"Reaching Across the Aisle"

[Al Sisti]

The themers you're looking for are row-wise symmetrical.

[woozy]

Okay, the nudges seem to be implying the first (and only) mechanism I thought of but it continues to yield nothing.

[minimuggle]

It finally hit me and I fell off the couch. Like the others I had the right idea but just couldn't see it until I focused correctly. Really great puzzle. Thanks!

[Schmeel]

I'm off the couch.
I had the answer an most of the mechanism pre-nudges. The nudges told me I was on the right track.
Thanks for the puzzle!

[BarbaraK]

Hmm. I'm correct on Crosshare, but I'm still not sure about that last letter.

I hate it when I have the correct general idea, try it but don't see it, then it turns out to be the right approach after all. I should have looked just a little harder.

I had a hard time with the last letter because my eye kept jumping to something that could have been relevant but was not. When I did see it, I was embarrassed to have missed it so long.

[Cinny]

Finally, I have rolled off the couch!! I had the answer from the start, but couldn't figure out how to backsolve. Maybe I have just been sleeping on the couch all this time!!

[woozy]

I think the thing I need to realize about Al's puzzle is he is a master-crafter. Thus his mechanisms are always complete, but elegant and balanced... and complete. So when I find mechanisms that are stubby, short, actually working but inelegant, then... they aren't the ones.

However as a mastercrafter Al doesn't always sweep away the stubs as they are not even in his radar. .... And I get stuck on the stubs.

But I'm off the couch now.

[MarkWoychick]

Finally off the couch (with the hints) - thanks, Al!

[michaelm]

Needer of nudge, but off the couch and on the way to the theater.
Thanks Al - it's great to have your wit and wisdom back in MMM form!

[CPJohnson]

Confirmed on Crosshare....thanks, Al!

[Al Sisti]

End of day three leaderboard additions:

43 TeamDoubleTow
44 MatthewL
45 Dplass 
46 jhseeman
47 Br1
48 minimuggle 
49 Schmeel
50 JHSeeman
51 Eric Porter 
52 Tyrpmom
53 woozy
54 Mr Tex
55 Cindy Heisler
56 Sharkicicles
57 MarkWoychick
58 CPJohnson
59 michaelm
60 Magistra
61 Darrell

[sharkicicles]

Thanks Al! Loved it.

[edestlin]

FINALLY climbed off the couch! Thanks for the puzzle!

[Al Sisti]

Thursday night additions:

62 edestlin
63 kurtalert
64 kieranjboyd
65 ReB

[Al Sisti]

Friday night additions to the leaderboard:

<crickets>

...although it did get a mention in Crosshare's Top Puzzles, so that's not totally uncool.

[Al Sisti]

Good morning, and happy 25D! It’s (past) time for the reveal.

Starting with the title – Reaching Across the Aisle – hmmm… what could that mean? Certainly not politics… well, we’ll put that aside for now. How about the prompt? “A Theater Personality”? What an odd phrase; are we looking for a movie star? Well, let’s put that aside too.

Themers then? Nothing (hopefully, said as a constructor) jumps out. So now what?

Okay, remember that title we put aside? Let’s go back and parse it more closely. “Aisle”… oh, with “theater”? There might be something there; theaters have aisles. What if we treated the white squares as theater seats, and the black squares as the aisle between them? Hey, and “reaching across” might imply that we need to do something like “seats-aisle-seats”… entry-black square-entry. Might that work? It’s worth trying.

Indeed it is. The savvy solver would find, in symmetrically placed rows (1, 4, 8, 12 and 15), five theater-related terms: COSTUMES, REHEARSAL, STAGEHAND, NOISESOFF and OVERTURE… and the letters in the “aisle” spelled out U-S-H-E-R… and an usher is a theater personality, and our answer.

Now, was it perfect? Nope… some said an usher – the theater employee – is not a personality, and that Usher – the singer – is a personality, but not involved in theater. I was only thinking of the employee, but I couldn’t use “employee” in the prompt… I mean how many employees are in a theater? Maybe “personality” wasn’t the perfect word, but… it is what it is.

Other issues (there were a few, weren’t there?): Besides the five themers I wanted you to find, savvy solvers also found CHORAL (a valid theater term) and EARWIG (I suppose if they were dining on crushed jujubees or Junior Mints); they were incidental, but I really should have caught them. Sorry. Finally, more than a couple savvy solvers took great pleasure in telling me that Macho Camacho is CAMACHO and not COMACHO. Maybe I should posted a corrected clue for 13A: “Descriptor of the career of once-well-known-comedienne”?

Okay, enough talk. The winner of either a Utica Club keepsake, or a Blarney Rebel Band CD, or $15 donation to any charity – randomly picked from our 67 solvers -- is @jhseeman . Congrats, and let me know what prize you want…

I’ll hopefully be back with a new meta in the next few weeks. In the meantime, save me a seat in the balcony!

[mattythewsjpuzzler]

Didn't get it. Got very distracted by the broken up AISLE in words like ISRAELITES, ALIENIST I could never get out of that rabbit hole. Nice though!

[KayW]

I submitted with an 80% solution - it took me quite a while to find the E. I'd heard of the play NOISES OFF but never saw it. And I didn't know what the phrase meant until I googled it this week. Thanks for a great meta and for this week's vocabulary lesson!

[JeanneC]

Ah, the weekend WSJ meta should give such pleasure…!

[Bird Lives]

"some said an usher – the theater employee..."
I was one of those (were there really others?) who said that ushers were supposed to project a bland personality lest they steal the show from the performers onstage. But I was kidding. I have been ushed by some whose demeanor let you know they were really actors waiting for their big break.

"and that Usher – the singer – is a personality,"
But in my note to Al, I also noted that Usher was indeed theatre people. Wikipedia tells me he was in Chicago and in some off-Broadway play.