"Back Nine" September 30, 2022

[Sleepy]

Ashore as of Saturday afternoon! Just getting around to posting. After reading all the golf jokes on here, I might just need to take up the sport!

[Joe Ross]

[Joe Ross]

[escapeartist]

I had anagrammed the letters but was not happy with that, but after submitting realized that the letters spelled correctly in clue order.

Nicely done Mr. Berry!

[woozy]

I anagrammed first ("Club Shoe + u? What's a club shoe +u") and got club house and saw they were in clue order which is my least favorite least intuitive order.

I tried spelling words backwards and but APE, ERA, NEMO, TEN etc but you know that is a rabbit hole when it's not a slam dunk ("Is DAP a word? For that matter is NEMO? And what about words that are already palindromes such as TAT (is that a word) and ANNA")

Over three days I never spent more than 10 minutes at a time. I tried doing the ends of words: BAH + A; BRA +C; RED + R; LATE + P. But what about SET which is in the realm of feeling like a coincidence and STAR which could be STAR or STARE.

It wasn't till tonight ("Gee, I guess I shouldn't give up on it") that I noticed NAVY and the RED + ROOT+EDAM and EDAM = CHEESE and notice that nine words RED, ROOT, SET, ANIMAL etc but at that point my wife threw me out the door and told me I had to walk the dog. I felt bad as there was EDAM = cheese but nothing that really meant the other words (some ambiguously similar but none *meaning* the words. Certainly no ROOT or RED or STARE or NAVY). As I walked the dog I remember "but HATED is there". I dragged the dog to finish the walk to see if I can find the rest. First time through the grid SET could be laid but it was kind of cheating as "set" was actually in the clue. Going through the grid I figured some had the word in the clue and weren't actually synonymous with the word at all. "Surely that's considered too simply and spelling things out *too* much" but there it was. The words WERE and HAD TO BE in the clues themselves.

That makes this one of the easiest puzzles in months.

But it was one of the hardest to solve easy puzzles I have ever seen.

[rjy]

Good evening muggles

Our final count is 5 on the ship and 215 on the shore

Good luck winning the mug

Make that 6… I’ll be here all week

[Tina]

The first backward word I saw was "ANIMAL" and I remembered the clue for ELMO was "Red Muppet," so I thought the meta was going to involve alternate answers to clues. But then I realized Animal is actually kind of orangey-pink anyway.

[Sleepy]

Just curious, do you need to include contact info/mailing address when you submit your answer? Or does WSJ contact you via email to get the info, if you are the mug winner?

[Omnibus]

Just curious, do you need to include contact info/mailing address when you submit your answer? Or does WSJ contact you via email to get the info, if you are the mug winner?

They send you an email. Good luck!

[Onaquest]

My husband bought me a set of golf clubs and ten golf lessons for my retirement. Guess the puzzle this week was a ‘sign’. Better get going.

[Bird Lives]

Try it yourself. Find a word or phrase that is composed of three consecutive smaller words backwards. i can't think of even one, though maybe with more time and some Internet resources I might get one. Patrick Berry had four, and he probably left a few on the cutting room floor. After all, his WSJ Saturday variety puzzle did something along similar lines -- i.e., two-way lines. He composes Rows Garden puzzles too, which also require this ability to see things backwards and forwards. Amazing.

[pjc]

As usual, am in awe of the construction.

Not much to talk about this week for rabbit holes. Due to the puzzle title, I saw the backward words right away and it was a quick trip to seeing those pop up in clues. The only snag was that I had the word order wrong for a while, then FINALLY saw the 'clue order' ordering (duh!) for the solve!

Winning streak up to 7 now - which ties my personal best. The thing is: the last time I got 7 successes in a row, that was immediately followed by 3 misses in a row (my personal worst!). So, we'll see what Thursday brings... Especially because I'm out of town Fri - Sun...

Boswords night 1 tonight! Wahoo!

[MaineMarge]

This came up on my Word-a-Day today

Meta coincidence cracked me up

[Bob cruise director]

My husband bought me a set of golf clubs and ten golf lessons for my retirement. Guess the puzzle this week was a ‘sign’. Better get going.

@Onaquest Golf is one of those games where it becomes more enjoyable the better you get. And that only comes with practice and playing. Stick with it.

[jrdad]

After filling in 1 and 2 Across and seeing the obvious palindrome, 'BAHAHAB', I started reading all the answers backwards, and voila! Strange coincidence or hint to the metanism?

[flyingMoose]

After filling in 1 and 2 Across and seeing the obvious palindrome, 'BAHAHAB', I started reading all the answers backwards, and voila! Strange coincidence or hint to the metanism?

I suspected a hint.

[Flying_Burrito]

Try it yourself. Find a word or phrase that is composed of three consecutive smaller words backwards. i can't think of even one, though maybe with more time and some Internet resources I might get one. Patrick Berry had four, and he probably left a few on the cutting room floor. After all, his WSJ Saturday variety puzzle did something along similar lines -- i.e., two-way lines. He composes Rows Garden puzzles too, which also require this ability to see things backwards and forwards. Amazing.

Repaid desserts?

[Bird Lives]

Try it yourself.

Repaid desserts?

This is the sort of thing Matt Gaffney likes to do -- come up with a phrase that is not a phrase anybody has ever used but that is useful in the grid and then create a clue for it.

[JeanneC]

Saw “bear” and “armies” and initially thought of Nicklaus and Palmer, two of the greats. There were also numerous first names of PGA and LPGA players.
Fortunately, I let those go and thought like a “muggle”.
Great “aha” this week.
Thank you Mr. Berry!

[Ergcat]

Took me a while to see the backwards words.

I started with “counting back 9 letters” in the long answers…. Garbage. Then counted back 9 letters in other places like rows, clues, etc. Nada! Then I looked at the letters in the grid spaces with number 9 ( 9, 19, 29, 39,etc). Nada!
At some point, I saw some words spelled backwards …..but I saw some in and outside of the long themers. Like “ape” for epa and “era” for are) . I could find alternates or synonyms for some but not all. FINALLY, realized there were 9 backwards words just in the 4 long theme answers and got the AHA to the mechanism!