A place to discuss the weekly Wall Street Journal Crossword Puzzle Contest, starting every Thursday around 4:00 p.m. Eastern time. Please do not post any answers or hints before the contest deadline which is midnight Sunday Eastern time.
Wow! I lusted after that car from a very young age. A true classic. When I bought my first car however I settled for a used Fiat 850 Spyder with the rear engine. It only lasted a couple of years before the unibody frame rusted beyond repair but I have never owned a car as fun to drive since
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I had a Fiat Spyder years ago. I sold a very sensical car and bought the Spyder. Although it was a very fun car to drive, I was constantly repairing something on it. I still miss it sometimes, anyway.
My very first car was a 1970 Fiat 850 Sport Spyder, bright yellow, with all the chrome add-ons just like the car in the photo. How I loved that car! But boy was it finicky. If it wasn’t tuned exactly right it just quit. Remember what FIAT stands for: Fix It Again, Tony! After a few short years it was traded for the more sensible Toyota Corolla.
Don’t we all wish we still had our first car? They’d all be classics and really be worth something. 5576F165-FDC6-4270-A2BE-0CDAACB89170.jpeg
The nice thing about my Spyder was that it was so basic mechanically that I could do all the tuneups, etc. when I discovered the rusting floorboards that the previous owner had tarred over to disguise the damage, I fashioned new ones out of sheet metal. I was fortunate to have a summer job at a company that did sheet metal fabrication and I had access to scrap and the necessary machines. Kept it going for a couple extra years.
This discussion has taken me on a real nostalgia trip. The first car that I owned was the Fiat but my first drive was a classic ’57 Chevy Bel Air in two-tone cream and copper that was only driven to church on Sunday by a little old lady who was my great aunt. My parents bought it from her after great uncle passed and it was in mint condition. It was a pretty cool ride for a teenager to take out dates in.
I spend a fair amount of time trying to make something out of the answers that started with I — Iran, iris, I see, iPad, I come, in it, Igor. Got nowhere of course. Finally I noticed iron-Iran, mike-mime, and actor-Astor, and it was off to the races.
I spent a fair amount of time thinking "but there's nothing there" but I spent an equal amount of time thinking "WTF is up with those weird-### clues?" Staring at the clues wondering "?huh?" is enough the eventually you will realize one of the words of the clue is the same as the entry but with a letter change (for me it was the WHALE/WHOLE), and then at that point pretty much anyone can chew the puzzle home.
Had the puzzle been done more subtly (and Matt is certainly capable of writing the clues more subtly) then I would have hated this. But as the clues deliberately and obviously had something very weird and wrong with them a that I was given just enough of a chew toy to make this a fair outing to the dog park.
Funny story. I was all set to enter Par for the course for the CrossHare midi contest for April but I mistakenly thought midi meant 7x 7 and not 11 x 11. Oops. Well.... Here's a complex but **small** meta on the subject of golf.
woozy wrote: ↑Mon Dec 05, 2022 12:51 am
Staring at the clues wondering "?huh?" is enough the eventually you will realize one of the words of the clue is the same as the entry but with a letter change (for me it was the WHALE/WHOLE)
Same here. Some of those clues were just so weird that I didn't spend much time on the other coincidences in the grid. Especially the octopus thing. It could have been clued "One swallowed Noah whole" and it wouldn't have called as much attention to itself.
HunterX wrote: ↑Sat Dec 03, 2022 5:21 pm
...I got one of the last rotary engine cars in production, the year before they discontinued it--a 2010 Mazda RX-8....
Do not make Wankel pun, do not make Wankel pun, do not....
Oh, give us a brake and go for it! You could floor us with your wit. You do always come through with a clutch pun after we've all exhausted ours. Have I ever steered your wrong on something like this?
And, take it away @DrTom...
Sorry, just got back to the forum...I was otherwise engaged gearing up for some other transmission. But I did not want to piston anybody off by thinking I had given this group the shaft or the boot. I didn't want anyone with a bee in their bonnet and certainly did not want to trunkate this conversation. So I looked though my bumper crop of car puns (which are matched only by my rap puns if I let my hair down) and even wondered if I could interchange them; alternating between the two. At any rate, I do have to make this short because I'm going ot have to get together some things to clean the car. Seems I hit a wild animal and though I did not kill it I did get a lot of fur up around the rear wheels...so I have got to go and trim the axel area hair....
NUDGES!I am always willing to give nudges where needed; metas should be about fun, not frustration. Send me what you have done so far because often you are closer than you think!
OK so here’s the story of the quick aha. After a week of swimming with dozens of octopi when I looked at 53A I thought “well of course it can they are very small” so as often happens that clue struck me as odd. A minute later I had it. Sometimes it just clicks
mheberlingx100 wrote: ↑Mon Dec 05, 2022 12:30 am
I spend a fair amount of time trying to make something out of the answers that started with I — Iran, iris, I see, iPad, I come, in it, Igor. Got nowhere of course. Finally I noticed iron-Iran, mike-mime, and actor-Astor, and it was off to the races.
Yes, I had
Iran - Sumer
Iris - Aqua (Ok that's a reach)
Ipad - Screen
isee - Mull
in it - Amid
icome - Thought about using "schwa"
igor - Well, that one...nothing
Whatever happened to the constructors saying, "We don't intentionally create rabbit holes." Really? Seven answers that started with "I" in this puzzle? Just an accident?
Anyway, finally climbed out of that hole and found the answer which of course using Occam's Razor was nice, simple and direct. I'm always going for the obscure route. Which is more scenic...
escapeartist wrote: ↑Mon Dec 05, 2022 12:43 am
I was thrown off by similar grid answers like:
SHOO - SHOT
MIME - MIMI
SINE - SINEW
devious
Yes and
CHEESE-CHEERS
SLEEP-SLEEK
I know these puzzle inventors say they don't inentionally mislead, but what is this? Once I saw the first correct clue, MIKE-MIME, it was off to the races but I was dragged down for a long time figuring what to do with the the grid pairs. All the same, nicely constructed meta.
Unlike our Cruise Director, my early car purchases were autos destined to fail - 65 Ford Falcon (never-ending transmission leak), 63 Ford Wagon (burned up the motor), 75 Fiat X1/9 (bubbles in the radiator), Fiat 124 (coffee can clamps)... My 77 Volvo 242 was my first reliable car.
mheberlingx100 wrote: ↑Mon Dec 05, 2022 12:30 am
I spend a fair amount of time trying to make something out of the answers that started with I — Iran, iris, I see, iPad, I come, in it, Igor. Got nowhere of course. Finally I noticed iron-Iran, mike-mime, and actor-Astor, and it was off to the races.
I chased the same I-word rabbit! Then the rabbit with words one letter off. Then I noticed 39a “hint” = “CLUE” and thought that was a hint…. But what to do with that hint?? Then I looked at the “Ending” from the title and AHA….. “Blue -clue” !!! So 39a WAS a hint AND part of the Meta too!
I made it ashore eventually, but not before spending a lot of time chasing SINE, SINEW and SWINE down a rabbit hole. Meanwhile 33D, "ALICE" was just taunting me.
Giant feral rabbits everywhere (and a Monty Python clue no less). A puzzle title and seven answers starting with the letter “I”, which is rare - fewer than 4% of English words do. A dozen or so animals in the clues. Numbers. Weirdly worded clues. Long answers making me think I had a zoom meeting starting at ten to one. Good puzzle, but a fluffle-packed warren if ever there was one!
My rabbit holes included MIME/MIMI, SINE/SINEW, etc., but I really got stuck on IRAN, ISEE, ICOME, which reminded me of veni, vidi, vici, so I spent an inordinate amount of time trying to make sense of those entries (IPAD?). I experienced a metaphorical head slap when I saw the solution. I noticed many of the clue/answer pairs, it just didn’t occur to me to use them to solve the meta.
woozy wrote: ↑Mon Dec 05, 2022 12:51 am
I both did and didn't like this.
I spent a fair amount of time thinking "but there's nothing there" but I spent an equal amount of time thinking "WTF is up with those weird-### clues?" Staring at the clues wondering "?huh?" is enough the eventually you will realize one of the words of the clue is the same as the entry but with a letter change (for me it was the WHALE/WHOLE), and then at that point pretty much anyone can chew the puzzle home.
Had the puzzle been done more subtly (and Matt is certainly capable of writing the clues more subtly) then I would have hated this. But as the clues deliberately and obviously had something very weird and wrong with them a that I was given just enough of a chew toy to make this a fair outing to the dog park.
I learned this with the trucker meta (but then lost it again with the halloween meta). If the grid is especially hard or the clues are just weird, it's part of the meta.
