"Keep on Truckin'" October 14, 2022

[MaineMarge]

How did “Good Buddy” get so many votes?
From the grid?

I’ve got a REALLY good BUDDY here. Buddy helped us in the garden during all his high school and college years, then produced Dorothy! Here she was 10 months on July 4!

[Dplass]

How did “Good Buddy” get so many votes?
From the grid?

I’ve got a REALLY good BUDDY here. Buddy helped us in the garden during all his high school and college years, then produced Dorothy! Here she was 10 months on July 4!
2A124ADB-66BD-4A0A-BEA4-286A843F422F.jpeg

"Ten four good buddy" was a pretty stock response in the 70s.

[LadyBird]

How did “Good Buddy” get so many votes?
From the grid?

I’ve got a REALLY good BUDDY here. Buddy helped us in the garden during all his high school and college years, then produced Dorothy! Here she was 10 months on July 4!
2A124ADB-66BD-4A0A-BEA4-286A843F422F.jpeg

"Ten four good buddy" was a pretty stock response in the 70s.

That was going to be my Hail Mary answer, for that very reason.

[KayW]

How did “Good Buddy” get so many votes?
From the grid?

I’ve got a REALLY good BUDDY here. Buddy helped us in the garden during all his high school and college years, then produced Dorothy! Here she was 10 months on July 4!
2A124ADB-66BD-4A0A-BEA4-286A843F422F.jpeg

"Ten four good buddy" was a pretty stock response in the 70s.

That was going to be my Hail Mary answer, for that very reason.

It was my immediate WAG, too. I was relieved when it turned out not to be THE answer. Only because it was such an obvious guess.

[HunterX]

How did “Good Buddy” get so many votes?
From the grid?

I’ve got a REALLY good BUDDY here. Buddy helped us in the garden during all his high school and college years, then produced Dorothy! Here she was 10 months on July 4!
2A124ADB-66BD-4A0A-BEA4-286A843F422F.jpeg

"Ten four good buddy" was a pretty stock response in the 70s.

It certainly was.

But apparently, truckers do not say it anymore. The term "good buddy" now has a new meaning in trucker lingo. So it would be an insult (or could be an insult, I suppose) to say it to another trucker nowadays.

[The XWord Rabbit]

Your XWord Rabbit has a bit of advice to all of those who spend their time evaluating candidates for important contests, like Rabbit Holes and Midterm Elections (actually, in many respects they are similar): “Don’t believe all the early claims and pronouncements made by the entrants.”

Shortly after last week’s puzzle was posted the whining began. “Still on the ship…” “Stuck with Isaac…” “Lost and adrift…” and “If I am going to be drowned, why, in the name of the seven mad gods who rule the sea, was I allowed to come thus far and contemplate sand and trees?”

Wait! That last one was from Steven Crane’s “The Open Boat”, something your Rabbit learned in high school English class. Regardless, the point is: Early reports of a tsunami of Muggles who had gone astray proved false, as most of you found your way to shore, albeit many with a helpful nudge or two.

Mr. Shenk’s Keep on Truckin’ puzzle was deceptively straight-forward (an oxymoron, if there ever was one). 38A proved to be the critical entry. “Ten-four” referred to 16 clues consisting of two words, a 10-letter word followed by a 4-letter word. The first letter of the answers to those clues yielded the meta: SEMIPROFESSIONAL.

The XWord Rabbit had given up hope that there would be any nominees at all when suddenly the clouds parted. He has to admit that this is the first week when a couple of late responses so befuddled him that he can’t begin to explain the logic involved. But his is not to reason why….

Kas said:

“Oh, sure, I saw the "Ten Four," and knew it was relevant. So I tried to make something of the (2) 10-letter words...and maybe the 4-letter words following? Then I tried to anagram the first letters of all of the 4- and 10-letter words. (At this point, one knows perfectly well that one is in a rabbit-hole...I never said I was smart, but I am nothing if not stubborn...) THEN I thought, okay...maybe it has to do with the 10th and 4th answer. Nope. AND THEN I thought, hey, maybe it's the grid answers that are *divisible* by 10 (5) and 4 (16)...and had quite the grand old time trying to anagram: "SPLMMAAPISTECFTINS" (Which by this point was truly just my plaintive offerings to the Frustration Deities, in hopes they would pity me and bestow another idea...)”

Or this from Collegetowngirl:

“My rabbit hole— there are four grid answers that have the word “ten” anagrammed in them - ENTer recENT priNTEr aNET. Anagramming those you get CARRIER wow plus SPER. Then decided okay maybe the fifth word with ten not anagrammed, TENsest, probably needed to be in there too but CARRIER PRETENS didn’t add up to anything.” See the accompanying worksheet in an earlier post.

To the rest of you who had trouble finding the exit ramp to the “Keep on Truckin’” puzzle: The XWord Rabbit sends his fondest regards – with a special shoutout to Hidden in 3D who referred to me as “powerful and wise” in a post. Your Rabbit will try to remain humble in spite of it all.

[Laura M]

By the way, I'm embarrassed to say that the pun went entirely over my head and I submitted either SEMIPROFESSIONAL or SEMI-PROFESSIONAL (via website, so I can't check) instead of realizing that it was two words. Not sure I should count that as a solve!

[escapeartist]

I think that counts as a solve.

[chriscross]

What helped me in this puzzle was having such a hard time filling in the grid!

Like others, I first started in the rabbit hole with the two rows in the grid that had a ten letter word and a four letter word. But then I looked back at the clues - the constraints on the way 16 of the clues were written helped explain why I originally thought the crossword itself was so bad this week.

[Al Sisti]

I almost pulled a "Grilled [Ham and] Cheese;" nearly submitting "Semi Pro." I think part of me couldn't believe he could pull off that mechanism --without making it obvious -- for nine more clues. And my answer would have been wrong (as was "Grilled Cheese").