"Finishing The Story" September 2, 2022

[Flying_Burrito]

TSARS is what quickly gave it away for me. This meta gave me a flashback of that great Cheers episode when Sam loaned Diane $500 to buy a collectable copy of The Sun Also Rises. "Such profound title" as Sam quips. In the same episode he mispels Dumas for Dumb Ass. oh all the worthless stuff in my brain...

[michaelm]

TSARS is what quickly gave it away for me. This meta gave me a flashback of that great Cheers episode when Sam loaned Diane $500 to buy a collectable copy of The Sun Also Rises. "Such profound title" as Sam quips. In the same episode he mispels Dumas for Dumb Ass. oh all the worthless stuff in my brain...

More Cheers profundity!
Albania…
Albania…
You border on the Adriatic…

[kawaja]

Still in the dark here:
What is the connection for these last letters added onto the acronyms?
TIA

Too late for 'Aha!,' so 'Groan!'
Thanks for spelling it out for me, I would not have found the connection to the last letter(s) on my own.

[ReB]

Probably the most amusing rabbit hole I went down (which didn't go very far) was to look for other grid answers related to the book titles.

The Sun Also Rises -- ORB (59A)
Crime and Punishment -- TSARS (38D)
Breakfast at Tiffany's -- EGGOS (67A)

but the engine started knocking at A Christmas Carol -- ODE(??) (57A) and ran out of gas at Pride and Prejudice.

And of course there were the one-off diversions of PAPA to go with Hemingway, and the hidden grid words within Elizabeth BenNET and Truman CAPOte [author name].

But what really hindered me was the way I listed the book titles, using the "&" sign instead of "and" and miswriting A Christmas Carol as The Christmas Carol. A reminder to self to be more careful and to avoid shortcuts.

[HunterX]

Albania…
Albania…
You border on the Adriatic…

I still sing that one in my head every so often.

Your land is mostly mountains... and your chief export is chrome.

[Dplass]

TSARS is what quickly gave it away for me. This meta gave me a flashback of that great Cheers episode when Sam loaned Diane $500 to buy a collectable copy of The Sun Also Rises. "Such profound title" as Sam quips. In the same episode he mispels Dumas for Dumb Ass. oh all the worthless stuff in my brain...

More Cheers profundity!
Albania…
Albania…
You border on the Adriatic…

We STILL sing that!

[Richard]

How the mind works is interesting.

First I thought that the last word on the literary work was important since I figured everyone knew "God Bless Us Every One" but got nowhere and since Crime and Punishment was in Russian the English last word might differ in each translation.

I was thinking with The Sun Also Rises and Papa in the grid that Hemingway was involved. Got nowhere further.

Then while half watching TV it dawned on me Pride and Prejudice PAP add an A and get PAPA.

Rest fell right into place.

I guess PAPA was just noodling in the back of my mind.

[AaronT]

I got to the mechanism very quickly as I was jotting down the book titles as acronyms and TSAR jumped out right away. However, once I had the cat by the tail (no pun intended) I completely forgot about the 5th starred clue and never even considered going back to the clues to look for more. So I ended up with ATOS which left me at a dead end, but then I convinced myself I could get to AOTS by reading top/bottom, left/right. Treating this as another acronym, I confidently submitted Tom Sawyer.

A bit of a sour taste in my mouth on this one. 4 of the 5 characters were right there in the grid and the 5th was CAT? Grrr. My fault, but grrr nonetheless.

[Barney]

How the mind works is interesting.

First I thought that the last word on the literary work was important since I figured everyone knew "God Bless Us Every One" but got nowhere and since Crime and Punishment was in Russian the English last word might differ in each translation.

I was thinking with The Sun Also Rises and Papa in the grid that Hemingway was involved. Got nowhere further.

Then while half watching TV it dawned on me Pride and Prejudice PAP add an A and get PAPA.

Rest fell right into place.

I guess PAPA was just noodling in the back of my mind.

I’d done the grid online Thursday, and written out the asterisked answers with their titles and authors. Seemed so open-ended I couldn’t even think of a rabbit hole.

Friday I filled in the print copy, and PAPA and ACCT just jumped out, in sync with Pride & Prejudice and A Christmas Carol. Took it from there: easy breezy, classic Mike.

Apparently it could be more complicated! Anyway I was the first to rate it on Fiend, a 5.

[RDaleHall]

Got the right answer, but at first was looking at the letters as they appeared in the grid and got stuck on HATOS. Was trying to use this as some sort of book title as well and though it might be some of Harry Potter novel title.... HarryPotter And The ..... Stone? to get to Harry Potter as the character answer. But then saw that the letter order from the clues led to ATHOS.

[Jeremy Smith]

Hmm!
13A--PAPA A nickname of Hemingway
43A--CAPO The beginning letters of Capote
9A-- BATH The home of Austen during her least productive years (Finishing stories)
38D--TSARS Dostoevsky belonged to a group critical of the tsar and was arrested and sentenced to death
All four of the above clues were part of the solution.
I did finally solve but I was stuck on these four clues for a long time. Methinks that, at the very least, the grid entry PAPA was an intentional red herring.

[mysterebus]

I was wayyy too focused on the content of the clues themselves, obsessing over the quotes, descriptors, names mentioned (the CAT clueing of not having a name didn’t help this either lol), among other rabbit holes (including investing in a punctuation-based theme - like KOLN for colon). Then I was questioning ATHOS (when I finally spelled it out), thinking maybe it was hinting at “ETHOS” (Greek for “character”). I once again leaned on the CAT clueing to reassure me in my final submission - the Wikipedia entry for “ATHOS (character)” mentions Athos's first name is never told in the novels. Not sure if it was intentional… but it worked lol.

[OGuyDave]

Done, Thursday; and done, yesterday, Sunday. A couple of hours, well actually just under four hours before deadline, as I needed a big bump from the 8PM ET Zoom call crew. Thank you, folks!

Saw PAPA, but just the red herring part, not the "a step to the answer" part.

I decided to submit "HOSTA", suggesting it was a character in my garden story.

Hope everyone had a safe and fun holiday.

TFTXWD nonetheless

[mheberlingx100]

More Cheers profundity!
Albania…
Albania…
You border on the Adriatic…

And its chief export is chrome!

[femullen]

I still don't get it.

[woozy]

I still don't get it.

The stories by initials are PAP (pride and prejudice), ACC (a christmas carol), BAT (Breakfast at Tiffany's), CAP (Crime and punishment) and TSAR (the sun also rises).

These are all unfinished words of the crossword grid.

You "finish the story" by adding the letters to the stories to make the words in the grid: PAPA, ACCT, BATH, CAPO, and TSARS.

This spells ATHOS which is a character from The Three Muskateers.

[femullen]

It amazes me that so many saw this mechanism at once. Not in my wheelhouse, as they say, but still, it was obvious to many to latch onto the first letters of the titles and then extrapolate. I googled the quotes (never read any of these books), Googled the follow-on dialogue, googled the last words in the book, and made many other useless stabs at finishing the story. Never occurred to me to start with the initials of the titles. Alas.

"No rules" is Rule 1. Me, down in flames.

[lacangah]

One of my rabbit holes was ‘triggered’ by the initials in the last down answer (YSL):

Elizabeth Bennet -> E. B. (White) -> Stuart Little (or Charlotte’s Web)
Jacob Marley -> J. M. (Barrie) -> Peter Pan…
…
I thought that the answer might be ‘SPOCK’ - fortunately, ‘CAT’ and the subsequent starred clue entries put the kibosh on that approach. Nonetheless, I think that would be a cool metanism for a puzzle in the future (mwahaha factor 10).

Cheers,

[KscX]

It helped that PAPA was sitting right above Elizabeth Bennett. I thought- huh - then went on to look for A Christmas Carol and clinched it.

[Colin]

With kids and grandkids here for the long weekend, we only got to start (and finish) this one tonight. Very satisfying meta ioho! Have a nice, short week y’all!