A place to discuss the weekly Wall Street Journal Crossword Puzzle Contest, starting every Thursday around 4:00 p.m. Eastern time. Please do not post any answers or hints before the contest deadline which is midnight Sunday Eastern time.
Cindy N wrote: ↑Mon Sep 05, 2022 1:14 am
Pride and Prejudice // the means of uniting (T)hem.
A Christmas Carol // God bless us, Every (O)ne. (More than one had it as two words, rather than "everyone")
Breakfast at Tiffany's // ???
Crime and Punishment // she only lived in his (L)ife.
The Sun Also Rises // Isn't it pretty to think (S)o?
FWIW Breakfast at Tiffany's // African hut or whatever, I hope Holly has, (T)oo.
I went that route too. I hadn't realized that Breakfast at Tiffany's was only a short story.
I tried that route as well but as I was working Mr Google soooooo hard to find the “last words” of all the books, I thought “this can’t be the mechanism”! It must be sitting in plain sight on the grid! And then for some reason I jotted down the first initial of the book plus the Author and I got for the first themer…. Pride and Prejudice, Austen = PAPA ! Wait, “ PAPA” is in the grid! Tried it for other themers with Authors and suddenly realized I didn’t need the Author! The extra letter was “finishing the story”!
Olof wrote: ↑Mon Sep 05, 2022 12:35 am
Got the letters TAOSH, which suggested "The Adventures Of Sherlock Holmes". First time to be 'sure' about an answer that ended up not being the answer. Never heard of this Athos character.
one of the 3 musketeers. Btw, 12D on this weekend WSJ crossword was a spoiler ("Dumas character" => Athos)
My initial solve was to take the very end of each theme clue - a quote character. I figured "Hey that's a character in stories." And it was 5 letters. So I chose the answer of QUOTE. I was told that I chose poorly. So I looked some more and PAPA jumped out when I was thinking Pride And Prejudice.
Funny thing about this week: I finished the grid on Friday, didn’t see anything right away and put it down; my modus operandi these days. Sat down with it Saturday or Sunday morning, can’t remember which, and figured out the books in question (have to admit I have only read one of them and had to look up the others, although I am an avid reader). I print out the puzzle, so there isn’t much room on the paper, so I wrote P&P, ACC, BAT, CAP, TSAR. Notice the ampersand in P&P, but not in CAP. Again, didn’t see anything and tortured myself for a short while. I considered the answer was “Alice” because of the CAT clue in the middle, but couldn’t work it out. Sat down again late Sunday afternoon, saw TSARS in the puzzle and my notes at the bottom and there it was.
The Three Muskateers Motto: "All for One and One for All"
As adapted by Monty Python:
All for one
One for all
All for one and one for all
(Some for some)
(None for none)
(Slightly less for people we don't like)
(And a little bit more for me)
Don & Cynthia
We are always happy to get to know other muggles and help in any way! PM's are always welcome. The next best thing to winning a mug is helping a fellow muggle win a mug!
This was a quick solve for me. As I was writing down the story titles and the authors, The Sun Also Rises jumped out at me as TSAR(S). Easy swim from there. Sometimes it just smacks you upside the head.
Whenever you find yourself on the side of the majority, it is time to pause and reflect. Mark Twain
This one took me a little longer than it should have because I'm TOO familiar with the subject matter at hand (I'm a software engineer and have the same problem with computer-related clues - I think knowing too much about a subject makes me overlook the obvious).
Anyway, I tried all kinds of things including turning to the names of the characters the lines were spoken to, the last words of the novels (FINISHING the story), etc. PAPA also threw me for a while since that was Hemingway's nickname and I was trying to figure out if there were other hidden nicknames (kind of ironic that PAPA ended up being part of the actual solve).
I can't remember which entry gave me the AHA moment, but once seeing the first one, the rest fell quickly.
Scott M wrote: ↑Mon Sep 05, 2022 8:28 am
This was a quick solve for me. As I was writing down the story titles and the authors, The Sun Also Rises jumped out at me as TSAR(S). Easy swim from there. Sometimes it just smacks you upside the head.
That is what cinched the metanism for me too but for a slightly different reason. I had the titles and authors playing in my head but that side of the grid was giving me trouble because I had entered REEL for 27D. So I was trying to decide the spelling to use for 38D and the connection to the Hemingway title made intraoccular impact. The rest was easy.
kawaja wrote: ↑Mon Sep 05, 2022 9:17 am
Still in the dark here:
What is the connection for these last letters added onto the acronyms?
TIA
Add A, T, H, O, and S to the initials of the book titles and you get words that are in the grid:
PAP + A = PAPA; ACC + T = ACCT; BAT + H = BATH; CAP + O = CAPO; TSAR + S = TSARS.
Last edited by BarbaraK on Mon Sep 05, 2022 11:31 am, edited 1 time in total.
If you want help with a meta, feel free to PM me. The more specific you are about what you have and what you want, the more likely I can help without spoiling.
(And if I help you win a mug, I’ll be especially delighted.)
kawaja wrote: ↑Mon Sep 05, 2022 9:17 am
Still in the dark here:
What is the connection for these last letters added onto the acronyms?
TIA
You will find the title acronyms with one letter extra at end as answers throughout the grid. Those letters “finish the story” so to speak and taken in the order of the reference characters spell out the answer, Athos. E.G. Bennet from Pride and Prejudice yields PAP and leads to 13A papA, the first letter of Athos,
Nope, not this week. I saw Papa and thought aha, Hemingway's nickname. I started looking up the other author's nicknames and that got me nowhere. I never thought of looking for abbreviations.
WabiSabi wrote: ↑Mon Sep 05, 2022 10:13 am
Another illustration:
TY & nicely shown!
I solved the meta as I solved the grid on my phone, so I marked-up a phone screen capture, then was too lazy to mark-up the spreadsheet, as I usually do.
mlvilv wrote: ↑Mon Sep 05, 2022 10:16 am
Nope, not this week. I saw Papa and thought aha, Hemingway's nickname. I started looking up the other author's nicknames and that got me nowhere. I never thought of looking for abbreviations.
I also really thought I was on to something with Papa Hemingway, so it was amusing when I realized PAPA was indeed part of the answer but for Pride And Prejudice instead.
If you want help with a meta, feel free to PM me. The more specific you are about what you have and what you want, the more likely I can help without spoiling.
(And if I help you win a mug, I’ll be especially delighted.)
BarbaraK wrote: ↑Fri Sep 02, 2022 11:46 am
Not my wheelhouse, but did finally figure it out. Oddly, something I thought might be relevant turned out to be, but not at all in the way I was thinking.
I wonder if it's the same thing I saw. More on Monday
I'm guessing I saw the same thing both of you did.
That makes total sense to me. An interesting and strange coincidence if we are talking about the same thing.
Time to compare notes. I had linked "Crime and Punishment" to CAPO thematically and tried to go down that path. EGGOS matched with "Breakfast at Tiffany's" for another example. However this rabbit hole dead-ended quickly enough. Also, was I supposed to find something to match the "Punishment" part too, and thus also find grid answers for both "Pride" and "Prejudice"? Surely not.
But then when I saw that the acronym CAP matched the first 3 letters of CAPO, I thought "Ah, so they were linked after all."
mlvilv wrote: ↑Mon Sep 05, 2022 10:16 am
Nope, not this week. I saw Papa and thought aha, Hemingway's nickname. I started looking up the other author's nicknames and that got me nowhere. I never thought of looking for abbreviations.
I also really thought I was on to something with Papa Hemingway, so it was amusing when I realized PAPA was indeed part of the answer but for Pride And Prejudice instead.
Ah, that makes sense. Different than CAPO/Crime. But thematically linked nonetheless.
I'm not even feeling guilty for not seeing this. I was so far down other rabbit holes the obvious was never going to be obvious again. It probably doesn't help that I know all of these stories but haven't actually read any of them.
As Mark Twain said, “A classic is something that everybody wants to have read and nobody wants to read.”
