"Trending Ending" November 4, 2022

[meowmiao71]

We got it but skipped a step! We noticed the bigrams covered all of the vowels so we figured the answer would end _Y_Y. After some thinking, we came up with SLYLY, confirmed it with an onshore person, and submitted.

Well, my partner wasn't satisfied with this and figured there had to be more to it. After looking at it for a few more minutes, he found the other step. Clever as always!*

* Referring to the puzzle here, but my partner is also clever!

[Bird Lives]

All I can think of is that Matt didn’t notice it. It would have been simple to avoid by clueing 57D as fragrant organic compound (ESTER) and 69A as seasonal actress on the O.C. (Reeser —Autumn Reeser).

It could have been inadvertent. But Matt often uses the last across clue as a place for a hint or an Easter egg, and maybe this was one of those instances. Since themers are all symmetrically located and since 1A does not end in a double bigram, REESES would not have been a loose end or a distraction.

[eagle1279]

Ashore, motivated by my daughter’s gloating that the answer hit her after “too many mimosas at brunch." I won’t post her specific gloat in case it’s a spoiler . . .

My daughter's mimosa-infused challenge was that the meta answer was "easy peasy." Ha Ha. Also while I was stumped, my son called to say that he and his kids were having hot cocoa (CoCo?) after an afternoon of kite-flying.

[Flying_Burrito]

Any-one else bugged that ReES-ES also ends with a double bigram. I mean.... Matt is certainly clever enough to avoid that so why didn't he?

Matt specifically states "possessive" in the def for 69A. The possessive 's is never part of a noun. That's why the meta is squeaky clean in my book.

[Ergcat]

Any-one else bugged that ReES-ES also ends with a double bigram. I mean.... Matt is certainly clever enough to avoid that so why didn't he?

Then it would pair with 42a “DULL-ES” and then that would leave us with “DULL”…. Definitely NOT true for Matt’s meta puzzles!

Did anyone notice that the answer “SLYLY” is true in both grid order AND theme answer order? Very SLY !

[Onaquest]

Any-one else bugged that ReES-ES also ends with a double bigram. I mean.... Matt is certainly clever enough to avoid that so why didn't he?

Matt specifically states "possessive" in the def for 69A. The possessive 's is never part of a noun. That's why the meta is squeaky clean in my book.

It’s been pointed out by someone cleverer than me that down in that right hand corner you have 57A FORGET with 63D ES(T)ES - inadvertent or v clever?

[Tom Shea]

Any-one else bugged that ReES-ES also ends with a double bigram. I mean.... Matt is certainly clever enough to avoid that so why didn't he?

I fell victim to it, but that isn't what really got me. It was my bad penmanship once again. Those mean old dead nuns are all laughing at me right now. But then again, I have ice water and they don't.

[Commodore]

Ahh. Bigram. He beat me to a pulp on the 5th grade playground.
We possessive'd this rabbit hole: "OH META IS CLUE" Anagram'd letters of the 6 Bigrams. (Yes, including the Halloween treat.)
Arrgh. Off to raid the galley. This should get me through to Thursday.

[pjc]

No rabbit holes for me this week. LUY jumped out at me as I was solving the grid - and I had already filled in HONOLULU, so I figured that had to be the mechanism. And, voila, it worked! Didn't even notice REESES!

[mheberlingx100]

I noticed Reese’s, but fortunately it was the last one on the grid. After I got SLYLY through the meta mechanism, I figured that Reese’s wasn’t to be included. And I couldn’t find a three letter answer in the grid with E-S.

[RobM]

Did anyone else think at first the answer would be ten letters? I caught on to the mechanism while still solving the grid and kept thinking that there would be two three-letter grid entries starting with each letter pair, since there were two pairs in each of the long entries.

[Bird Lives]

And I've heard that it has developed a method of yoga as well.

[Guy]

I continued to rabbit hole on same three letter triangles with a vertex in the double letter endings, didn’t exactly fit for all five endings and eventually stubbornness gave way to enlightenment. Though at one point I managed to contort enough to suss out “muse” as part of an answer, makes me wonder though, what is the muse of a meta crossword contest creator?

[LadyBird]

Though at one point I managed to contort enough to suss out “muse” as part of an answer, makes me wonder though, what is the muse of a meta crossword contest creator?

Marquis de Sade

[Mister Squawk]

HA, ME, TI, CO, LU. Five double endings, five vowels. Find a word ending in the form xYxY. Not gonna happen. Look at every word in the grid looking for endings that can be doubled etc etc. Finally notice the presence of the five three-letter words.

[The XWord Rabbit]

The XWord Rabbit has a growing feeling of dread regarding nominees this week.
Should you have any stories worthy of note with the "Trending Ending" puzzle, please
post them sooner rather than later. The Rabbit's internet provider has been out to his burrow
and reports the power company damaged a line when it installed a new pole some weeks ago.
Service is spotty at best and your Rabbit may have to hang out at a nearby Starbucks
for wi-fi connectivity.

Your support would be greatly appreciated.
Meanwhile, another Iced Brown Sugar Oat Milk Shaken Espresso, please.

[SusieG]

Here’s my rabbit hole: I assumed “trending” meant that it had something to do with recent news, especially when I saw LULU, my mind went to Lula, the recent president-elect of Brazil. Of course! I also see TITI, which must be Bibi (Netanyahu). Then COCO must really be Toto (Wolff of formula one fame). The other two did not materialize, and I was not able to backsolve with only _ BT_A. I’m happy that I was able to back myself out of that tunnel.

[jrdad]

I thought the solutions was kind of meh. I now see the amazing elegance of five vowels and *lyly. Bravo, Mr. Gaffney!

[Henry Paul]

HA, ME, TI, CO, LU. Five double endings, five vowels. Find a word ending in the form xYxY. Not gonna happen. Look at every word in the grid looking for endings that can be doubled etc etc. Finally notice the presence of the five three-letter words.

That's what I found fascinating about the construction: -- all the vowels in the theme answers: A E I O U, with the answer vowel being "Y"

Tres cool Matt...

[MikeMillerwsj]

The contest answer is SLYLY. Each theme answer ends in a double bigram: BROUHAHA, NEFERTITI, TEXCOCO, SUPERMEME and HONOLULU. Find a three-letter word in the grid starting with each bigram: HAS, TIL, COY, MEL and LUY. The added letters spell the contest answer.

This was a great week for our solvers: We had a big turnout with 1876 entries, and an unusually large 91% were correct. A very clever puzzle--with that nice Easter egg in the last entry (REESES), which also used that double-bigram ending.

Other guesses were for HTML (20, using the first letters of 4 of the bigrams), various phrases with THEME/THEMATIC/THEMATICALLY (8), COYLY (2) and a handful of others.

Congrats to this week's winner, Jonathan Lipinski of San Francisco!