XWord Muggles Forum

DrTom wrote: ↑Sun Oct 27, 2019 10:31 pm

Inca wrote: ↑Sat Oct 26, 2019 10:35 pm

DrTom wrote: ↑Sat Oct 26, 2019 5:06 pm AARRGGHH! I got through the grid no problem, I struggled through the theme answers with initial difficulty until I saw the light, but the last step WOW??? I am getting nothing that makes any sense, or at least nothing I don't have to interpret. I know that interpreting what is meant in the past has gotten me into real trouble so I am sitting at the bar ruminating and pulling my hair out (well that is rather figurative speech at this point but if I had any I would!). I'm following the usual association of numbers of theme answers with letters in answer but I cannot make them work at all.

I am wondering what this miraculous grid that was developed is? I have seen reference to it twice but nothing anywhere to tell me where to get it. I am grasping at straws here. I can't even find the kid whose raft I stole last week...selfish little devil.

If you are referring to the template that Joe Ross shared, it is Post #51 on Come Aboard > FAQs - Community (and quoted below.) I love Excel and redoing the puzzle by filling in the grid a second time and then being able to highlight/erase highlights and write comments....all neatly and quickly without printing did the trick for me.

Joe Ross wrote: ↑Thu Oct 24, 2019 4:12 pm Link to Friday, 10-25-19, TAKE A NUMBER WSJ Crossword Contest

Good luck, muggles!

Wow - a tad complex but brilliant! I have used Adobe Acrobat to turn the pdf to a “fillable” pdf, but then you have to print the filled pdf so you can go back into adobe and highlight. I’ll have to try this.

I just opened it with excel. It's really easy to fill/highlight

The only real issue I had was whether Bankruptcy was synonymous with Chapter 11 or Chapter 7. I got past that pretty quickly though. The theme answer that got me on the right path was “Dubya” and then noticing that “Bush” was also in the grid. From there I got to “Bankruptcy” and “Chapter”. The last one which I found only because of the pattern that had developed was “Revolution”—“Three”.

Inca wrote: ↑Mon Oct 28, 2019 12:21 am

DrTom wrote: ↑Sun Oct 27, 2019 10:31 pm

Inca wrote: ↑Sat Oct 26, 2019 10:35 pm

If you are referring to the template that Joe Ross shared, it is Post #51 on Come Aboard > FAQs - Community (and quoted below.) I love Excel and redoing the puzzle by filling in the grid a second time and then being able to highlight/erase highlights and write comments....all neatly and quickly without printing did the trick for me.

Wow - a tad complex but brilliant! I have used Adobe Acrobat to turn the pdf to a “fillable” pdf, but then you have to print the filled pdf so you can go back into adobe and highlight. I’ll have to try this.

I just opened it with excel. It's really easy to fill/highlight

Oh. absolutely, very elegant and very easy. What I was referring to was complexity in creating it de novo for the next puzzle. Joe kindly provides the steps but if you are not an Excel user, or rather just the casual Excel user, it might be difficult. I will definitely try it for my the next Crossword Contest because I feel it might be better than my Adobe method. There is, however, some satisfaction in the feel and exercise of the retro method, i.e. pencil and paper (I am not so vain as to believe I might do the WSJ CC in ink).

I gotta say that solving that one was a Hail Mary for me because of the BUSH 2 versus BUSH 43 assumption I made. I also caught sight of a rabbit tail in the INRI - CROSS LETTERS because in my frustrated attempt not to drown there in the vast ocean I grasped at any piece of driftwood I saw. I was convinced, since my IN TNO was obviously wrong, that there were letter intersections (wouldn't be the first time) that would give me the rest of the letters. I can tell you for certain that besides the fact that there was no consistent way to determine which crossed letters were the correct ones (a strict No No as we are aware, Mike & Matt are sneaky but ordered) all combinations yielded words that contained WAY too many consonants. I think I may have gotten a Welsh Village name but that did not fit the clue. Had the Title been "A Rare Bit of Real Estate" maybe, but ....

DrTom wrote: ↑Mon Oct 28, 2019 12:54 am

Inca wrote: ↑Mon Oct 28, 2019 12:21 am

DrTom wrote: ↑Sun Oct 27, 2019 10:31 pm
Wow - a tad complex but brilliant! I have used Adobe Acrobat to turn the pdf to a “fillable” pdf, but then you have to print the filled pdf so you can go back into adobe and highlight. I’ll have to try this.

I just opened it with excel. It's really easy to fill/highlight

Oh. absolutely, very elegant and very easy. What I was referring to was complexity in creating it de novo for the next puzzle. Joe kindly provides the steps but if you are not an Excel user, or rather just the casual Excel user, it might be difficult. I will definitely try it for my the next Crossword Contest because I feel it might be better than my Adobe method. There is, however, some satisfaction in the feel and exercise of the retro method, i.e. pencil and paper (I am not so vain as to believe I might do the WSJ CC in ink).

Thank you, Inca and DrTom. DrTom, I hope you and anyone else will find it useful.

I will post this, tomorrow, in the proper thread, but linked here is a screen capture video of the process of capturing the PDF, pasting it to the Excel blank, editing it for use, and saving. The hope is that anyone can see it's very easy to use, once you get the hang of it.

The Excel spreadsheet blank is linked here:

Bird Lives wrote: ↑Sun Oct 27, 2019 9:41 pm Any guesses on the Under/Over? I'm going with 600.

I'm guessing 675 correct answers, just a little less than last week.

I found Dubya / Bush first, then when I saw Bankruptcy / Chapter 11 I realized it was Bush 43 and the rest fell into place.

I have an easier time with ones like this because it was obvious what the theme answers were as well as that I was looking for something else which fit the clue and was X letters.
There was one kind of like this around March which I failed to solve. I remember the theme answers in the grid didn't make much sense and you had to find an alternative.

Joe Ross wrote: ↑Mon Oct 28, 2019 1:38 am

DrTom wrote: ↑Mon Oct 28, 2019 12:54 am

Inca wrote: ↑Mon Oct 28, 2019 12:21 am

I just opened it with excel. It's really easy to fill/highlight

Oh. absolutely, very elegant and very easy. What I was referring to was complexity in creating it de novo for the next puzzle. Joe kindly provides the steps but if you are not an Excel user, or rather just the casual Excel user, it might be difficult. I will definitely try it for my the next Crossword Contest because I feel it might be better than my Adobe method. There is, however, some satisfaction in the feel and exercise of the retro method, i.e. pencil and paper (I am not so vain as to believe I might do the WSJ CC in ink).

Thank you, Inca and DrTom. DrTom, I hope you and anyone else will find it useful.

I will post this, tomorrow, in the proper thread, but linked here is a screen capture video of the process of capturing the PDF, pasting it to the Excel blank, editing it for use, and saving. The hope is that anyone can see it's very easy to use, once you get the hang of it.

The Excel spreadsheet blank is linked here:

Well that is truly slick! Thanks Joe, and thanks also for the wonderful demonstration. I was making it harder in my mind thinking that I had to paste the solution done with the WSJ App onto the grid but it looks like you are doing it with Excel itself. I should be able to try it this coming Thursday.

oldjudge wrote: ↑Mon Oct 28, 2019 12:19 am

BethA wrote: ↑Mon Oct 28, 2019 12:11 am Neither the WSJ Monday pdf nor crossword fiend spells out plainly enough for me why IN TWO ties back to the hint/answer. Is it because part is a word and part is a number? Like catch-22? I got it but didn’t feel a real solid CLICK!

Beth-I thought the “In Two” might be the fact that there are two answers for each theme clue. I agree that it didn’t click like some answers do, but it was a clever puzzle.

That was my concern that I brought up earlier - how the two tie together. I wonder if it is that each of the alternative answers has two parts, but the second half is not actually in the grid.

I thought about 360, Bush 43 and Chapter 11 for the numbers, and once I decided to look for Bush in the grid, that and Chapter came quickly, and it didn't take long to find and figure out Square and Catch would be another two alternate theme entries. But the toughest for me was to figure what word in the grid for Full Spin. It took a while for me to realize it was the word Three in the grid, leaving 60 as the other half; it is probably because the word Three itself is a number and I thought of 360 as one number didn't consider separating it into two, making Three hiding in plain sight.

I complete the grid online before filling in the printed copy. Because Matt said that the themed entries were key to solving the meta I filled in only those 5 answers. My husband walked over, saw Dubya smack in the middle and said, ‘Bush, 43 and then Bankruptcy, Chapter 11’ From there it was pretty easy to make the connection and solve the meta. If I win I will definitely have to share!!

Anyone else immediately think Number 9 for REVOLUTION? As soon as I realized he was going for synonyms, I tossed that idea, but I filled in REVOLUTION first and was so sure! So art first I had 9, 43, and 11 to look at. When I saw the related words I then found all the appropriate numbers but changed my DUBYA number to 2. Eventually sorted it all out, and enjoyed it.

There are two reasons that I didn't solve, both self-inflicted:

- I mistook the number of letters for 23D in my notes (7 vs the correct number, 5)

- I didn't double-check the clues to catch my mistake.

Trying to connect FLUTIST (the only other 7-lettered answer in the grid) to PREDICAMENT proved to be impossible, not to mention frustrating. Lesson learned!

FrankieHeck wrote: ↑Mon Oct 28, 2019 7:05 am Anyone else immediately think Number 9 for REVOLUTION?

Me. It was the first theme entry plus the title Take a Number. It had to be the Beatles, right?

Red Herring Alert: The title is “Take a Number,” and four clues that specify years. These seem to be there just because they are numbers. There are many ways to clue YES other than “2017 Hall of Fame Inductee,” and other ways to clue QATAR besides “2022 World Cup Host.” Ditto for Trent LOTT (39D) and DUBYA.

If you ignore the century indicator (20), one of those numbers – 22 – matches up with the missing number for one of the theme entries, PREDICAMENT - CATCH 22.

Maybe those numbered years that were forced into the clue definitions were a coincidence, or maybe they were a distraction deliberately placed by MG. In any case, they were completely irrelevant to the meta. If I had ignored those clues with numbers, I’d have gotten the solution much more quickly.

Well, crud. The weekend totally got away from me and I never got back to the puzzle. Count me as going down with the ship. Trying not to read answers/spoilers in case I get back to it this week, but the few things I've seen lead me to believe I'd never have made it to shore.

I had some good origami going with the paper grid before I actually took scissors and cut it IN TWO down the middle. Turn one half bottom up, lay it face up on the other, and Voila! Your mind’s eye can see it, but this was more fun.
I had the easiest 60% correct theme answer relevant matchups, but had wrongly chosen 40% as larvae and whirr. That whirr(360) was an excellent red herring, wasn’t it? And right below the Three... I was stuck there until a kind friend helped me put two and two together properly.
Another great meta, Mike! Keep’em coming!

FrankH wrote: ↑Mon Oct 28, 2019 3:29 am I thought about 360, Bush 43 and Chapter 11 for the numbers, and once I decided to look for Bush in the grid, that and Chapter came quickly, and it didn't take long to find and figure out Square and Catch would be another two alternate theme entries. But the toughest for me was to figure what word in the grid for Full Spin. It took a while for me to realize it was the word Three in the grid, leaving 60 as the other half; it is probably because the word Three itself is a number and I thought of 360 as one number didn't consider separating it into two, making Three hiding in plain sight.

I too agitated over three sixty when I was so lost and thought of IN TWO as the answer based on having most of the letters and using the theme. I abandoned it many times until about 5 minutes before the deadline when it was toss up an answer or fail. So I did a Flutie and turned out OK. Still think it is not two words but will gladly accept a cup if offered because I’m willing to do a one eighty on my stubbornness.

My one quibble with this puzzle was that all of the synonyms are typically written "word #" or "word-#" except for "three-60," which I've never seen anyone write out that way. It's 360. Made it not quite as neat as I think it should've been.

I thought this was tricky even after I discovered the path, because it wasn't clear which bankruptcy chapter it referred to (there's a few), and I struggled with revolution/three-sixty (thought it was sneaky). The Dubya one correlating with the letter W was a nice touch.

Like last week, KAS 5 for me.
My math brain was stuck in a coordinate grid with its point of origin at (0,0) so a solution was never going to happen there.
I did notice CHAPTER and BANKRUPTCY but the only chapter of them with seven letters is Chapter 15. I did learn that there are more chapters (six: 7, 9, 11, 12, 13, and 15) in the bankruptcy law than I was aware of, though.
Oh, well, there's always next week