"What Should I Where?" December 16, 2022

[Fogway]

I originally had WHIST transforming to WRIST instead of WAIST. You can imagine how long that damn R caused me to be "unshod."

[PHOFER]

Still looking for the grid error so many of you mentioned that you found and corrected . . .

[Barney]

Another mugless Monday for me! I got the right answer, but no mug.
Meanwhile, Boxing Day is still elusive. I have a lot of the answers, but not the 1A and 1D.

Boxing Day cryptic, you have to be kidding.

I know when to quit before I start. I gave that puzzle five minutes.

[Berto]

Another mugless Monday for me! I got the right answer, but no mug.
Meanwhile, Boxing Day is still elusive. I have a lot of the answers, but not the 1A and 1D.

Boxing Day cryptic, you have to be kidding.

I know when to quit before I start. I gave that puzzle five minutes.

The 1A and 1D certainly didn’t start with the letter I thought they would, two of the last answers I found (and after figuring out the yellow boxes..)

[Ergcat]

My quick diversions were:

ASCOT -> COAST (43a) - Quickly got nowhere

HAT is in MATH - Also a quick dead end

Other articles of clothing off by a letter?

GASH->SASH (Relates to VEST or BELT?)
SNIP->SLIP (Relates to VEST or BELT?)
FOOD->HOOD (Relates to HAT)
TEE->TIE (Relates to ASCOT)

Which gave me one of SLHI, LSHI, GNFE, NGFE, none of which made any sense.

Wait... NOCK->SOCK... Okay... back to my mantra of "title, Title, TITLE!"

Where? ... Remembers WHIST and makes the WAIST connection...

I already had the order written down from the numbers, so HOSE wasn't an option.

Got it. (With FOOD->FOOT as confirmation)

This was exactly the rabbit trail I followed at first! Then I went back to the “Title” for direction —- “WHERE do you WEAR the clothing items??” AHA!

[Ergcat]

Don't forget tonight's Zoom for Isaac's Last Call.

I'm curious about the people with a grid error that impeded their solve. Hope to hear about those this evening on Zoom and/or tomorrow on the forum.

This was a great puzzle! As far my grid errors go, the lower right corner was a mess. For guarantees, I had IOUs, which seemed extremely weird since IOU was another entry. I didn't know much about WWII guns

I had same grid error… IOUs, NOOK, STUN gun… so when I had “neck for ASCOT” I knew “Nook” had to be wrong so I had to redo that corner of the grid!

[The XWord Rabbit]

Your Rabbit needs to take a deep breath before explaining the details of Mr. Gaffney’s “What Should I Where?” puzzle … …. Ready? … OK, here we go ...

Each of the four anchor entries had a piece of clothing buried within: VEST in DAVE STEWART, ASCOT in MARTHA SCOTT, BELT in ABEL TASMAN and HAT in AISHA TYLER. Next, turn to the “where” in the title: Name a body part that is covered by each of these articles of clothing: CHEST (VEST), WAIST (BELT), NECK (ASCOT) and HEAD (HAT). Step 3: Find a grid entry that changes a single letter in each of these articles of clothing. CHESS (CHEST), WHIST (WAIST), NOCK (NECK) and HEED (HEAD). Step 4: Take the four changed letters and arrive at yet another article of clothing: S-H-O-E. Finally, in true Gaffneyesque fashion, ask yourself what body part is covered by a SHOE and arrive at the meta: FOOT.

Still with us? Well, not everyone apparently, as we now turn to this week’s nominee:

There’s no point in duplicating MikeyG’s elegant entry here (#284) as it took up the better part of a page, but it was a masterclass in what your Rabbit is looking for. It starts out so simple, organized and correct … and then unravels. Your Rabbit also appreciates it ending on a humorous note. Pay attention, you mugless Muggles. There is hope for you.

And now the X-Word Rabbit will make his X-it, but not before wishing everyone a Merry Xmas and a truly X-ceptional XXIII. XOXOXOXOXOXOXO’s to all of you.

[MikeMillerwsj]

The contest answer is FOOT. Each theme answer conceals an item of clothing: DAVE STEWART; ABEL TASMAN; MARTHA SCOTT; AISHA TYLER. There’s a grid answer one letter off from each garment’s body part: chest/CHESS; waist/WHIST; neck/NOCK; head/HEED. The changed letters spell SHOE in the order indicated in the theme clues, yielding the contest answer (confirmed by FOOD at 13-Down).

A lot of you successfully followed the tangled trail to the correct answer this week! We had 1,940 entries, with a higher-than-average 85% correct. Incorrect answers clustered around the limited number of 4-letter body parts to choose from: HAND (16), NOSE (13), SKIN (13), HEAD (10), SHIN (9) and a few others. Plus 49 for SHOE, on the trail but not quite there.

Congrats to this week's winner: Jim Griffin of Saddle River, NJ! And happy holidays to all!

[KayW]

This is unrelated to this week's meta...

I got deja vu all over again as I solved this morning's WSJ daily puzzle Build Your Own. It reminded me very much of @TMart's wonderful MMM Key Ingredients of a few years ago. But Tmart's version had a LOT more thematic fill.

Hmm, perhaps you should sue for (inferior) copyright infringement?

[SewYoung]

I completely forgot that today was Tuesday so I missed the Tuesday night Zoom. Was planning to assist neighbors with transportation to the Birmingham airport for a flight to Chicago that was to take place this Thursday. Due to weather, they have rescheduled to fly tomorrow, so my other neighbor and I are taking them to B'ham tomorrow instead. I usually do the payroll and pay the bills for the museum on Wednesday so I had to go in and do that today. I'm so confused.... Didn't solve the meta this week, but I was kind of on the right track, just couldn't quite pull it out.

Quoting BarbaraK, "I had to do Boxing Day backward, starting in the bottom right corner with the last answers" That's exactly what I did. I had a good many answers to enter, but didn't have 1a or 1d. Took me quite a while to finally get enough leading up to the bottom corner and fill in from the bottom up.