"Find Us Online" September 23, 2022

[kurtalert]

I'm still confused on how you got to answer. ????

The full URLs for each theme answer were:
PETA.ORG
SENATE.GOV
BROWN.EDU
PINTEREST.COM
NAVY.MIL

Each of those answers could be anagrammed to another answer in the grid- but you had to remove one letter.

So, PETAORG anagrams to PARGET by removing the O. SENATE.GOV anagrams to STONE AGE by removing the V. BROWN.EDU anagrams to RUB DOWN by removing the E. PINTEREST.COM anagrams to CONTRETEMPTS by removing the I. And, finally, NAVY.MIL anagrams to VAINLY by removing the M.

If you order these from top to bottom & left to right in the grid, you spell out MOVIE with the letters that you had to remove in order to complete the anagrams.

[DBMiller]

I'm still confused on how you got to answer. ????

Think of it either as a word/letter rebus or letter math if you will.

NAVY + MIL - VAINLY = M
PETA + ORG - PARGET = O
SENATE + GOV - STONEAGE = V
PINTEREST+ COM - CONTRETEMPS = I
BROWN + EDI - RUBDOWN= E

[Barney]

https://crosswordfiend.com/2022/09/25/w ... r-23-2022/

Crossword Fiend always has a good explanation, beyond the brevity in the WSJ, along with a song. I particularly loved today’s music selection. Thanks, Conrad.

[femullen]

I had a look at this briefly on the way to a wedding. Made no sense to me. Even after seeing @Joe Ross' reveal this morning it still made no sense. Took a couple of you providing additional details to clarify that I wouldn't have had a prayer of solving this. So, two wins for me over the weekend: I gained all the time not spent pulling out my meta-hair, and Madame and I gained a lovely daughter-in-law.

Life is grand.

[CalRhody]

My answer was not correct. Now I know why I was so unsure.

Here is what I thought it might be:

navy.Mil
peta.Org
senate.Gov
pinterest.Com
brown.Edu

The first letters of the extensions are M, O, G, C, and E which can be unscrambled as "GE.COM", something that you can find online. Not really a click, but a light bulb certainly did turn on when I saw that. Whoops!

Nice work by those who got the correct answer.

[chart]

The presence in the puzzle of awls, brawl, SHAWL, and PAWLS caught the eye but ended up leading nowhere (find online = web crawl?). I can only imagine how much fun there is in creating all the wordplay that isn't even part of the meta. The flip side is the all the wordplay leads to rabbits!

[KscX]

Hope not to offend… A solving friend said they thought a better answer would have been PORNO. . That would have been a funny solve! And maybe inappropriate for this proper crowd.

[Guy]

I started tinkering around with domains when I realized the 5 answers had different domains. I arrived at the missing letter piece when I noticed that Brown and Owned overlayed had the correct letters for the URL except for a missing "u". I searched "vainly" for something similar for Navy, and tripped to the anagrams. On to the others, but the "rub" was that Brown and Owned were not anagrams, but I eventually got "down" to the correct anagram, and the meta answer.

[pjc]

My answer was not correct. Now I know why I was so unsure.

Here is what I thought it might be:

navy.Mil
peta.Org
senate.Gov
pinterest.Com
brown.Edu

The first letters of the extensions are M, O, G, C, and E which can be unscrambled as "GE.COM", something that you can find online. Not really a click, but a light bulb certainly did turn on when I saw that. Whoops!

Nice work by those who got the correct answer.

If I was the WSJ person who randomly pulls answers and saw you submitted that, I would think that was a FINE alternate answer.

[ship4u]

We'll join in with the chorus of @Deb F : "Just another mugless Monday....."

[The XWord Rabbit]

We'll join in with the chorus of @Deb F : "Just another mugless Monday....."

Not necessarily. There's a lot of competition for Xword Rabbit Hole Nominees this week.

[Conrad]

https://crosswordfiend.com/2022/09/25/w ... r-23-2022/

Crossword Fiend always has a good explanation, beyond the brevity in the WSJ, along with a song. I particularly loved today’s music selection. Thanks, Conrad.

Thanks, @Barney! It took me a while to find a movie-themed song for this writeup, and then I (re) heard Death Cab for Cutie's latest on Sirius XMU.

[MajordomoTom]

I fell down the "find the/an-other domain with the same TLD" rabbit hole and never crawled back out:

Code: Select all

1A  NAVY      .MIL  72A CODE
5A  PETA      .ORG  73A CATO
57A SENATE    .GOV  49A TSA
62A PINTEREST .COM  37A ROKU
68A BROWN     .EDU  15A UTAH 

Like (I think it was) HeadinHome, I found three of alternates quickly, while one (.COM) had too many possibilities and the fifth (.MIL) not enough, although I eventually discovered that there is a code.mil domain. But I couldn't make anything out of CCTRU.

Same, but I went with TheMirage.com

[altosax]

Another correct answer (I hope) would be “Vimeo”.

[CPJohnson]

Another correct answer (I hope) would be “Vimeo”.

For the 7-26-19 puzzle, the answer was IDYLL. I submitted dilly. I never asked if my wrong answer would be accepted; all it asked for was a 5-letter word. (I still remember the error, and I usually remember to check for anagram re-spellings of my first guess.)

[Darth]

Like many, I quickly found the correct domains for each themer, although Navy had several options. Not making sense of MOGCE -- except GEMCO (or possibly GE.COM!), which seemed doubtful, I was nagged by that recurring message ("Find Them Online!), which kept me thinking there had to be some sort of online scavenger hunt going on here!...

It became more like a rabbit hunt!... I started thinking "online" could mean something related to a "line" and then spotted TAG line (?), TAN line (tan = a shade of BROWN), aBASE line (as in NAVY BASE), and (AHEM)...HEM line (as in PINtrest up that hem!)...

That whole process seemed to make sense as more of the grid middle was being used, but I just couldn't get anywhere with it. It was now 1AM on Friday. Thanks to Matthew in Tokyo who was "online" I was able to share my findings. He confirmed my list of domains as correct and key to the puzzle. I just needed to see straight and avoid those rascally rabbits.

[MikeMillerwsj]

The contest answer is MOVIE. Add the domain name extension to each of the five “Find them online” sites, then subtract one letter and anagram to get a grid answer: NAVY.MIL – M = VAINLY; PETA.ORG – O = PARGET; SENATE.GOV – V = STONE AGE; PINTEREST.COM – I = CONTRETEMPS; BROWN.EDU – E = RUBDOWN. The subtracted letters spell the contest answer.

This one was tough! (Stumped us at puzzle HQ.). We had 697 entries, with 63% correct--lower than our usual 75% but impressive in this case.

Incorrect answers included DOMAIN(S) (34) , GE.COM (22, see intriguing logic for that in entry above this one), YAHOO (11), SITES (9), and lots of others in small numbers.

Congrats to this week's winner: Richard Buckley of Woodland Hills, Calif.!

[Louwers]

My answer was not correct. Now I know why I was so unsure.

Here is what I thought it might be:

navy.Mil
peta.Org
senate.Gov
pinterest.Com
brown.Edu

The first letters of the extensions are M, O, G, C, and E which can be unscrambled as "GE.COM", something that you can find online. Not really a click, but a light bulb certainly did turn on when I saw that. Whoops!

Nice work by those who got the correct answer.

I went with GE.com as well. Not as meta gas mic as the solution, but certainly defensible.

[ArchaicMage]

My answer was not correct. Now I know why I was so unsure.

Here is what I thought it might be:

navy.Mil
peta.Org
senate.Gov
pinterest.Com
brown.Edu

The first letters of the extensions are M, O, G, C, and E which can be unscrambled as "GE.COM", something that you can find online. Not really a click, but a light bulb certainly did turn on when I saw that. Whoops!

Nice work by those who got the correct answer.

That’s the logic I followed as well but didn’t submit cause it just didn’t feel right

[The XWord Rabbit]

The XWord Rabbit is proud of you Muggles. After last week’s rather pedestrian tales you did much better this week. Many of you demonstrated you are not masters of your domains, at least so far as Mr. Gaffney’s “Find Us Online” puzzle goes.

Five clues led to five entries that had to be completed with appropriate three-letter domain endings: NAVY.MIL, PETA.ORG, SENATE.GOV, PINTEREST.COM and BROWN.EDU. When anagrammed, each appeared somewhere else in the grid with an added letter. Those extra letters, in order, spelled out the meta: MOVIE.

But what about those other entries that were also domains? That’s when your XWord Rabbit began to salivate. Omnibus found five other grid entries that contained a URL ending with an added letter, getting a perfectly logical answer to what you can find online:

PAT -> PA.gov (T)
NEAR -> NEA.org (R)
UMNO -> UMN.edu (O)
SHAWL -> SHAW.auf.mil (L)
IDOL -> IDO-DANCE.com (L)

Something you find online – TROLL

This brought a tear to The XWord Rabbit’s eye. Such a lovely – and misguided– solution, and so worthy of our first nomination.

Some Muggles focused on a single missing domain name, like Wendy Walker and Main Marge who had a problem, working without a NET.

There’s hoover, trying to make sense of CCTRU, a composite of the start letters of five rather remote grid entries that still filled the “add the extension” requirement. Or what about CalRhody, using the start letters of the domains themselves to arrive at GE.COM?

Finally, there’s aaugusti, our second nominated Muggle, who followed your Rabbit deep in a hole and found a website selling miniatures with names that no one can either spell or pronounce.

I had the five theme answers and their separate web extensions. Then I saw “Utah” and knew that Utah.edu is a site. So is tsa.gov and cato.org. Then I found that code.mil is a military website. That left me hunting for the match to .com and I was led to the clue oreo. In order I took the first letter of each match and was left with UTOCC, which if you search the web, leads you to this:

https://mierce-miniatures.com/index.php ... &sea=UTOCC

UTOCC is a pony of an anime character, and you can buy the figurine of it.

(Take note, Muggles, you can pre-order the CROM OF CARN WRACH WAR-DRUNE ON FOOT now!)
https://mierce-miniatures.com/index.php ... ld_200_100

In all, it was a lovely week with some lovely tales of Muggles lost. Your XWord Rabbit thinks he’ll have a snack of green leafy vegetables and sit in the warm sun. Life is good.