"Shifty Schemers" November 11, 2022

[DrTom]

Well let's see:
Noise from a Scottish hat covering a goose: TAM HONKS

(I think he might be courting Cinder Brady!)

[DrTom]

Oh, Oh
Object of the Pike's Peak race: MAKE HILL
(Mike Hall = Dexter)

[jrdad]

I saw Rod Carew early but was stuck like others on Ike Blane and Alito for a while till the fog lifted. Bird, I think you're right; Mike has a big fat notebook full of ideas.

[Barney]

Did someone say diabolical?

(Not in a gazillion, btw)

[Joe Ross]

Re-title this crossword contest "Thrifty Themers" since each themer gives us two hints, two hints, two hints in one?

[HeadinHome]

re @Dr. Tom — Well now, I was looking precisely for 8-total-letter entries, so I will expand my options.

Also, the phrase that results from the ONE letter being moved should be a recognizable phrase (or word) that people actually say — LACE INTO, PTOMAINE, ROAD CREW. I mean, THAT is the hard part!!

I did think of one that fits the pattern:
6-letter entry: Costume-wearing crowd pleaser, for example
8-letter entry: “she’s likely your grandma”.

(anybody? anybody?)

MASCOT

UNCLESMA

I also imagine Shenk walking around with a handy-dandy notebook of crazy meta ideas and lists, and when he sees an interesting name or word that gets his imagination running, he starts a list. How long it must have taken him to come up with four 8-letter ones I cannot imagine… and then to work these into a clean grid is beyond me.

ON TOP OF THAT, the four he came up with actually made a word (using the displaced letter), placed IN ORDER in the grid.

[Joe Ross]

In providing minimal help to a muggle on a recent contest, I referenced @Tina's gold standard of Hints for Solving Meta Contests, which I review whenever stuck.

Thank you, Tina, and all muggles who have added their wisdom!

[KayW]

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

I'm not sure if it's astigmatism or just lazy eyes or what. But I do have a tendency to misread words, and that was one I misread at least a few times over the course of this weekend On the plus side, I think it's also why I saw some of the names (TOM PAINE being the first) fairly quickly.

[Bird Lives]

BOY BLAND? Maybe I'm out of synch?

It was the stage name used by Boy George for his less provocative persona in which he covered all those Andy Williams songs.

[Dplass]

In providing minimal help to a muggle on a recent contest, I referenced @Tina's gold standard of Hints for Solving Meta Contests, which I review whenever stuck.

Thank you, Tina, and all muggles who have added their wisdom!

I followed some of these by re-doing the grid. Not by copying from source to destination, but from re-reading the clues. AHA - found the 4 "linked" clues - AHA they are symmetric! And, for pete's sake PTOMAINE? How could that NOT be significant!

[HeadinHome]

Also, I did all the things:
@mheberlingx100’s alliterative clues (“balky beast” etc.), of which I believe I saw 8 examples and though “well, multiple of four, so maybe…”
and
@Ergcat’s 4-letter word ladder — so many pairs just one letter different!
and
something similar to @erk070’s computer-key theme: I saw ALT in 14A and started looking at my keyboard layout. If CTRL had been in the grid, I would still be in this rabbit hole.

As to @VanVeen’s question, the tipoff for me finally was pamphleteer, which seemed such an oddly specific clue for WRITER. I started thinking, “I can’t even think of any well known pamphlet writers… wait a minute! 6th grade history… who was that revolutionary war pamphlet guy… OH!! there he is.” Then Alito came quickly. I had to google several variations of ROADCREW (Rod Acrew? Rod Crewa??) and let google’s spelling suggestions help me to get that one (no familiarity). And though I know who Bil Keane is, that was actually the last one to fall (by backsolving) because I couldn’t imagine Bil having just one L.

[DrTom]

BOY BLAND? Maybe I'm out of synch?

It was the stage name used by Boy George for his less provocative persona in which he covered all those Andy Williams songs.

OK, now I REALLY want to hurt him, really want to make him cry

[HeadinHome]

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

Ditto - that fact helped me focus. And same thoughts on ALTEREGO… “why abbreviate that one but not the others?”. A-haaaa.

[woozy]

I kept thinking BIKE LANE always looked like BIL KEANE but I kept dismissing that as coincidence. I kept trying to make CON ARTIST and ?grift? WRITER into something. Figure nothing easy was going to work and I'd need to look harder I noticed the four all had e.g. and another clue had "for example" so I figured it was something. I had always been irked that the answers were much broader than the clue so I figure Bil Keane was an example of a cartoonist, the clue, not the answer and then I had the meta completely figured out-- it was just a matter of finding the remaining three names.

I had never heard of the phrase "LACE INTO". Usually not knowing a phrase should trigger but it didn't at first.

[Joe Ross]

Tip your hat to José Ros, please, & I'll tip mine back.

[Flying_Burrito]

I slapped my head so many times after I got the nudge. Super clever, super elegant and yes, not too difficult. A poweful figure in my household gave me 1 hr to spend on the meta and since it's college football season I had to compromise with her. I dove in head first into a hole where ptoMAINE+WRITER = Stephen King, JURIST+LACEinto = Ruth Bader Ginsburg, CREW+PLAYER= Stage Manager. By the time I hit the wall my timer had expired with a goose egg. Need to think of a big christmas present so I can negotiate with her for an extension to 2 hrs

[VanVeen]

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

I didn’t even notice ALTEREGO. Very cool. A lot of layers to this one.

Also, I’d like to add that I know nothing about baseball but knew Rod Carew from Adam Sandler’s Hanukkah Song. Otherwise I’d never have solved it.

[ZooAnimalsOnWheels]

8 Letters: E-mail unsolicited offers to the singer of Smooth Operator; and Gumshoe, for example

These are difficult to come up with as natural phrases. And in addition to all the other qualifications mentioned above, those four were all well-disguised. Humans are so good at swapping letters in our heads while reading, but none of these 'popped' for me until I went looking.

I saw Rod Carew first. I'm a big baseball fan, but also:

I've got more action than my man, John Woo
And I've got mad hits like I was Rod Carew

- Sure Shot, Beastie Boys

[Inca]

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.

That's exactly what I think as well. I think he has a love of word play and notices all kinds of interesting things in words, names and phrases and saves them for the right moment for all of us to be intrigued by them. It would be interesting to hear from him to see if we are right or waaay off

[JAQT]

My "aha" was Rod Carew (sometimes it helps to live in SoCal), after which Lance Ito and Tom Paine fell almost immediately. Bil Keane took a while, but I knew the shifted letter had to be an "L" so that helped.

My very shallow rabbit hole (of the "stared at it for far too long before realizing it wasn't going anywhere" variety) involved THOTH (33A). It's a word I never heard of, filled in with the crosses, and I had to Google to confirm its correctness. One meta solving technique is to focus on words that seem to be a stretch or out of place, but that certainly wasn't the case here.

Still amazed at the construction: all of them a 6-letter occupation coupled with an 8-letter name. In the spirit of @DrTom, I tried for a while but the best I could get was this, which is a 5-7 combo and not the needed 6-8:

Noise from a grandmother clock?

HER TOCK => The Rock, actor

Take care everyone!