One thought was to add the grid numbers in each themer. So, (17+18)=35. Well, no perfect square, but, aha! If you subtract 10, you get 25, square root 5, and a T. Thought I was on to something. (maybe trig is the answer?)

Next themer, (25+26+27+28+29+30+31)=196. Aha! Square root 14, and the letter E. (term? tech?)

Next themer, (45+46+47+48)=186. No perfect square, but, aha! If you add 10, you get 196, square root 14, and the letter E. (Uh oh, TEE(blank) is not a math term)

Last themer, (59+60+61)=180, not a perfect square, and adding, subtracting, multiplying, or dividing with 10 produces no perfect square. End of the road.

I also tried:
using perfect squares in the grid to spell something (maybe an instruction?)
noticing 40A nina is one letter off from nine….couldn’t find any others
looking for numbers in the clues (one, two, second, and dozen)
looking for diagonal words, since exponents are sort of on the diagonal. Found lean, you, and sole, but no instruction, which is what I was hoping for
Pondering the occurrences of 2 letters in each themer….that led to nothing
Looking for occurrences of AC and DC in the grid, in case POWER in the title referred to electricity. Found a few, but no results there
Looking for hidden words or hidden-word-plus-one-letter in themers. Found ShOUL in 17A, but “soul power” didn’t sound like a common phrase

A fellow muggle finally suggested that I count the letters in 59A, and there it was.