"This Stays Between Us" January 27, 2023

[mkmf]

I also solved without seeing the inter- clues.

I saw MITT in the center and then UTAH popped. (Ha!) Looking for more in that vein, I saw EARTH and CUBA and switched gears; then saw MARS, and the rest went quickly.

[pipster]

Finally ashore with no nudges. Did anybody else besides me end up deep in the rabbit hole that (I think) is supposed to be a signpost?

My problem was I found the “inter” clues first and spent most of the weekend trying to fit NOLAN, PROBE, etc. into a solution.

[mheberlingx100]

I saw the inter- clues after seeing the planets, states, etc. and coming up with the -lock. When I saw the inter-s, the light bulb truly went on.

[mikeB]

Three Aha! moments for me. First, EARTH and the other three embedded in the long entries. That was quick. Then my rookie blinders slowed me down, because I thought I was so close with those four words. Uh-huh. (Major rabbit-nip was my imagining a fake trickiness: Clue 71A says “. . . first five letters of the contest answer”, but it doesn’t explicitly say “in that order”. Long rabbit-play over that.) Second Aha! moment was noticing UTAH and IOWA and then the other three pairs. Third, I happened to notice ROO and R_O, thanks to close placement in the grid. Without that nearness, I doubt I would have solved. Thus, three very enjoyable Aha! moments – probably fewer for the experts here, but that’s a side benefit of my still learning. This is a very ingenious meta. Only one way to describe it: AHA-some!

[Gman]

Did anyone else waste time on Latin translations of US? There were several NOS and NOBIS's hiding in the grid. A classic Gaffney mis-direction!

In addition, I was convinced that the first letter of the grid to the clues containing "inter" would spell INTERPRET after finding PR. When I did this for all four clues, it spelled INTEPRAD. Good thing I kept looking.

VEGAS was a dastardly rabbit, as was ROMAN. All in all, great fun.

[ZooAnimalsOnWheels]

Like others, at first I only found the hidden words in the longer, two-word, "theme" answers. I figured, "four words that match the 'inter-' clues, and I need four letters, so I'm good!", even though MARS in MARSH kept drawing my attention. I should know better.

I spent too much time trying to get one letter from those words using the concept of "between." I did note that OMAN was between R and O, and that led me to ROO, but that didn't work for the others. My most tempting distraction was looking at the inner letters of those four words, which gave me EG from VEGA, which appears in one clue, and ART from EARTH, which appears in two clues (and also Asian Risk territory if you want to get sneaky!). And MA from OMAN and TA from UTAH would have been easy to sneak into a clue, but, alas, they weren't there.

It required me taking a step back from just the "theme" clues and remembering that "inter-" would usually imply a relationship between two things rather than just "amidst" to notice the other four places.

[DrTom]

Hmmm, with all the puns flying fast and furious I'm surprised we have not heard from Hunter X? Edam well better have a gouda excuse. OK, ricotta go now, might as well this is a feta compli.

My apologies. Though you're a bit of a Muenster to bring me into this. As a true American, and a CaerPhilly in particular, I should be a Wiz at cheese puns. Pay me some cheddar and I'll Limburger up my skills. Though I'm inclined to drink my Port, Salut you, and thank you for bringing cheese into the picture. (Not that good on sausage puns, in this casing.)

Actually, I had a busy weekend trying out new ski boots in the Poconos before a trip out west next week. Ice, crowds, vertical drop of no more than about 800 feet, and runs lasting all of about 60 seconds. Maybe I should have stayed home and worked on puns.

But hey, speaking of cheese wiz*, the "Igles" won tonight. The hollers from all the units in my condo building were drowned out by the screaming on the street. And there were more horns honking than when the taxis used to go on strike. Then everyone streamed to Broad Street to try to climb the greased light poles. We actually used game-time to drive home from the mountains in the lightest traffic I can remember. Now we're hunkering down to avoid the drunken crowds.

*Proper ordering etiquette**: "One, wit, wiz."

**If you want something fairly disgusting, IMO. Better to get Provolone than wiz anyday.

Whew, I thought you didn't like us anymore, I didn't know skiing was rennin you ragged!

I actually cut my ski teeth on a hill (generous description) near Allentown, PA, and then graduated to Elk Mountain, From there Killington and Stowe and finally Utah when I was in school. First time I skied in Utah I was amazed because I could not hear my skis on the snow. I once skied in Michigan when my wife to be told me there was a ski area near where we lived. Turns out it was an old trash dump that they covered over and made snow ro ski on. I could never determine what wax to use for skiing old soup cans. I remember the first time I went; I took the "loft" up, started down the hill and, as I did out west, was arranging my music (on my Walk Man of course!) and by the time the first song was starting to play I was at the bottom. Their "expert" ill was about 30 yards long with a drop of about 100 feet and their "ski patrol" all snowplowed down the mountain. That was the last time I skied in Michigan.

If my Jags couldn't be in the SB I am delighted the Giggles are (sorry , that was what we called them back in the days of Jaws Jaworski). As for cheese steaks, I would NEVER get wiz and I would NEVER eat a Pat's or Geno's. The best cheese steak I have had in a LONG while was from Costa Deli in Ambler and before that Carmen's in the Reading Terminal.

[MikeMillerwsj]

The contest answer is INTERLOCK. The clue at 71-Across mentions INTER, and four clues begin with Interstellar, Interplanetary, Interstate and International. H - N separates MARS and EARTH (interplanetary) in row 3; R - O separates IOWA and UTAH (interstate) in row 6; S - I separates VEGA and SOL (interstellar) in row 10; O - S separates OMAN and CUBA (international) in row 13. Grid answers HLN, ROO, SCI and OKS form LOCK, completing the contest answer.

This was a complicated one, but a lot of you followed the twisty trail to the end. We had 1527 entries, about 72% correct (in range of our typical 75%). Lots of guesses for other INTER- words, including SECT (51), FACE (42), CEPT (14), CITY (12) and VENE (7).

Congrats on this week's winner: John Treankler of Carmen, Idaho!

[EVJ]

Yay Idaho! I’ve lived in Idaho for over 40 years and never heard of Carmen, ID. I had to look it up. I’m so glad to see Idahoans participating in the meta and even WINNING A MUG! Congratulations to John. I hope he is a muggle. If not, I hope he’ll join us soon.

[Grover]

So glad I didn't see the inter in the clues before finding all the buried words. That would have really messed me up. Also, very clever of Matt to have all the word pairs as inter something. I missed that, too. Another Gaffney work of art.

[eagle1279]

Did anyone else waste time on Latin translations of US? There were several NOS and NOBIS's hiding in the grid. A classic Gaffney mis-direction!

Ha, I was also misled down the nobis path. Thought BONSAI was nobis plus an extra letter. Short, cold trail.

But when I realized I was looking for the name of a country, BONSAI popped up again as an anagram of BOSNIA. Another cold trail.

[DBMiller]

Count me in the "Never noticed the INTER... clues" group. When it was mentioned in the Zoom meeting, I was like, "What???" Probably would have kept me from getting distracted with some shallow rabbit holes, but I can't say for sure.

Looked for U_S combos, and didn't find four cases to look between.

Minor distraction was NEARTHERE leading me to think about "HERE to THERE", OUTAHEAD leading to "HEAD TO HEAD", and RAYROMANO leading to "MANO Y MANO" (Hand to hand). NERVEGAS didn't make much sense in that vein, but I did continue to wonder, especially with RAYROMANO - MANO - Y = RARO (ROAR??). Had ARROW been in the grid, I would have gotten fixated, and thankfully I missed seeing CARR which just changed the O in RARO to a C.

Saw EARTH early on, but it didn't hit me at first. I think when I saw IOWA, I realized UTAH was there, saw the RO in between them and remembered ROO. Didn't even notice/care about the black space in between them. Quickly identified the four "inter" pairs and came up with INTERLOCK.

My nit in an earlier post was that INTERLOCK didn't have the full CLICK that I was expecting. But when the description said it was just a 9-letter word, I stopped thinking about it and just submitted. Had I thought about it some more, two people can be interlocked when they hug, so it's a little "Click-y".

[michaelm]

Yay Idaho! I’ve lived in Idaho for over 40 years and never heard of Carmen, ID. I had to look it up. I’m so glad to see Idahoans participating in the meta and even WINNING A MUG! Congratulations to John. I hope he is a muggle. If not, I hope he’ll join us soon.

Well, EVJ, John apparently had a very high probability of winning among Carmen-ites (Carmen-ians?, Carmen-oans?) who do participate in the meta, muggle or not!
According to: https://www.sales-taxes.com/id/carmen
The sales tax rate in Carmen is 6%, and consists of 6% Idaho state sales tax. Carmen is located within Lemhi County and has a population of approximately 0, and contains the following one ZIP code: 83462

[BarbaraK]

Having noticed the Inter___ clues I started looking for related words in the grid or other clues. 'ARIES' had my attention for 'stellar' for quite a while, but I couldn't make anything else work that way. The next time I picked it up, I read the comments on the WSJ for entertainment (people can be funny about Naticks and such there) and someone mentioned seeing EARTH and UTAH and not knowing what to do with them. Ugh - exactly what I'd been looking for.

Lesson learned - will try not to look through the comments until finishing the grid. Didn't submit, for the record. Still had my AHA moment, but it would have been more satisfying if I hadn't stumbled on a hint.

I saw the spoiler comments on the WSJ site and started to report them. The pop up gave me the following options:

• Identity attack - Harassment, bullying, personal attacks or direct threats.

• Hate speech - An attack on any individual or group solely based on religion, race, gender or creed.

• Inappropriate Language - Excessive profanity, obscenity, vulgarity, or slurs.

• Spam - Advertising, phishing, scamming, bots, or repetitive posts

• False information - Disinformation, misinformation, conspiracy theories or additional misleading information.

• Sexual activity - Sexually explicit, pornographic, flirtatious, or sexually aggressive

• Profile - Inappropriate username, avatar, bio, impersonation

• Other

Nothing that really applies, and spoiling a puzzle seems really trivial compared to all that stuff. Also started to wonder if anyone at WSJ even looks at complaints over the weekend. And I noticed that they no longer have, " Please do not post any answers or hints before the contest deadline" at the top of the page.

So maybe WSJ doesn't care if people post spoilers there?

[HunterX]

Actually, I had a busy weekend trying out new ski boots in the Poconos before a trip out west next week...
[...]
*Proper ordering etiquette**: "One, wit, wiz."
**If you want something fairly disgusting, IMO. Better to get Provolone than wiz anyday.

First time I skied in Utah I was amazed because I could not hear my skis on the snow.

I heard that from guy I met when skiing in Maine. He essentially said, "I went out west to ski but didn't like it. I couldn't tell if I was turning properly since I couldn't hear my skis scratching across the ice!"

As for cheese steaks, I would NEVER get wiz and I would NEVER eat a Pat's or Geno's.

Wise choices. I had to take my kids once each to Pat's and Geno's to let them experience it and see what they thought. That was two times too many. We never went back. And now my son is a vegan. Must have been scarred by the experience.

The best cheese steak I have had in a LONG while was from Costa Deli in Ambler and before that Carmen's in the Reading Terminal.

Haven't tried those. I don't really each cheese steaks. Just never was my thing. Well, except when I worked in the Fidelity Building for a number of summers back in the 70's/80's. One of my coworkers and I would celebrate Fridays by going to this little hole-in-the-wall on Samson at 12th or 13th and get Sukiyaki Cheese Steaks. There was always a line behind the few bar seats they had that extended out the door. I recall them being great. But when you're 18 or so, you do stupid things.

[EVJ]

Yay Idaho! I’ve lived in Idaho for over 40 years and never heard of Carmen, ID. I had to look it up. I’m so glad to see Idahoans participating in the meta and even WINNING A MUG! Congratulations to John. I hope he is a muggle. If not, I hope he’ll join us soon.

Well, EVJ, John apparently had a very high probability of winning among Carmen-ites (Carmen-ians?, Carmen-oans?) who do participate in the meta, muggle or not!
According to: https://www.sales-taxes.com/id/carmen
The sales tax rate in Carmen is 6%, and consists of 6% Idaho state sales tax. Carmen is located within Lemhi County and has a population of approximately 0, and contains the following one ZIP code: 83462

A very high probability among Carmen-oans indeed!
I noticed Carmen is 4 1/2 miles north of Salmon, ID which actually has a population.

[Susan Goldberg]

They always seem so simple, once you see the answer. I just wasn’t looking in the right places, but did brush up on my Latin as one theory was that Latin words were interspersed throughout. Oh well, onto the next.

[The XWord Rabbit]

Well, the XWord Rabbit has good and bad news regarding Mr. Gaffney’s “This Stays Between Us” puzzle. The bad news is that for the third consecutive week there are no nominees for a Rabbit Hole award. Was the puzzle too challenging? Did some of you Muggles throw in the towel early? Is there a growing reluctance to share your tales of woe? Do you have too many mugs already? Your Rabbit wants to know.

Mr. Gaffney intended that INTER, the entry for 59A, would lead solvers to four clues beginning with that word: INTERSTELLAR, INTERPLANETARY, INTERSTATE and INTERNATIONAL. The endings of those words are categories to which portions of side-by-side across entries apply, e.g. MARS and EARTH are contained within MARSH and NEARTHERE. In between each pair of entries is a black square. With the letters on either side of that black square solvers could find a 3-letter word elsewhere in the puzzle. Those four “missing” center letters, when added to the word INTER completed the meta: INTERLOCK.

Could your Rabbit have explained this more clearly? Maybe, but he’s only a rabbit, so cut him some slack. He figures if you could understand his explanation, you probably understood how to solve the puzzle in the first place and didn’t need it. A number of you reported you didn’t even notice the INTER workings in the clues. A savvy bunch, you are.

In spite of our disappointment at having only a single nominee for a Rabbit Hole award in the month of January we do have some good news!


Our first finalists will be announced on Groundhog Day!
(He's a close personal friend of your Rabbit.)
STAY TUNED!

[jhseeman]

Hmmm, with all the puns flying fast and furious I'm surprised we have not heard from Hunter X? Edam well better have a gouda excuse. OK, ricotta go now, might as well this is a feta compli.

My apologies. Though you're a bit of a Muenster to bring me into this. As a true American, and a CaerPhilly in particular, I should be a Wiz at cheese puns. Pay me some cheddar and I'll Limburger up my skills. Though I'm inclined to drink my Port, Salut you, and thank you for bringing cheese into the picture. (Not that good on sausage puns, in this casing.)

Actually, I had a busy weekend trying out new ski boots in the Poconos before a trip out west next week. Ice, crowds, vertical drop of no more than about 800 feet, and runs lasting all of about 60 seconds. Maybe I should have stayed home and worked on puns.

But hey, speaking of cheese wiz*, the "Igles" won tonight. The hollers from all the units in my condo building were drowned out by the screaming on the street. And there were more horns honking than when the taxis used to go on strike. Then everyone streamed to Broad Street to try to climb the greased light poles. We actually used game-time to drive home from the mountains in the lightest traffic I can remember. Now we're hunkering down to avoid the drunken crowds.

*Proper ordering etiquette**: "One, wit, wiz."

**If you want something fairly disgusting, IMO. Better to get Provolone than wiz anyday.

Whew, I thought you didn't like us anymore, I didn't know skiing was rennin you ragged!

I actually cut my ski teeth on a hill (generous description) near Allentown, PA, and then graduated to Elk Mountain, From there Killington and Stowe and finally Utah when I was in school. First time I skied in Utah I was amazed because I could not hear my skis on the snow. I once skied in Michigan when my wife to be told me there was a ski area near where we lived. Turns out it was an old trash dump that they covered over and made snow ro ski on. I could never determine what wax to use for skiing old soup cans. I remember the first time I went; I took the "loft" up, started down the hill and, as I did out west, was arranging my music (on my Walk Man of course!) and by the time the first song was starting to play I was at the bottom. Their "expert" ill was about 30 yards long with a drop of about 100 feet and their "ski patrol" all snowplowed down the mountain. That was the last time I skied in Michigan.

If my Jags couldn't be in the SB I am delighted the Giggles are (sorry , that was what we called them back in the days of Jaws Jaworski). As for cheese steaks, I would NEVER get wiz and I would NEVER eat a Pat's or Geno's. The best cheese steak I have had in a LONG while was from Costa Deli in Ambler and before that Carmen's in the Reading Terminal.

Ditto for me, grew up skiing in the development my family had a place in graduated to Big Boulder and Camelback....then went to college and started sking on White(ICEFACE)face. so named as it was usually boilerplate....then I went out to Utah and decided that Alta was the place...ruined east coast skiing for me.

Have fun skiing out west, enjoy the powder.

[Al Sisti]

Ditto for me, grew up skiing in the development my family had a place in graduated to Big Boulder and Camelback....then went to college and started sking on White(ICEFACE)face. so named as it was usually boilerplate....then I went out to Utah and decided that Alta was the place...ruined east coast skiing for me.

Have fun skiing out west, enjoy the powder.

Not sure if you're talking about the Whiteface in New York, but they hit -87 degrees windchill today (article).