"I Almost Gave Away The Ending" December 2, 2022

[Nlobb]

I can’t believe no one has mentioned the 1964 Karmann Ghia! Greatest car ever! Sped up the switchbacks of the Cooke City highway in Montana at an amazing top speed of 5 mph!!

[DBMiller]

Whatever happened to the constructors saying, "We don't intentionally create rabbit holes."

Where did this come from - an article or Q&A? I have a very hard time swallowing that. Think it's very obvious that meta grids are master classes in misdirection.

Some sort of Q & A if I remember correctly. Enough accidental misdirections sneak in in their own. No need to intentionally add any.

[femullen]

On the eve of my 50th birthday, I wanted a convertible sports car to reaffirm my advancing youth. Now, 16 years later, the sports car is still youthful.

[jrdad]

My rabbit hole was looking for answers with missing terminal letters that would yield synonyms for other answers:
THINk=MULL
TEEn=MINOR
MIMIc=MIME
It was one of those situations like a stuck record; I couldn't move forward but I couldn't let go...

[MikeMillerwsj]

The contest answer is SMALL CHANGE. The final word in 11 Across clues are one letter off from their answers: ACTOR/ASTOR, MIKE/MIME, IRON/ IRAN, MANES/MALES, SHEEP/SLEEP, BLUE/ CLUE, CLEESE/CHEESE, WHOLE/WHALE, EIGHT/ NIGHT, HOLD/GOLD, THREW/THREE. The changed letters spell the contest answer.

More than one solver (including us) marveled at the craft in slipping 11 thematic answers into this one.  We had 1420 entries, with about 78% correct, right in line with a typical week's success rate.  A big turnout for SPOILER ALERT (just because of the title? we couldn't discern any other reason), with 170 entries.  Plus a NO SPOILERS (3), GO AWAY (2), SEE MEMO, NIGHT CAP and a handful of others.  

Still waiting to confirm this week's winner... stay tuned!

[Ann]

It has to be me!

[mkmf]

Oooh! That's a nice idea!

My rabbit hole was looking for answers with missing terminal letters that would yield synonyms for other answers:
THINk=MULL
TEEn=MINOR
MIMIc=MIME
It was one of those situations like a stuck record; I couldn't move forward but I couldn't let go...

[EVJ]

GENT popped out at me right away as missing it’s ending (gentleman).
When I got to the clue Thou Thou with an answer of MIL(million) I was sure I was onto something. But, alas, the only other answer that I could find in that vein was SAKS (5th Avenue).
But one thing that I started revisiting was that you had to add LION to MIL to finish the word. But, hey! Isn’t there a clue and answer concerning a Lion somewhere?
So revisiting that was where I first noticed MANE and MALE. Hmm
A few minutes later I turned my head to the side and out of the corner of my eye I noticed ACTOR and ASTOR.
Aha! I caught you, you silly rabbit!!

[pjc]

Still waiting to confirm this week's winner... stay tuned!

{searches through Junk Mail folder}

[Ann]

(Opens all “congratulations!” emails in junk folder)

[MikeMillerwsj]

And... congrats on this week's winner: Michael Sorkin of Teaneck, NJ!

[JJD]

I was sure was seeing the right mechanism with the answers all starting with I, then giving away the last letter, to find another clue that starts with the remaining letters.
iRAn > RA > RAds
iRIs > RI > RIch
iPAd > PA > PAcer
iSEe > SE > cheeSE
iCOMe > COM > COMas
This last one convinced me it must be the right mechanism because both seemed odd to me.

[The XWord Rabbit]

You know when the subject turns to old cars that whatever challenges existed in finding this week’s meta have largely been forgotten. Yes, there were a few bumps in the road and an occasional detour, but apparently none meaningful enough to give your Rabbit much to
talk about.

“I Almost Gave Away the Ending” by Mr. Gaffney seemed to be tailor-made for an AHA moment, and you could hear the lightbulbs popping during last week’s Zoom call. The “ending” in the title referred to the last word in nine clues, each of which was only a single letter change away from the corresponding grid entry. Taken in order, they spelled SMALL CHANGE.

There was some flapping about regarding an abundance of “I” words, but mostly you Muggles seemed pretty satisfied with yourselves and the puzzle. So here we are – now two weeks running with no nominees. What’s a Rabbit to do?

He could break out another Carmen Miranda clip, but with Christmas less than three weeks away this seems much more appropriate …




Until next week then --

[Joepickett]

Whatever happened to the constructors saying, "We don't intentionally create rabbit holes."

Where did this come from - an article or Q&A? I have a very hard time swallowing that. Think it's very obvious that meta grids are master classes in misdirection.

Yes, it was in a Q & A with either MIke or Matt. Might have been just on a video. Or I made it up.

[woozy]

Whatever happened to the constructors saying, "We don't intentionally create rabbit holes."

Where did this come from - an article or Q&A? I have a very hard time swallowing that. Think it's very obvious that meta grids are master classes in misdirection.

Yes, it was in a Q & A with either MIke or Matt. Might have been just on a video. Or I made it up.

I think it was one constructor, probably Mike, who claimed that once. It was up to us whether we believed it or not. Matt says every week "Solve well, and be not led astray by words intended to deceive" which to me is an outright admission that he will deliberately mislead... if he wants to... or maybe he won't.... but it's not off the table.

To my mind there is nothing wrong with misdirection (unless the misdirection leads deliberately to a consistent answer that is arbitrarily declared the wrong one.)

[BarbaraK]

Whatever happened to the constructors saying, "We don't intentionally create rabbit holes."

Where did this come from - an article or Q&A? I have a very hard time swallowing that. Think it's very obvious that meta grids are master classes in misdirection.

My recollection, which may not be accurate in any regard, is that Matt said he rarely puts in intentional red herrings because plenty just crop up anyway. Note "rarely" not "never". And he was not speaking for any other meta writer, just himself. Pete Muller of MMMM always put an intentional red herring in his mega-metas and at some point even started awarding points for finding it.

[Bob cruise director]

Whatever happened to the constructors saying, "We don't intentionally create rabbit holes."

Where did this come from - an article or Q&A? I have a very hard time swallowing that. Think it's very obvious that meta grids are master classes in misdirection.

My recollection, which may not be accurate in any regard, is that Matt said he rarely puts in intentional red herrings because plenty just crop up anyway. Note "rarely" not "never". And he was not speaking for any other meta writer, just himself. Pete Muller of MMMM always put an intentional red herring in his mega-metas and at some point even started awarding points for finding it.

I agree with @BarbaraK . I believe that it came from the Q&A last year. That being said, that does not mean that he does not have misleading clues which can create rabbit holes if read the wrong way.

Note from his web site "Solve well, and be not led astray by words intending to deceive."

Is it possible that honest Matt would intentionally lead us down the primrose path to an opening that could be construed as a rabbit hole?

[Penny_Keatley]

Now that the answer is out, I'm very curious how most people solved the meta. I think, with some evidence by what people were saying in the forums, that most people noticed the metanism of changing a letter in the clue while solving the grid. I wonder which clue is the one that got people to see the metanism.

For me it was IRAN/IRON.

For me it was WHOLE/WHALE. The swallowing of octopi just seemed like a very strange way to clue the word "WHALE"!

[woozy]

There were enough weird clues to get me to say "There's a lot of weird clues". The weirdest of the weird was "Hint on NYPD Blue". That choice of cop show was bizarrely arbitrary and as a procedural rather than a cozy the cases didn't really rely an clues anyway. But I couldn't get anything from it.

I still tried to look for some meta in the grid and when I couldn't tried to got through the weird clues, and yes, it was the WHALE/WHOLE I noticed first. Seeing that I immediately went to see if that applied to BLUE/CLUE. That meant I was on to something. The title immediately made sense then that it was last words of clues being changed by a letter. Went through the across clues one by one and compared.

The EIGHT/NIGHT was one that I *hadn't* been chewing on as a weird clue. It appeared perfectly normal until I did the check on all.