MGWCC #793 — "Consider the Alternative"

[Jeremy Smith]

After exploring a myriad of rabbit holes I've successfully beamed.

[woozy]

Well that was… odd. What the what?? I think I had the same question/objection as @Meg. And I want my wasted hour back! I could have gotten to the solve very quickly but for the very shiny “keep going” trail markers. A week 2 unless you fell for this trick and couldn’t get the seeming second step to take you anywhere good, no matter how many times you checked and rechecked the math. Grrrr

@HeadinHome I totally agree and had to get confirmation from @Wendy Walker that what @MaineMarge came up with was really the answer. There will be a lot of comments on The Fiend and here on Tuesday

Why am I on this conversation?

[Bob cruise director]

Well that was… odd. What the what?? I think I had the same question/objection as @Meg. And I want my wasted hour back! I could have gotten to the solve very quickly but for the very shiny “keep going” trail markers. A week 2 unless you fell for this trick and couldn’t get the seeming second step to take you anywhere good, no matter how many times you checked and rechecked the math. Grrrr

@HeadinHome I totally agree and had to get confirmation from @Wendy Walker that what @MaineMarge came up with was really the answer. There will be a lot of comments on The Fiend and here on Tuesday

Why am I on this conversation?

I included the people that @HunterX had in his posting.

[Qmark]

Beamed up!

[woozy]

@HeadinHome I totally agree and had to get confirmation from @Wendy Walker that what @MaineMarge came up with was really the answer. There will be a lot of comments on The Fiend and here on Tuesday

Why am I on this conversation?

I included the people that @HunterX had in his posting.

Ah. Well, I guess this is reference to my first post. I assumed Matt was doing something else that it turned out he wasn't doing. I really should learn to have faith. My complaint about doing what I thought he was doing would have been legitimate but I should have learned by now that Gaffney is more consistent and stronger than that.

[cbarbee002]

Wow, I read the postings, but fell into the same DEEP hole that it seems most of you did. Would be difficult to believe it was unintentional. So in the future I'll think, "Week 2, week 2, week 2 . . . ." Beamed

[cbarbee002]

Oh, forgot to mention (my bad) that woozy supplied a key nudge . . .

[ship4u]

Beamed. Better late than never!

[dk letter]

I am beamed!

Every once in a while I need to pause and admire how amazing these puzzles are. The brilliant ideas somehow just keep coming, and moreover the execution is just remarkable… especially on a puzzle like this where you not only get an answer but it ties back to the theme with a great click. It’s really magical.

[Bird Lives]

I think I know what Matt had in mind. But to me, it looked like the waters were teeming with scarlet clupea harengus (as we icthyologists say).

[mattythewsjpuzzler]

Beamed. Same issue as others.

[Laura M]

Whew! I'm going to blame a very busy weekend, but really I did spend what should have been more than enough time for a week 2 staring at this puzzle without any luck until now. Will be interested to hear everyone else's rabbit holes, there were definitely some things that I 100% thought HAD to be significant but it turns out they were not :-)

[woozy]

I'm sort of surprised how I almost had the idea. I just had to consider one more thing. But when considering that one more thing.... everything changed and actual solution was in entirely different places. So I'm surprised teeny change in concept can have massive change in results.[1]

I'm also surprised how I couldn't see one little thing that in hindsight was plentiful and obvious.

[minimuggle]

I've submitted with some helpful nudges but not sure if I am correct. Waiting for the site to update.

Edit: seemed . Thanks Wendy for the help. I can't believe I didn't notice that one thing you pointed out. I'm embarrassed to mention some of the alternatives I came up with.

[Bird Lives]

Easter egg or red herring?

I think that Matt wanted the solver to follow a sequence that starts with the “other” (i.e., non-OR) word. You would look at the clue for 1A (“Male family member”), enter DAD but then eventually see that the answer to that clue could be DAD OR SON.. That would lead you to focus on SON and similaraly on all the other words that followed OR.

My course was the reverse I immediately saw the OR-words, noticed that removing the OR left another word, and then found the related word elsewhere in the grid. ORSON became SON, which led to DAD. My grid had these pairs in the same color with a line showing the connection.
.

.
I kept trying to make something of initial letters of these non-OR equivalents — DAD, FONDUE, etc. I had to be nudged towards the simpler version.
.

.
I spent a bit of time scanning the grid for these related entries. But they turned out to be completely unnecessary for the solution. I would have solo solved and sooner if I had never noticed them. So were they red herrings or Easter eggs?

[sharkicicles]

I had to declare meta bankruptcy this weekend due to a Lemons race, but I wish I had had the time to work on this one- seems like a great mechanism.

Since I don't have anything else to say about the meta, have this video of dinosaurs pushing a race car.

[woozy]

In my opinion they are neither. They certainly aren't easter eggs because they don't give you anything. I don't think they qualify as red herrings as they aren't intended to mislead and are required to make DER, EOS, CHARD, etc. legitimately "the alternatives" (to be "the alternative" there must be something they are alternative to). It is weird that you can't discover the "originals" first (at least not without arbitrary guessing which ones are originals and which ones aren't) and that this is a puzzle where you dicover things, the things to dicover-- the "originals"-- have nothing to do with the mechanisms, but there's no law that says what you discover matters. But it does feel like the wind in blown from the sails. Perhaps we need a term for this kind of thing-- an legitimate bit of work that ultimately goes nowhere and is unneeded. Maybe we can call it a "deflated sail".

What bothers me is how on earth could there have been eight! (count them eight) instances of OR (and some red herring extra ORs) and I never noticed them at *ALL*. Even when nudged I didn't think anything of them.

It's also interesting in that I knew from the very beginning I had to find alternative answer to entries but I assumed they'd be the "big" ones like DAYAN and alternate for ARENS and LIBRA for ORION and just about any four letter Japanese city for NARA. what a huge difference a tiny change can make.

[rjy]

So were they red herrings or Easter eggs?

My $.02

All weekend I thought they were insidious - and perhaps unfair - red herrings, and to be honest I was somewhat irritated with the additional time spent essentially beyond the finish line.

However - in seeing the write-up on crossword fiend, I'm altering my take on it. It seems thematically it all works from what Matt was trying to construct, but sometimes the path to a clever construction doesn't mirror the path to the solution. He constructed thematically - and well - while I solved mechanically and missed his intended theme.

A rare disconnect between construction and solution - from that particular constructor to this particular solver - but still fair, and actually well done (...but the me two days ago didn't have exactly the same opinion!)

[Bird Lives]

So were they red herrings or Easter eggs?

My $.02
<snip>
However - in seeing the write-up on crossword fiend, I'm altering my take on it.)

Thanks for the lead. I almost never remember to look at Fiend. Over there, Matt says,
The original answers to these eight clues (EINE, AURORA, FONDUE, ATOM, DAD, HERON, BORO, RAY) . . . were 100% necessary,

But in his next comment he says,
I realized that someone might just spot the eight OR- words and score right away,

Not to be picky and all, but if you can score right away without noticing the original eight answers, then those answers are not necessary. That is, they are not necessary to the solution. They are, however, necessary to a full appreciation of the puzzle.

[rjy]

So were they red herrings or Easter eggs?

My $.02
<snip>
However - in seeing the write-up on crossword fiend, I'm altering my take on it.)

Thanks for the lead. I almost never remember to look at Fiend. Over there, Matt says,
The original answers to these eight clues (EINE, AURORA, FONDUE, ATOM, DAD, HERON, BORO, RAY) . . . were 100% necessary,

But in his next comment he says,
I realized that someone might just spot the eight OR- words and score right away,

Not to be picky and all, but if you can score right away without noticing the original eight answers, then those answers are not necessary. That is, they are not necessary to the solution. They are, however, necessary to a full appreciation of the puzzle.

Totally agree. From his own process and creativity, I don't doubt he thought they were necessary. He had a theme and concept he was building, and it all hung together for him. But for people solving mechanically - even within the notion of the general theme - the word "OR" is enough to click with the title and have us think we got the theme without necessarily pairing up all the words. Then you get the AHA of seeing alternate words, so you start collecting and then... um... anagramming?? Someone on Discord came up with BARFHEAD as the only possible anagram