"Think Different" August 11, 2023

[dogguy]

On shore with a nice nudge in the right direction. I guess they felt sorry for me going around in circles. LOL

[LadyBird]

On shore--figuratively--with some helpful nudges, so no mug submission for me. This was a Kas 5!

And on the shore literally as well.

[HunterX]

Has the server been having issues this weekend, or is it just me? I've been getting Internal Server Error 500 on and off the past couple of days. My other internet forays work fine. Just the Muggles. And I've seen double posts, and gotten duplicate PM's.

Just wondering. No worries.

[dandre]

Have to admit I'm stuck on this one. Would love a nudge if anyone might be up for dm-ing me. Thanks in advance.

[JerryF]

I can swim in circles and tread water no longer....going down..glug, glug.

[HoldThatThought]

Has the server been having issues this weekend, or is it just me? I've been getting Internal Server Error 500 on and off the past couple of days. My other internet forays work fine. Just the Muggles. And I've seen double posts, and gotten duplicate PM's.

Just wondering. No worries.

I've had those issues, as well. I've found that clearing my cache eliminates the problem, albeit, briefly. The error message tells you to notify the site administrator, so please consider the site administrator notified herewith. The party of the first part is notifying the party of the second part, subject to all claims under international law, though I reserve the right to pursue whatever legal remedies are afforded to me under the Geneva Convention and the Boy Scout pledge.

[Beth Tyrpin]

🏝

[Bird Lives]

Ashore, but the life preserver I needed was such that I'm not submitting. Should have seen it.

[hcbirker]

[escapeartist]

What?!

[ky-mike]

Opposites Attract might have been a better title.

[escapeartist]

"Think Different" - I was thinking all Apple stuff since that was their motto a while back.

i something - jobs about the starred answers - apple varieties

This is so out there and could have meant anything.

Maybe I should have busted out a Tarot deck...

[moron]

Holy cow, spent my weekend drowning again.

Thoughts:
Each theme answer is two words right? Maybe each connects to a clue:
FARM TOOL => AWN
WELL BUT => THO
LAST ROUND => BEER
SAIL PAST = >AWASH (clueless)

this of course goes nowhere
what if each theme answer has an alternate answer? I thought tennis and table tennis => ball sport was a strange connection and that maybe something else could fit, following this:

BALL SPORT : RALLYGAME
FARM TOOL : ????????
RIGHT WAY : BESTPLAN
LAST ROUND : NIGHTCAP
WELL BUT : HOWEVER
DUCK DOWN : BACKAWAY
SAIL PAST : BREEZEBY

this of course goes nowhere
the fact that two words are in each theme answer must be important, what if I'm supposed to swap them around to reference other clues in the puzzle
SAIL ROUND : INDIA (I am coping at this point)
RIGHT DOWN : DSIX (clueless)
DUCK SPORT : would reference some kind of hunting clue IF ONE EXISTED
RIGHT TOOL: possibly referencing the ANORAK?
this of course goes nowhere

Brilliant solution though. I can't believe I missed my chance to see Matt Gaffney.

[woozy]

The weird thing is that for all the difficulty and impossibility to do... it wasn't actually that hard....

I kind of got it stuck in my had that "think different" referred to doing metanisms that had never been done before. I was all set for "DUCK DOWN" to be equal to eider and "LAST ROUND" to mean "FIRST SQUARE" and for the first square O, the chessboard D-6 L and the battle ship D-6 E to spell OLE or something, to spell WAY by going to the RIGHT so it spells...., um, WAY I guess. And so on. And somehow you would end up with FOOLISH which is different than INTELLIGENT and so the answer would be TELLIGENT because if you didn't solve it you would be IN TELLIGENT for not falling for all the faulty steps that were obviously illogical and stupid.

...

Oh well, just wait till next week! Just wait till next week.

[woozy]

...
what if each theme answer has an alternate answer? I thought tennis and table tennis => ball sport was a strange connection and that maybe something else could fit, following this:

BALL SPORT : RALLYGAME
FARM TOOL : ????????
....

REAPER. Sickle and Scythe aren't just any farm tools. They are specifically REAPERS. ANd Last round means to go in circles an there is a 2 by 2 square that if you read clockwise reads REAP. Actually there were dozens of 2 x 2 squares that read really interesting things. I know that's just the boggle effect but this one really seemed to have a lot.

[mheberlingx100]

Brilliant puzzle. The Bad Good as confirmation knocked my socks off.

[hcbirker]

This was hard even after I got a nudge on the Friday Zoom. And we had 25 on the Sunday Last Call Zoom which I think is a record. Good job who figured it out without nudges or even with nudges!

[Mister Squawk]

Working on this puzzle I felt as if I were trapped in a room with three mosquitos buzzing around my head.

First was the puzzle title -- "THINK DIFFERENT" is inextricably linked to Apple Computer, so it must be something to do with Apple. Apple products. Kinds of apples? Steves? Jobs?

Second, the starred clues. All two-word answers, all pairs of single-syllable words, all badly clued (Scythe and Sickle for "FARM TOOL"? Really?) And those answers were unique in the grid, so why are they starred? Normally, that's a mechanism to signal that otherwise unrelated answers are part of the meta, but in this case they were related (7 pairs of single-syllable words).

Third, the large number of bizarre three-letter words. AWN? ITD? LPS? WCS?

On Sunday, I started looking for rhymes, homonyms, synonyms, or alternates for the word pairs. Then, for some reason the substitution of WARM COOL for FARM TOOL just popped into my head, and of course having been starting at the three-letter words, WCS popped out. I was slightly discomfited by the fact that both WARM COOL and NIGHT DAY substituted the words' first letters but the others did not.

Anyway, a satisfying, if time-consuming, solve.

[clonefitz]

Has the server been having issues this weekend, or is it just me? I've been getting Internal Server Error 500 on and off the past couple of days. My other internet forays work fine. Just the Muggles. And I've seen double posts, and gotten duplicate PM's.

Just wondering. No worries.

I also received several Internal Server Errors earlier in the weekend.

[MaineMarge]

I was in a good mood when I hit the metanism early on. I was thinking opposites from the get-go from the title. So farm tool had me stumped- city tool??
But BINGO when I got to right way. Wrong way wasn’t pulling up any grid words or clues, so I started getting new themers by changing a first letter. Right..fight, light, might, NIGHT! And the WAY instantly became DAY!
Then back up to farm tool to see WARM/COOL.
I thought Matt eased us into the metanism by changing only the first letters in these first 2 themers. Then it was serious thinking cap time.
FAIL/PASS was my last find.
Excellent job, Matt
How’s this for tall/short?

Beloved garden helper and Jack of all trades, Buddy, and 5’ Marge
2017