"Showtime" November 25, 2022

[Onaquest]

Last week with the all the hoop-la I forgot to submit. On a rare/unique occasion when I got it wrong and still had a chance of getting the mug. Anyhoo, just had a final look at this week’s and bingo. Also remembered to submit. How on earth did Mr Shenk divine this one??

[arecibo]

If you're stuck, this is a puzzle that rewards discipline in discarding ideas and thinking of new ideas. You have to try something (conceivable... from a certain angle) with essentially no confidence of success beforehand. There are signposts.

[Colin]

Ashore! One of my early mentors taught me to trust my intuition. Good advice! Still, that didn’t stop me spending a few hours in dark places before circling back to my first idea and polishing that rough little mud-covered and rock-encrusted diamond into the shining crown jewel that is my meta submission! Time for a Loch Lomond 12-yr old with a very small ice cube to celebrate being on page 12!

[MajordomoTom]

I just threw myself headlong overboard with a swag, so no longer at the bar.

maybe at a sand bar, we'll see.

[MajordomoTom]

If you're stuck, this is a puzzle that rewards discipline in discarding ideas and thinking of new ideas. You have to try something (conceivable... from a certain angle) with essentially no confidence of success beforehand. There are signposts.

been there, done that, only found this lousy t-shirt

[Joe Ross]

[Joe Ross]

[Collegetowngirl]

Ohhhhhhh. I had a feeling the numbers were it and tried so many ideas including the letter positions of the last two digits, 88, 81, etc. I even noted the clue for YEAR but still didn’t think of checking all four digits!!! Argh. Beautiful construction; hats off to Mike Shenk!!

[escapeartist]

Having the grid answer of 13D YEAR really helped solidify that the dates of the theme clues were important.

I wouldn't have solved this week's puzzle without that tidbit.

[escapeartist]

OMG how many movies are titled where the digits of the year of the movie's release spell a word that can be used to clue a grid answer AND fit symmetrically into a standard crossword grid?

[SHIWUTONG]

OK. So I am competing now for the Rabbit Hole Award. First of all, I looked at the title SHOWTIMES and the answer A MOVIE TERM. So like many of the solvers I continued to dig deeper and eventually found the puzzle answer, but for some reason, it didn’t really seem to fit from my experience. Because, before I actually solved the “real” answer I went down a Rabbit Hole which seemed much more fitting to my experience. Now when I think of movies, I think of ones I see in the actual movie theatre. And because I love my wife, I let her decide which movies we watch. And because my wife is such a wonderful and loving person, she always chooses those ones that were described in a recent WSJ puzzle answer, namely, ROMCOMS. Personally, I enjoy documentaries, sports, games etc. but not ROMCOMS. So, when I first started solving the puzzle, I took the end number from each of the year dates in the clues. Namely 8, 1, 4, 3 and 1. So then when I counted back to the letters in those numerical amounts, I came up with L, P, S, E and T, in that order. So then after rearrangement I came up with and ANSWER: SLEPT!! Which is exactly what I do when watch a ROMCOM movie! So that is the answer I submitted.

[MajordomoTom]

Ok, I jumped off the ship and landed in a lifeboat hanging from davits off the port side, never made it to the water, much less to dry land.

There's always next week.

[ZooAnimalsOnWheels]

OMG how many movies are titled where the digits of the year of the movie's release spell a word that can be used to clue a grid answer AND fit symmetrically into a standard crossword grid?

And are not totally obscure films...

[FrancesY]

Well of course, it seems so obvious now. But I didn’t know what to do with the years, so I added the four digits of each year. Got 26, 19, 22, 21, and 17. The letters in those numbered squares S, I, E, P, C anagram into my answer: EPICS.

[clonefitz]

I'm seeing trends regarding the puzzles that I can't solve. I will have to try to keep these lessons in mind next time I'm stumped. I knew the year was significant, but I was chasing the rabbit hole of looking up Oscar winners from those years and hoping to see a pattern.

[Ben B]

When I was trying to solo solve, I was stuck in a shallow but persistent rabbit hole regarding alternate clue answers. 54A "Test by a Neurologist" fits EEG, but I smiled with joy when I realized that is also a "Spinal Tap". How could that not be the right path? Thankfully my son saved the weekend by focusing instead on the year clue, otherwise I would never have been able to let this go.

[Magistra]

Well of course, it seems so obvious now. But I didn’t know what to do with the years, so I added the four digits of each year. Got 26, 19, 22, 21, and 17. The letters in those numbered squares S, I, E, P, C anagram into my answer: EPICS.

That was my answer, too. It didn't seem right, but it was all I could find.

[MikeM000]

OMG how many movies are titled where the digits of the year of the movie's release spell a word that can be used to clue a grid answer AND fit symmetrically into a standard crossword grid?

This becomes super-easy to figure out nowadays with a Wikipedia-esque list of movie releases by year, a copy of MS Excel, and knowing how to use the LEN, LEFT and MID functions.

I never even noticed 13D; my solve was based entirely on the "Time" half of the puzzle title.

[KayW]

OMG how many movies are titled where the digits of the year of the movie's release spell a word that can be used to clue a grid answer AND fit symmetrically into a standard crossword grid?

This becomes super-easy to figure out nowadays with a Wikipedia-esque list of movie releases by year, a copy of MS Excel, and knowing how to use the LEN, LEFT and MID functions.

I never even noticed 13D; my solve was based entirely on the "Time" half of the puzzle title.

"super-easy"???

[MikeM000]

"super-easy"???

8 minutes and 58 seconds, with a couple breaks to get my dog some treats. Got a list of 271 1987 movies; 142 had 9-15 characters in the title. These could conceivably start clues, although SEVE and OONA might be tough without an apostrophe S.

BlindDate 9 B e t a
DeadlyPrey 10 D e r P
EmpireState 11 E a t S
LeonardPart6 12 L a P d
Mauvaissang 11 M a s s
NowheretoHide 13 N o t e
OneWomanorTwo 13 O o n a
ScaredStiff 11 S i t S
StreetSmart 11 S a m S
SweetRevenge 12 S e v e

(and yes, if I did this again I'd change it to ALL CAPS. Tough to tell capital I from small l.)