" I Made You a Pair of Shorts" September 9, 2022

[Richard]

I saw the Chip S pretty early but discarded since I thought there were probably multiple cartoonist named Charles and so multiple answers.
Spent a lot of time looking for something else.

Obviously Charles Schultz is the most famous and i got a strong shove to shore so that was that.

[caf.caf]

I’m glad I only had an hour for the grid and contest.
KAS 5 for me.

Completely agree, KAS 5+ !!

[MatthewL]

My first approach, given the title, was to look for nicknames in the grid (I thought the fact that the themers were all full first names seemed significant and they were just sort of crying out to be shortened). Found AWE for Abe and thought -- cool, just find the shortened names, and the changed letter will spell out the answer. Easy peasy. Except, not. Couldn't find anything else. Then realized it was a Gaffney and so I looked at the clues as well. And the one that jumped out at me was IKEA. Then found TONYA and it was pretty straightforward from there. Got CHIPS, and Googled, and found a couple of cartoonists named CHIP, but that didn't seem right. Then realized it was a Gaffney, and so there had to be one final step. Googled "what is Chip a nickname of" and there it was. To me, at least, it was a 100% lock. I certainly understand the questions people seem to have about this one, but I thought it was entirely fair and gettable, if difficult. But a darn sight more clear (again, to me at least) than the square root puzzle of a couple of weeks ago. But, I'll also allow for the possibility that I just got lucky.

[Joepickett]

I filled in Anthony Anderson as my first answer, looked at the title and thought Tony. Oh this is easy. Found the others pretty quickly and had CHIPS in no time. So of course I didn't change Chip back to a formal name. I just jumped to Chip Sansom with the help of Google and thought I was so brilliant this week.

Ummm err. Guess not..

[Joe Ross]

I solved & submitted without seeing the last name initials, which slapped me upside the head the next day.

So I had:
Two A-HA!s,
Two A-HA!s,
Two A-HA!s in one!

Which is nice.

Interwebs sez "Chip" is for Chuck (despite my personal experience)? Sure! Chip S. it is.

Mug me, SVP.


(I'm 'kind of' a twitch this weekend. You should have seen how I butchered MGWCC #745 yet was correct. I then misspeeled my September '22 MMMM entry & was allowed within the Hall of the Holies by the grace of Pete, luckily. yeesh)

[Jace54]

This one had no "now we do this and we are done" moment. I got the mechanism to take the clues with the nicknames and got CHIPS. But that's a hardly a *stopping* point. There are dozens of cartoonists named Charles (including Chuck Jones of course and as the titles was "a pair of shorts" animation could be strongly implied) There was simply no way I could consider that done simply because it had a letter S artificially stuck to it.
This just wasn't complete.

Wow. So you thought that all the letters following the nicknames were "artificial stuck" on. And not indicative of the first letters of the last names in the grid.

IkeA
MegA
TonyA
AbeL
JackS

I agree with Boharr that you appear to be missing the full mechanism. How many noted cartoonists do you know with a first name of Charles and a last name starting with S?

[Toby]

When I googled Charles Shultz I saw his nickname was "Sparky" but Chip seemed to fit the pattern so I submitted with hesitation though I did try to get some confirmation from "Shorts" in the title which vaguely suggested Shultz. By the way, I do know a Charles whose nickname was always "Chip." He became a Buddhist and then a Tibetan Buddhist monk and so his former friends disrespectfully call him Chipmunk.

[MMe]

What really iced it for me is that Charles Schulz is the only famous cartoonist.

[michaelm]

I had the first part of the first part.

Ike, Tony, Abe, etc.

But not the IkeA, TonyA, etc. second part of the first part.

Did nor even send in a guess.

For me, it was the clue for 69A that did it — "Jacks player's need" was such a weird clue and phrasal construction for the answer SPEED that it caught my eye right away, especially in such close proximity to the theme answer JOHN SPENCER. Next came IKEA (helpfully capitalized...you didn't have to do that, Matt) and from there it came quickly. CHIP S threw me until I googled what Chip was a nickname for.

If I hadn't immediately noticed "Jacks...." I'd probably not have solved this one.

Wonderful observation on the Jacks clue - and it was the last across clue as well.
You definitely remembered your Meta 101 material this week.
Congratulations and good luck on the mug!

[ship4u]

(I thought the fact that the themers were all full first names seemed significant and they were just sort of crying out to be shortened).

Yes, except that JACK is no "shorter" of a name than JOHN. So I had some trouble getting started with the title clue "shorts."

[MatthewL]

(I thought the fact that the themers were all full first names seemed significant and they were just sort of crying out to be shortened).

Yes, except that JACK is no "shorter" of a name than JOHN. So I had some trouble getting started with the title clue "shorts."

Yeah, I agree with you there -- it's not shorter. And that was the last one I got, probably because of that issue. But, I Googled that as well, which said, Jack was a "diminutive" form of John, and found another site which opined that "The name Jack is a derivative of John, which originated in medieval England. The name went from John to Johnkin to Jankin to Jackin to, you guessed it, Jack." That was good enough for me.

[Ergcat]

I had the first part of the first part.

Ike, Tony, Abe, etc.

But not the IkeA, TonyA, etc. second part of the first part.

Did nor even send in a guess.

For me, it was the clue for 69A that did it — "Jacks player's need" was such a weird clue and phrasal construction for the answer SPEED that it caught my eye right away, especially in such close proximity to the theme answer JOHN SPENCER. Next came IKEA (helpfully capitalized...you didn't have to do that, Matt) and from there it came quickly. CHIP S threw me until I googled what Chip was a nickname for.

If I hadn't immediately noticed "Jacks...." I'd probably not have solved this one.

That 69a clue “Jacks players need” also bothered me…. Kept looking at it thinking that is an odd clue!! And I had the nicknames ( but not last name initial) But, Unfortunately, the JackS never connected to the nickname Jack for me!
And while I had Ike, Tony, Abe and Jack… I was thinking Maggie or Peggy for “ Margaret”… never thought of “Meg” even though I have a niece that is a Margaret who goes by Meg! Duh!

[HunterX]

What really iced it for me is that Charles Schulz is the only famous cartoonist.

Well... He's certainly the most famous to Americans of a certain age. (My kids didn't know him.)

But then we were throwing out all sorts of names:
- Matt Groening, Simpsons
- Scott Adams, Dilbert
- Gary Larson, Far Side
- Garry Trudeau, Doonesbury (I remember when that was a must-read every day)
- Jim Davis, Garfield
- Al Capp, Li'l Abner
- Charles Addams, The Adams Family style cartoons in the New Yorker Magazines my grandmother displayed in her living room

At least those are the ones that came to my mind. My kids knew mostly illustrators, and not the old ones like Chuck Jones and Fritz Freleng.

[chart]

(1) this is the second Friday puzzle in a row with CAT at the center. So Jim Davis was my plan B.

(2) I assumed "I made you" was a key part of the title since titles are dense valuable real estate, and I thought of parent/child relationships. I noticed ABRAHAM/ISAAC right away, and then I noticed DIANA (Princess Di) and JOHNSPENCER (the name of her dad). That seemed like too incredible of a coincidence to pass up, so I was stuck for days. Eventually I made it ashore when a nudge told me to give that up.

[kurtalert]

Well... after seeing the solution, I'm glad I didn't spend any more time with it than I did- because I was never going to see those nicknames. It's a good mechanism to keep in mind for future puzzles, though.

[tonyrobots]

Looks like I picked the wrong week to come back to meta solving after a year+ away...

Oh well, at least I got the MGWCC!

EDIT: lol, looks like I said the same thing about 10 months ago

[mikeB]

It never dawned on me that Chip was a nickname for Charles. If only . . .

[DianeA]

I had Ike, Peg, Tony, Abe and Jack (my Dad was a John, but always called Jack)...couldn't get anywhere with it.
Taking the literal "a" pair of shorts...and noticing that there were many (17) grid answers that began with the letter A, i tried to pair them up by shortening them. Guess what? zilch.
A few letters-off gets you MAMET/UNMET, INSUM/INSTA, LASER/LAMER, LANES/LAMER, which turned out to be another another dry well.
Sometimes you're just not meant to succeed.

[Gman]

I had the same thoughts as many other posters regarding CHIP (of which there are at least one or two famous cartoonists that have gone by that name) versus Charles, the extra letters in the clues appearing to be random at first, and that Schulz's nickname was SPARKY. Ultimately, I felt that it had to be CHARLES SCHULZ because it was a Matt Gaffney puzzle, and he really likes answers where one imputes the answer from the pattern of the metanism. It was nice to confirm with a friendly PM from a more experienced solver, too .

[RobM]

I'm very skeptical of Chip as a nickname for Charles. In mid-20th century upper income families, it was one of the Chip-Trip-Skip nickname system. Chip (as in chip off the old block) was a Junior; Trip was a III; and Skip was someone who had is grandfather's name but not his father's.

Wikipedia has a page of famous Chips https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chip_(name). There are about 50, of which only about 15 whose names were actually Charles. And some of those (e.g. 1940s-50s diplomat and Ambassador to the USSR Charles "Chip" Bohlen) got the Chip nickname the old fashioned way -- they were named after their wealthy fathers.

Disclaimer: I'm by no means saying that's the reason I didn't solve the puzzle. I was nowhere near the correct rabbit hole regardless of the Charles/Chip issue.