" Surround Sound " July 21, 2023

[pjc]

My previous streak was 8. My current streak was 26 - and this one broke it; back to square one!

But, I agree that it was very fair.

My two major rabbit holes were:

- SURROUND SOUND seemed to indicate I should look for a word (like SOUND) whose letters were at the beginning at end of a longer word (like SURROUND). And, I came up with a four-letter word for each of the long answers. And, then, nothing. Trying to find other words in the grid that may differ from one letter; or an added letter; or a subtracted letter. Or clues that may contain those words or be CLUES for those words. Etc., etc. Got me nowhere.

- Playing off of SOUND, I looked for words that had homonyms in the grid. And, son of a gun, I found eight (like PAST->PASSED). And tried everything I tried above. And nothing.

Ah, well.

I did enjoy Boswords yesterday, though!

[Joe Ross]

A nudge shove to break this for anyone:

SURROUND BOOKEND

[HunterX]

I tried many sound-like rabbit holes.
- POI was prominent in the center with its OI sound, and the OI combination, albeit not necessarily sound, also appeared in MATCHPOINT (as the complete word and sound), and in TIVOING (less completely). But intersecting/connecting LIONS switched it up, while ONIT completely split it up. For the desperate, OI even appears in diagonal form.
- ALOE and ECHO sound nice next to each other, as well as with UHNO and LOGO, all in the same area. By the time I got to 37A, I those sounds seemed just so long AGO.
- Similarly, LOP and MOP slightly offset from each other drew my attention.
- DOORLOCK rhymes with WARLOCK, and warlocks celebrate the solstice, don’t they?
- SETS and STEPS surround the top row and are very similar. The ETS reverses to STE on the other side of PAUL.
- PAST at 60D, a location known for the occasional hint, made me think that LENT was the past tense of LOAN which rhymes with ATONE. And does it mean that I should change TORE to TEAR? But what does that rhyme with? Oh “dear.” (Thanks Ogden Nash?)
- Although I didn’t notice the marvelous MALAPROP mentioned above, I did wonder about the 3-word rows and columns, and whether the surrounding words were important, or the ones they contained. Around LOP is HAITI and NASH. Taking the last 2 letters of the first and the first 2 letters of the second spells TINA. Similarly, around POI you would get GORY. (A misspelling of Edward Gorey? How ghastly!) But the letters around ADS ruined it. EPMI?

Eventually frustration got me to go back to basics. What do we commonly do with themers? Take the first letter of each word. But not all of them are 2-word answers. How about the surrounding first and last letters….. Oh….. Well that’s pretty CAGEY of Mr. Shenk! I popped a CD in the MT disc slot and was surrounded by the sound of the successful “A ha!”

[Yoda66]

My aha truly came in stereo as both DeKay and EmTee hit my brain at the same time. It was a 'oof' and 'duh' moment combined, which from a sound standpoint corresponds to Utah Funeral Directors Association. Oh Utah again, now i need to chatup

[mheberlingx100]

Tried to do this on my phone but got nowhere. Got home and printed out the grid and it fell together immediately. It was much easier to sound out the letters and see them in the clues. Decay was the one that I saw first.

[moxy]

<snip>
- SURROUND SOUND seemed to indicate I should look for a word (like SOUND) whose letters were at the beginning at end of a longer word (like SURROUND). And, I came up with a four-letter word for each of the long answers. And, then, nothing. Trying to find other words in the grid that may differ from one letter; or an added letter; or a subtracted letter. Or clues that may contain those words or be CLUES for those words. Etc., etc. Got me nowhere.
<snip>

Me too! KING, DOCK, MINT, COLD, MARE, and... SOVA

And then I went down an even less fruitful path:

1. Maybe "sound" is music? So "Supernova" points to "Champagne Supernova" by Oasis... ooh, one letter off from SAYSO! -->Y
2. So <google>, "Kibbitzing" is... "Brotherly Kibitzing" by Kiss, which is one letter off from SAKS -->A
3. Then, uh <google google google>, "Matchpoint Of Our Love" by Beach Boys, which is sort of TOBY for BOYS -->T
4. ...

I restarted, looking at PAGAN next to SUPERNOVA and thought maybe I need the "other" letters from CHAMPAGNE: CHEM

[vandono]

I stayed asea and didn't even find much of a rabbit hole to explore, but enjoyed time on the boat nevertheless.

[ky-mike]

I had this song in my head all weekend and still couldn't solve the meta.

[steveb]

I managed to skip step 1 and still solve the meta. I never noticed the first and last letters of the long answers, but I was convinced that 15A must have something to do with it because the clue used the word "sound." It's usually significant when a clue uses a word that's in the puzzle title and/or the hint, and especially if it's in both. Knowing Mike's propensity for using puzzle clues also as meta clues, I noticed that clue 15A started with a word that was the sound of two letters. I found the other 5 of those, looked at the 6 answers and came up with S E T O R E.

That anagrams to STEREO, of course. I couldn't find any indication that I was supposed to anagram them, but I figured that must be the answer and I would find out Sunday night what I missed in terms of ordering the letters.

Off the subject of this puzzle, but on the subject of surround sound, I work for an audiology practice and I have learned that if you have trouble hearing voices on TV (especially on sports broadcasts), try turning off your TV's surround sound feature. Surround sound works by boosting the background sounds to give you more of an immersive feel, but in doing so it de-emphasizes voices in the mix. Turning off surround sound gives more emphasis to the voices, which may help you hear them better.

[michaelm]

On my top five SAD-istic list. Brilliant example!

[eagle1279]

Never close. Stuck all weekend looking for sounds in the grid and clues thinking they would be surrounded or echoed. In the grid: echo, zing, tap, rap, tone, eek. And in clues: sound, slam, knock. Despite a helpful reminder from @Joe Ross, never thought to sound out the themers.

On the good side, I learned some new words. Hoping to use TOBY and KIBITZING in a sentence this week.

[ZooAnimalsOnWheels]

Wow, this was a good one. I was at Comic-Con from Thursday through Sunday, so I only filled out the grid on Sunday evening. As I was running on about four hours of sleep each night, it wasn't surprising I didn't see anything. I resisted a temptation to just look at the answer and kept at it today, and I was just writing @Wendy Walker for a nudge, when in the process of writing everything down, it popped out at me.

I got hung up on the clue for 5A "Duke Leto Atreides's heir in Dune", which sounds way too wordy to me, and the first and last words begin with the "Do" sound. And "Do" is used in two other clues, once at the start (27D) and once at the end (23A). Also, the use of "heir" in any puzzle with a title which suggests homophones is a rabbit hole starter. The correct way in for me ended up being 15A because it used "sound" in the clue, but then it got me to focus on "empty room", which was an odd clue for ECHO.

[Inca]

How do you know you've done really a lot of metas?
When you really think simple is a word you could use to describe this meta

1. Take the first and last letters of the longest grid entries
2. Say them out loud together and hear the word
3. Remember (or carefully re-examine all the clues until you realize) that all these words appear in the clue
And then the rest is well, yes, simple

I didn't have a chance to get back here until now, so missed my usual 2nd glance on Sunday night, but probably wouldn't have seen, or heard, the light anyway

[VanVeen]

If anyone is wondering what a TOBY mug is, there's a whole building full of them right outside Chicago at the Toby Jug Museum: https://www.tobyjugmuseum.com.

It's only like a block from the purple line.

[iggystan]

If anyone is wondering what a TOBY mug is, there's a whole building full of them right outside Chicago at the Toby Jug Museum: https://www.tobyjugmuseum.com.

It's only like a block from the purple line.

I got the answer, Toby, but was surprised that the clue said mug vs jug, as in your mention of the museum. I don't know that I have heard Toby mug used before.

[ZooAnimalsOnWheels]

Uncreative rabbit hole: I the "oor" in door the same sound as the "ure" in sure? Kind of, but not really. That's the action of a desperate man who has nowhere to go.

I tried many sound-like rabbit holes.

MAKE SURE and "Mature" from 53D were close enough to draw my interest. These sound puzzles can be an exercise in pronunciation rationalization.

[hcbirker]

If anyone is wondering what a TOBY mug is, there's a whole building full of them right outside Chicago at the Toby Jug Museum: https://www.tobyjugmuseum.com.

It's only like a block from the purple line.

We have several Toby mugs that we’ve collected. Here are two

[michaelm]

TONY mug

[LesY]

Speaking of mugs…. Holy cow I won the WSJ mug!!! Very excited. And it only took about 8 years!

Thankful for all Mike S, Matt G, Mike M and the WSJ team do to make and support such great puzzles. And for this outstanding community, which is of course the true treasure.

Have a good week all.

[DBMiller]

I too, thought ECHO was a hint to the metanism.

No indication of themed answers. Either 4 or 6 long answers. Six would make STEREO a good Hail Mary...

66A) God with ARROWS ... EROS ... Arrows ... Eros ... arrows ... eros

No other real connection, except maybe...

34A) matchPOInt ... 38A) POI

Did all the same sound variations already noted by others, including a G+NASH variant that led nowhere.

Kept going back to surround and looking over and over for boxes on either side of a sound, finally looked at the boxes at each end of what I assumed were the possible theme answers. KG, DK (Wasn't there a Decay?), MT (Empty... ECHO!), CD, ME, SA. Got it. Heh, Hail Mary it was!