"Shifty Schemers" November 11, 2022

[HunterX]

Checking in briefly from Cape Town, South Africa. Downloaded the puzzle on my iPad while on the 36 hour trip here. (With an 8 hour layover in Doha just as the World Cup was starting.) Finished the grid, but never made it to the beach. Been a bit busy though.

Have to admit, I don’t remember two of the people, don’t know another, and am not buddies enough with Thomas Paine to have called him Tom. But it is quite an impressive construction!

Off to see two oceans this morning at Cape Point. Then taking a gander at some. Penguins. Don’t know if I’ll be able to get the next two week’s metas either, as I’ll be in the Nambiti Game Reserve, then Victoria Falls in Zimbabwe.

It’s a rough gig, but somebody’s got to do it. The local wines here have certainly helped!

[erk070]

First time poster, long time lurker.

Tough one! I would never have got this. I don't know most of those names nor would I have even recognized some of them as names. I'm impressed with those who got it.

I went down what I thought was a very convincing rabbit hole and never came out. CAPS on the far left and ENTER on the far right mirror a computer or typewriter keyboard. To make it worse, the left and right Shift keys are BELOW those. I spent many hours creating nonsense by shifting grid answers one letter to the left and to the right on the keyboard.

My other rabbit hole was to shift the letter E (shifty) around in various answers. Hope I'm a better schemer next week!

[meowmiao71]

My partner and I worked on it with his visiting nephews and their partners...some of the most brilliant people I've ever met and we were all stumped! I asked for a nudge, pondered some more, and was super excited to notice road crew = Rod Carew. Clever one!

@erk070, we went down the keyboard rabbit hole as well.

[Ben B]

I had sensed the mechanism but could not make it work. So I took it to my puzzle partner son and explained what I had so far and that we likely needed to figure out a famous writer, cartoonist, etc. For pamphleteer I said the only famous pamphlet I know is Common Sense so it has to be Nathan Hale. He looked at me and corrected to Thomas Paine and we were done in short order!

[clonefitz]

This was definitely one of those that left you wondering how the heck the constructor figured it out.

I’m curious which name was first for other solvers. For me, it was Lance Ito. Pretty much by accident. I was running out of ideas and wondered “do you need to think up a famous writer? Artist? There are too many. And on the other extreme, how many famous judges are there?” I joked to myself, “the only one I can think of is Lance Ito” because it’s a pretty obscure name. And amazingly, that was it.

Amazing puzzle. And the title having the same number of letters as the name/job pairs was just icing on the proverbial cake.

For me it was Lance Ito also. As I was filling the grid, I picked up on the four "for example" clues and that keyed me in right away. Other than those four, there was only one "e.g." clue: ALTEREGO. Clever

[Ergcat]

Clever construction…. I needed a nudge to see the paired themers. Then Mr. Google to get some names! Great AHA!

I (briefly) chased a rabbit down a “word ladder” hole, thinking of a letter “shift” ( that and I play Cadoggle every day) . So there was “GERM -> BERM -> BERT” and “STOW -> STEW..” luckily that rabbit hole was shallow.

[JaneGummy]

Never finished this, I saw Tom Paine, but when I Googled him, it said he was an activist, not a writer. So thought I was in a rabbit hole. And I don't know the other three names.

[Bird Lives]

At least we didn't have any astigmatics who misread the title.

[Scott M]

Checking in briefly from Cape Town, South Africa. Downloaded the puzzle on my iPad while on the 36 hour trip here. (With an 8 hour layover in Doha just as the World Cup was starting.) Finished the grid, but never made it to the beach. Been a bit busy though.

Have to admit, I don’t remember two of the people, don’t know another, and am not buddies enough with Thomas Paine to have called him Tom. But it is quite an impressive construction!

Off to see two oceans this morning at Cape Point. Then taking a gander at some. Penguins. Don’t know if I’ll be able to get the next two week’s metas either, as I’ll be in the Nambiti Game Reserve, then Victoria Falls in Zimbabwe.

It’s a rough gig, but somebody’s got to do it. The local wines here have certainly helped!

Let me put in a recommendation for dinner at Belly of the Beast. Fantastic, adventurous dining! 5 - 8 courses of whatever they decide to serve that night, and as a snout-to-tail butchery, some courses are going to be... different. But it was all delicious, and extremely reasonably priced. Great service, and amazing wine pairings too.

BTW, I never left my bar stool on this one. Might as well have been written in Afrikaans for as far as I got with it.

[mbryant]

I saw Tom Paine and Rod Carew right away. Then searched Laine for a cartoonist and found Blaine, a Canadian political cartoonist, and then anagramed LaceInto to Alito as a Jurist. I thought Rod and Tom were nice coincidences. Leftover letters seemed okay but were meaningless. I searched for other writers and found Verne in Nerve (but also Uris in Jurist) and Laver (coincidentally also a Rod) in Levar. Also saw that a Player "bats" from "baas" and a Jurist "rule" from "lune" and Artists "paint" from "taint" and a Writer "pens" from "pins". Wrong tense so not elegant and "Pert" or "Anti" didn't feel right. Went nowhere for two days with these rabbit holes but knew I was on the right track. Finally googled famous cartoonist and saw Keane and saw how the first name was spelled and realized my mistake. I tossed Alito from the court room and found Lance Ito. Incredible construction. Very impressive. I would have been kicking myself if I hadn't corrected my mistakes. Not often down rabbit holes knowing the right mechanism.

[DMc]

Found everyone except Bil Keane. "Ike Blane" is apparently a recording artist, but obscure, and PBAN was dead end.

[auee89]

Never made it to shore this weekend. I am moving my youngest from Indianapolis to Tucson and completed the journey last night. Solved the grid on Friday and saw that if I shifted the p below lace would read placed into and saw sort right there. Now I was hopelessly stuck in that hole for the entire weekend without having time to study the grid again.

[EdStrong]

How’s this one for an alternate metanism: The clues “less than”, “non specific amount”, “X, at times”, and “avoids a tag, maybe” all can be clues for the following shift-keys: <, ~, *, and #. The answers for those clues begin with B, A, T, and S or BATS. Not sure how scheming bats are, but they’re pretty shifty…

Got stuck on “Less Than”, which trapped me in an entirely different metaverse!

[JoeS]

I lept immediately to what I thought had to be the correct answer - POLS. I did finally get to the correct answer (Rod Carew was the first name I found) after much staring. And as Bird Lives challenged, I have yet to come up with another example that fits the mechanism.

[DrTom]

Checking in briefly from Cape Town, South Africa. Downloaded the puzzle on my iPad while on the 36 hour trip here. (With an 8 hour layover in Doha just as the World Cup was starting.) Finished the grid, but never made it to the beach. Been a bit busy though.

Have to admit, I don’t remember two of the people, don’t know another, and am not buddies enough with Thomas Paine to have called him Tom. But it is quite an impressive construction!

Off to see two oceans this morning at Cape Point. Then taking a gander at some. Penguins. Don’t know if I’ll be able to get the next two week’s metas either, as I’ll be in the Nambiti Game Reserve, then Victoria Falls in Zimbabwe.

It’s a rough gig, but somebody’s got to do it. The local wines here have certainly helped!

Taking a gander at some penguins? Well that is something to crow about, are you doing it on a lark? Remember not to break any cardinal rules. OK, Ladybird, you jump in now.

Why do I hear Toto playing in my mind....

[DrTom]

Found everyone except Bil Keane. "Ike Blane" is apparently a recording artist, but obscure, and PBAN was dead end.

I found Ike too, but you are correct he seemed far to obscure. I never knew Keane spelled his name Bil and had you asked I would have sworn it was Bill all these years, what a circus.

[DrTom]

At least we didn't have any astigmatics who misread the title.

That would have been crappy!

[Bird Lives]

and I’m working on @Bird Lives‘s challenge… it’s ON!

What we’re looking for is a name, preferably well-known, that becomes a word or phrase, preferably recognizable, when one letter is shifted to another position. I couldn’t find any. If only BLAN were a word, there would be BODY BLAN. Or if Tom and Gisele named their daughter CINDER (short for Cinderella of course), we’d have CIDER BRANDY, i.e. Calvados or applejack.

How did Mike come up with these? Did he do what I did and mentally run through names – maybe lists of names in various categories (movie stars, athletes, etc.) — till he found four good ones? Probably not. My guess is that he’s one of those people who looks at a name, word, or phrase and sees anagrams. (Remember Marie Kelly?) Maybe he even records these in a notebook, with a special section for when he finds a one-letter-shifter. When that section finally has four eight-letter names, he goes to work.

[Dplass]

Maybe it was having AUTOS, ROAD, and BIKE in the gird, but I began the solve thinking about gearshifts. As we were looking for a four-letter word, I thought that could correspond to Park, Reverse, Neutral, and Drive. Scanning the grid, I see ATPAR: Hey, that's 'Park' with the K taking off! We've got NEWT in the lower right. Well, that's the first syllable of 'Neutral'. There must be a ROLE or something like it in the grid! No? Hmm. Well, I see ERR and VEE in a column, and those anagram to 'Reverse' with the S missing. And then you have ARRIVE, which is pretty close to 'Drive'! OK, those are all stretches, and they are stretching in different directions. But what about 'Low' for a gear? There's BELOW sitting smack dab in the middle! One of these must be leading to a gearshift themed mechanism...

And that's how I spent Saturday afternoon! I finally concluded I wasn't going to get anywhere, and went back to look at everything in a fresh light. That's when I noticed the four 'for example' s in the clues, as opposed to the one 'e.g.', and it was smooth sailing from there.

That was one of my (admittedly shallow) rabbit holes. I wrote PRNDL on the grid but didn't get that far with it.

[DrTom]

and I’m working on @Bird Lives‘s challenge… it’s ON!

What we’re looking for is a name, preferably well-known, that becomes a word or phrase, preferably recognizable, when one letter is shifted to another position. I couldn’t find any. If only BLAN were a word, there would be BODY BLAN. Or if Tom and Giselle named their daughter CINDER (short for Cinderella of course), we’d have CIDER BRANDY, i.e. Calvados or applejack.

How did Mike come up with these? Did he do what I did and mentally run through names – maybe lists of names in various categories (movie stars, athletes, etc.) — till he found four good ones? Probably not. My guess is that he’s one of those people who looks at a name, word, or phrase and sees anagrams. (Remember Marie Kelly?) Maybe he even records these in a notebook, with a special section for when he finds a one-letter-shifter. When that section finally has four eight-letter names, he goes to work.

BOY BLAND? Maybe I'm out of synch?