"Hiding Places" April 7, 2023

[mlvilv]

I am throwing a flag on this one. Ask anyone in Italy where Capri or Isola d 'Elba are and they would tell you Tyrrhenian Sea. The Mediterranean only start below Calabria (or below the heel of the boot). That is how we were taught geography over there. You have the Ligurian, Tyrrhenian, Ionian and Adriatic Sea that surround Italy. MikeM000, ask anyone in Venice if they think the city is on the Mediterranean.
Enough sour grapes. For the record i put down Sea: did not like the answer but it was the only common denominatior across the 'correct' seas surrounding those islands.

I agree. When I looked carefully at a map I saw that four of the locations were technically on other seas. So I wrote them out and tried to spell something with them to no avail. The answer 'sea' felt a little anemic but based on what I looked up 'Mediterranean Sea' seemed incorrect. I'm glad I wasn't the only one.

[CPJohnson]

I tried so hard to make this puzzle hard. I first identified these hidden things: cave, elba, tent, attic, malta. Napoleon hid on Elba, right? And people hide in caves and attics all the time, right? And one certainly could hide on Malta or in a tent. Tried to find those things hidden in other grid answers. Found elba in 5D, also elba scrambled in 28D. Found attic with 1 letter changed in 64A eatit. Found cave in 11D, also attic. Found malta in 10D. But wait, there’s malta MINUS 1 letter in 39D tama! Could this be the key? Sadly, no.

A fellow muggle suggested I look for islands. Aha, so now I have Ithaca, Elba, Crete, Capri, and Malta. Still trying to think of someone who hid on Malta. But, back to the grid to search for hidden islands. There are still 5D and 28D for Elba. And there’s Ithaca in 11D! And Malta in 10D! Surely the metanism is to take the leftover letters and spell a body of water. Nope, Crete and Capri are nowhere to be found. How about the initial letters of the islands? IECCM….can’t anagram that to anything.

Ok, so let’s look at bodies of water. According to google, the 5 islands are located (top to bottom) in the Ionian, Tyrrhenian, Aegean, Tyrrhenian, and Mediterranean Seas. ITATM? No body of water there. Googled all the seas. Sigh; they are arms of the Mediterranean.

[Seth0326]

I feel like my answer is way better. Because of all the sea uncertainty, and because of SECRET ENTRANCES in the center, I submitted the waterway that’s the entrance to this part of the water world: STRAIT OF GIBRALTAR. I think that’s a much better answer.

[Katiedid]

I had done too much googling, finding Tyrrhenian and Ionian etc. But then I found this page and was satisfied with Mediterranean.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_i ... iterranean

[Joe Ross]

After getting three of the islands in theme entries, I declared myself ashore and submitted Mediterranean Sea as my answer.

Later, seeing the doubt of other muggles, I finished the grid & looked up bodies of water associated with the islands, ignoring rivers & lakes upon the islands themselves:

ITHACA - Mediterranean Sea, Ionian Sea, Strait of Ithaca, Afales Bay, Frikes Bay, Kioni Bay, Molos Gulf, Ormos Gulf, Sarakiniko Bay

ELBA - Mediterranean Sea, Tyrrhenian Sea, Ligurian Sea, Piombino Channel, Corsica Channel

CRETE - Mediterranean Sea, Aegean Sea, Sea of Crete, Libyan Sea, Myrtoan Sea, Carpathian Sea

CAPRI - Mediterranean Sea, Tyrrhenian Sea, Gulf of Naples, Malta Channel

MALTA - Mediterranean Sea, Malta Channel

Seeing the Mediterranean Sea as the only common body of water & much too many other options for this laziness to explore, I stuck my head in the sand upon which I'd been sunning for a day or two.

Later, I looked up & found this incomplete list of bodies of water that comprise the Mediterranean Sea with apologies to @Flying_Burrito for my ignorance:

Abu Qir Bay
Adriatic Sea
Aegean Sea
Afales Bay
Alboran Sea
Arab's Gulf
Balearic Sea
Baltalimanı
Bay of Grama
Bay of Lalzi
Bay of Palma
Bay of Tangier
Bay of Vlorë
Belceğiz Bay
Bosporus
Cape of Rodon
Corsica Channel
Dardanelles
Eğribük
Frikes Bay
Gozo Channel
Gulf of Alexandretta
Gulf of Antalya
Gulf of Bomba
Gulf of Drin
Gulf of Fethiye
Gulf of Gabès
Gulf of Gaeta
Gulf of Genoa
Gulf of Gökova
Gulf of Hammamet
Gulf of Kyparissia
Gulf of La Spezia
Gulf of Lion
Gulf of Manfredonia
Gulf of Mersin
Gulf of Naples
Gulf of Oristano
Gulf of Pozzuoli
Gulf of Roses
Gulf of Saint Euphemia
Gulf of Salerno
Gulf of Sidra
Gulf of Trieste
Gulf of Tunis
Gulf of Valencia
Gulf of Venice
Haifa Bay
Icarian Sea
Ionian Sea
Kioni Bay
Laconian Gulf
Levantine Sea
Libyan Sea
Ligurian Sea
Malta Channel
Mirabello Bay
Molos Gulf
Myrtoan Sea
Ormos Gulf
Piombino Channel
Sahara Sea
Sarakiniko Bay
Sea of Crete
Sea of Sardinia
Sicily Channel
Split Channel
Split Gates
Strait of Bonifacio
Strait of Gibraltar
Strait of Ithaca
Strait of Messina
Strait of Sicily
Straits of Corfu
Thracian Sea
Turkish straits
Tyrrhenian Sea
Velebit Channel
Vinodol Channel

This was scary enough to justify bingeing The Masters for the rest of the weekend.

[Bob cruise director]

After seeing the islands in the Med, my immediate thought was "this is too simple and there is not closure so there must be another step" - talk about paranoia!!

So, my first thought was that Napoleon was exiled on Elba (hidden away?) so I wondered if other notables were exiled on the other islands. My googling fingers kicked in. And I found (heaven knows that I knew none of this before and will forget in another hour) that Daedalus who was the father of Icarus was exiled on Crete. AHA - I am on to something and may have found the secret passage to success.

And then I found that Pablo Neruda was exiled to Capri. (and that Capri is known as the Island of exiles). This must be it! I am sensing a rabbit to catch.

So that leaves only Ithaca and Malta to find out who was exiled there. But alas and alack, I could find nothing.

Undaunted by dead end rabbit holes, I thought that these islands must be owned by someone and I found that two were owned by Greece and two by Italy and Malta is its own country (and in our useless factoid mode which muggles are familiar with, Malta is the smallest member of the EU by area - even smaller than Luxembourg)

And all this was Thursday so I had the rest of the weekend to ponder whether there was other rabbit holes that might be more fruitful

[pjc]

I had done too much googling, finding Tyrrhenian and Ionian etc. But then I found this page and was satisfied with Mediterranean.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_i ... iterranean

That is EXACTLY what my path to the answer was, too.

Set a new personal best streak of 12 in a row!

[Flying_Burrito]

Thanks for posting @Joe Ross. My goal last week was speed and I was indeed fast but wrong. I knew that my answer Sea was 1% tight but as I was keeping an eye on how quickly page 1 was filling up I rolled the dice.
I did a similar exercise while my wife drove on Friday. Depending upon the sites you google, the bodies of water on this spinning orb could be 10 or 100+. In the worldatlas.com those seas mentioned in my previous post are listed as bodies, but I also saw other sites where they were mentioned as arms of the Mediterranean. I thought that maybe a second hidden mechanism would lead to a final solution (i was enamored by 'xandy' answer, translating into X a Y axis on the grid, or simply points of intersection) until my wife told me that as the owner of two X chromosomes she demanded the X and Y person next to her to get behind the wheel and drive his portion of the trip.
It's all good, I still love your metas Matt Gaffney.

[Dickie_Dunn]

I, like others, certainly looked into who may be "hiding" on those islands but could make nothing stick. Also, like others, briefly looked into US places with the same name but seemed to be stretching too far. In the end, came to the original conclusion that all of the places were still technically within the larger sea that is the answer - but I guess they were hiding in some other smaller bodies of water.

[flyingMoose]

I took Hiding Places to be the island names hiding in the themers. Apologies if already mentioned.

[ship4u]

Here's my rabbit hole:

When I saw CAVE in 17A, I thought that is a perfect "Hiding Place." Next was ATTIC in 48A and TENT in 37A, also great "Hiding Places." I was convinced that I was on to the correct mechanism. Hmmm, now what? Well, Napoleon was exiled on ELBA, hence, his "Hiding Place." MALTA took some googling.

It turns out that between March, 1919, and October, 1920, high ranking leaders and militia of the Ottoman Empire were exiled to Malta after being accused of crimes, effectively "Hidden" away. Of course, as typical, Mr. Gaffney has given us one very tough one to complete the mechanism!

Next, I saw that C E T A M anagrams to C-META! Could it be that SEA is the META?

By now, I had dug myself pretty deep!!!

[MikeyG]

This was scary enough to justify bingeing The Masters for the rest of the weekend.

Rabbit holes: a tradition unlike any other.

[woozy]

We actually saw the islands, did the geography, came up with this answer, and thought that this couldn't be the answer, because it was so far below standard... so we did not submit it. We even speculated on MetaLuna being a sort of nudge (Middle of the moon, middle of the earth) but didn't like that either.

We need a new word that is the opposite of pageant - an answer that is so easy that it is suspect.

Opposite of pageant. Might I suggest COLLEGE BOWLED?

"far below standard". Yes, indeed.

[mikeB]

As with several here, Occam’s Razor, rescued me from my particular rabbit hole. The initial look at the completed grid entries gave me five island names in the Mediterranean Sea. Huh? That’s it? I decided to hold off submitting to allow for more study. I noted the contest appearing on Easter weekend, recalling past solutions have sometimes related to a nearby holiday. That focused me on the double entendre title, Hiding Places, which on Easter suggests to me an Easter egg hunt, so I looked for words describing where you might hide Easter eggs. On the verge of abandoning that rabbit hole and submitting my initial solution, I tripped over 9D – OVA – right next to the partial entry META____. Aha, ova are eggs! Back to the hunt for an Easter egg hunt. That consumed some time over Friday and Saturday, before Occam showed up and gave me some friendly and time-worn advice: “Simpler is better. When pursuing a crossword contest solution, do not make the mistake of ova-thinking it.” Simpler indeed.

[phykos]

So, did anyone else chase a rabbit into “2 points define a line, but Elba, Capri and Crete are geographically almost exactly colinear, and that line intersects (x and y, x marks the spot) a line from Ithaca to Malta in the Ionian Sea!”? Anyone? Just me? Oh, well…

(actually, the rabbit got away - I shaved with Occam’s Razor, too, and submitted Mediterranean)

[femullen]

Hey, let those of us with low standards have our week, okay?

I sent in MEDITERRANEAN SEA and never thought twice. Sometimes it's an advantage to have a simple mind.

[DBMiller]

I had done too much googling, finding Tyrrhenian and Ionian etc. But then I found this page and was satisfied with Mediterranean.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_i ... iterranean

Only Google search I did had all five islands on it. First result was that one and confirmed what I had already ready knew and submitted.

Also helped that I had been on a Mediterranean cruise, which started in Barcelona, with stops in France and Italy. And I spent four weeks in Greece with my daughter during the between her Junior and Senior college years.

[mitchel674]

Hey, let those of us with low standards have our week, okay?

I sent in MEDITERRANEAN SEA and never thought twice. Sometimes it's an advantage to have a simple mind.

I'm with you! All of this complaining because the meta was too easy is a bit over the top. Some are just easier than others.

[ZooAnimalsOnWheels]

With the contest answer being a body of water, I figured the obvious answer was the answer, although I did take the precaution of checking this forum and making sure nobody was saying things like "Got steps one through three easy enough, but bogged down with four..."

My almost-rabbit hole came earlier when I was doing the fill. 34A was "Jack's predecessor", which I wanted to be TEN. Then when I filled SECRETENTRANCES after that, I saw my TEN right in the middle! 54D's "High range" started to look like ALTA (which, I know, is a ski resort and not a mountain range, but it is such common crossword fill my mind immediately went there), and then I saw FORMALTALKS with ALTA in the middle. I went so far as looking for a clue that could be interpreted as CAP from ATTICAPRISON, but then I began to see the full island names in the themers, so that rabbit hole was never fully explored.

[Barney]

Reminding myself that if some of you brightest bulbs could not overcomplicate something simple, you probably could not solve something complicated.