"Connect Four" May 5, 2023

[ship4u]

I wanted the answer to be DONALD DUCK. My grade school classmates continually reminded me that I shared his name and they would often greet me talking in a duck-like manner. It wasn't until more recently that I finally realized that my name had a Scottish heritage and not that of a cartoon duck.

I believe that it was @CromsFury on our Friday Zoom who revealed noticing the connected letters D-U-C-K under the D in DREW (17A). Alas, not quite enough to pursue as the meta answer.

[Franklin.Bluth]

ARCHIE ANDREWS. Showing my age, but that was the first name that came to mind. Who is this Fred person that everyone keeps talking about anyway?

I knew Archie wasn't what the WJS powers-that-be had in mind; it repeats the same connected four as one of the theme entries. But it does meet the criterion.

When I saw all the posts about multiple right answers, I thought: They can't all be thinking of Archie. And I guessed that there would be a lot of wrong submissions this week. We'll soon see.

But neither ARCHIE nor ANDREWS are four letter words (or, more precisely, distinct four-letter strings like DXCV).

Also, a bit of a pedantic note (because someone earlier suggested ELMER ELEPHANT): "alliteration" generally refers to repeated consonant sounds. Repetition of vowels is called "assonance". (But in practice most people just use "alliteration" to mean both.)

[ship4u]

Also, a bit of a pedantic note (because someone earlier suggested ELMER ELEPHANT): "alliteration" generally refers to repeated consonant sounds. Repetition of vowels is called "assonance". (But in practice most people just use "alliteration" to mean both.)

You sure don't pull any punches in your analysis!

I always learn something new from this group!

[Bird Lives]

ARCHIE ANDREWS.

But neither ARCHIE nor ANDREWS are four letter words (or, more precisely, distinct four-letter strings like DXCV).

Also, a bit of a pedantic note (because someone earlier suggested ELMER ELEPHANT): "alliteration" generally refers to repeated consonant sounds. Repetition of vowels is called "assonance". (But in practice most people just use "alliteration" to mean both.)

As the magician The Amazing Mr. Ballantine used to say, "Well, if you're gonna look that close. . . "

[Barney]

I don’t hesitate to rate a brilliant puzzle a 5 on Crossword Fiend even if I don’t solve it

Similarly, I didn’t hesitate to rate this a 1 (given that zero is not an option)

Nuff said

[Joe Ross]

I haven't been posting my reveals at midnight since Heidi @hcbirker has graciously been posting the mocked up "official" reveal for me.

[MattGaffney]

I don’t hesitate to rate a brilliant puzzle a 5 on Crossword Fiend even if I don’t solve it

Similarly, I didn’t hesitate to rate this a 1 (given that zero is not an option)

Nuff said

Quite the contrary — I’d be most interested to hear

[Jace54]

We had this discussion at the end of the Last Call zoom session yesterday.

The definition of alliteration is "the occurrence of the same letter or sound at the beginning of adjacent or closely connected words".

That does not mean that the two names of the answer have to begin with the same letter but they can also begin with the same sound.

Nor does it mean that the answer has to be the four adjacent keyboard letters to start the alliteration.

Although having the two names start with the same letter and having the four letters starting the word was what was intended it does not preclude other answers. However, doing the metas for several years, it would also make sense that whatever answer you came up with would have to be known by the average solver.

As @DaveKennison pointed out there are other answers like Mighty Mouse and Pink Panther would fit the criteria given and should be considered valid responses. So now we get down to "the best" answer as opposed to other answers which could be made to fit the criterion.

My guess is that the WSJ staff, as they have on other occasions, hope that the first name the pick out is Fred Flintstone and everything else is just statistics.

p.s. this kind of detailed but not desired logical analysis of the problem got me in trouble in grade school more than once. Sometimes you can be technically correct but not desired at the same time.

I disagree that Mighty Mouse and Pink Panther are valid answers. The letters ‘t’ and ‘h’ are not connected to each other on the keyboard, so the ‘ghty’ and ‘ther’ strings do not follow the same sequential example as the strings in the five theme answers where each subsequent letter is connected to the prior letter.

[femullen]

Time to acknowledge the role in my life of dumb luck. I work on these things on a spreadsheet. Figuring that the four-letter parts of the theme answers played a role, I typed each of them into a cell of a column. Then I typed in all the alliterative cartoon names I could think of--Betty Boop, Tom Terrific, Daffie Duck,..., Fred Flintstone,..., Jane Jetson, Bugs Bunny. In the end, I had a dozen. Then I retyped just the four-letter names, having an idea of a mechanism that turned out to be completely wrong.

The luck was in typing those four-letter names: the tactile impression of typing FRED using just the first two fingers of the left hand got my attention. Mind you, I did not suddenly think "Aha!" I only thought it was an interesting curiosity. But then I thought, I wonder if the four-letter theme bits are all typed with a single finger. Nope, but they were all typed with one hand, just as was Fred. So, Fred F-something must be Flintstone.

If I'd done this with pen and paper, I'm sure I'd have never guessed.

[boharr]

.... but they were all typed with one hand....

So now you're telling me I have to learn how to type? Yikes. Too late I'm afraid. lol

[woozy]

Here is why all the other suggestions don't work and why in the end I thought this was very valid.

All examples contained two words. One word is four letters and the other is not (so Archie Andrews and Mighty Mouse as not okay). It is the four letter word is formed by the connected keystrokes (so "pink panTHER" is not okay). The connected keystrokes are so that consecutive letters are in order (so FERD FEATHERS [if there were such a character] would not be okay because F is not adjacent to E; also another reason "pink phanTHER" wouldn't work). And finally the non-four letter word has no pair of adjacent consecutive letters (so Fred Fredburger is not acceptable).

It's funny as when I got the "connect four" idea my immediate thought was there would be no way I could possibly go through a list of all alliterative cartoon characters and check this obscure and unnatural condition but then I quickly thought, oh wait, it must be a four letter word that have the condition, and then, oh wait, a four letter name will always have a vowel (or the cartoon character would be notable for having a vowelless name) so I just need to check the five vowels. A seemed unlikely as Ased, Resa, Qwaz and worse were the choices. E yielded FRED pretty quickly and so Fred Flintstane (is he the only alliterative character named Fred... Freddie Femur from "Strangers in Paradise" can't count as he is always referred to as Freddie and never Fred and a comic book is not a cartoon). I did a check to make sure the pairs of consecutive letters in FLINTSTONE where never adjacent (complete disconnection is pretty rare) and the were. A glance at the O,I ,U keys convinced me those were unlikely to have any results.

.....

The letters ‘t’ and ‘h’ are not connected to each other on the keyboard, so the ‘ghty’ and ‘ther’ strings do not follow the same sequential example as the strings in the five theme answers where each subsequent letter is connected to the prior letter.

Not to mention in THER if we did claim T was close enough to the H, there is no way we could claim the H was close enough to the E.

[otlaolap]

I am a paper solver. Love that stuff. Was wierded by the DXCV pattern I had to write -- is that a valid Roman numeral? Sure looked strange. But then I got nowhere. Wound up contemplating the look-down clue for minutes. What could that guy mean? But I know the phrase ZXCVBNM, and the XCV had a faint resonance in my mind. After ten minutes: keyboard, and an immediate discovery of the mechanism. But what about cartoon characters? Not my strength. Started typing into Google "alliterative cartoon characters", on Thursday afternoon, and before I got anywhere near the end up popped "allliterative cartoon characters", and a list. Picked Fred from the supplied names. Either Matt or Mike did us a favor by picking a googleable prompt, or a lot of you were into Google before me!

[Barney]

I don’t hesitate to rate a brilliant puzzle a 5 on Crossword Fiend even if I don’t solve it

Similarly, I didn’t hesitate to rate this a 1 (given that zero is not an option)

Nuff said

Quite the contrary — I’d be most interested to hear

Too 2-down.

First one must fathom to take the four letter words in each asterisked clue and note that their letters can be connected (albeit all differently) on a keyboard.

Second, one must examine the keyboard to find four *other* letters that constitute a name that can be extrapolated to a cartoon character.

Seems to me masterfully obscure.

[sharkicicles]

Went down a slight rabbit hole (as I solve on an iPad and pencil minus keyboard…) shift-4 prints a “$”, and there are 4 letters in RICH, so I tried to backsolve from Richie Rich. Which went about as well as you’d think.

[woozy]

First one must fathom to take the four letter words in each asterisked clue and note that their letters can be connected (albeit all differently) on a keyboard.

To my mind that's what looking down but with the distinct and clearly stated condition you are solving with a keyboard meant. I tried looking for letters below letters in in the grid but got no-where but went over typing them in my head and so the connection (the weirdness of DXCV helped) showed itself. Felt a little weird that the "look down" was not part of the metanism but just a hint for what to look for was a little strange but I liked it. What I really liked though was at first it seemed like it'd be impossible to sift through such an unnatural device but it turned out to be straightforward to do so.

[Geezer Weezer]

I looked down as suggested by 69A. I came up Peter Parker.

[hoover]

I solve on the computer. I looked down and knew the answer had something to do with a keyboard, but that's as far as I got. I was trying to figure out what NANCY and JAMES and LOKI had to do with each other.

[MikeMillerwsj]

The contest answer is FRED FLINTSTONE. As suggested at 69-Across, one four-letter part of each theme answer can be found by tracing a path through four adjacent computer keys: DREW, LOKI, POLK, DXCV and TRES. FRED can similarly be found, suggesting the contest answer.

This was a tricky one, especially for print solvers! We had a pretty big turnout with 1,644 entries, about 74% correct--right in line with our usual percentage. Incorrect guessers romped through all the famous alliterative cartoon characters: PORKY PIG (33), DONALD DUCK (31), BUGS BUNNY (31), DAFFY DUCK (29), PEPE LE PEW (22), MICKEY MOUSE (15), ROAD RUNNER (10) and several others.

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

[Tom Shea]

The contest answer is FRED FLINTSTONE. As suggested at 69-Across, one four-letter part of each theme answer can be found by tracing a path through four adjacent computer keys: DREW, LOKI, POLK, DXCV and TRES. FRED can similarly be found, suggesting the contest answer.

This was a tricky one, especially for print solvers! We had a pretty big turnout with 1,644 entries, about 74% correct--right in line with our usual percentage. Incorrect guessers romped through all the famous alliterative cartoon characters: PORKY PIG (33), DONALD DUCK (31), BUGS BUNNY (31), DAFFY DUCK (29), PEPE LE PEW (22), MICKEY MOUSE (15), ROAD RUNNER (10) and several others.

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

...frantically checking inbox and spam folder.

Oh %($%&*!!

[femullen]

.... but they were all typed with one hand....

So now you're telling me I have to learn how to type? Yikes. Too late I'm afraid. lol

Afraid so, but you must blame Mr. Gaffney for the requirement.

After reading the post mortems here, I'm glad I didn't think of Pink Panther, as Pink is also typed with one hand. Dumb luck, as I say.

As usual, even when I solve one of these things, the meta construction is even more clever than I thought.