A place to discuss the weekly Wall Street Journal Crossword Puzzle Contest, starting every Thursday around 4:00 p.m. Eastern time. Please do not post any answers or hints before the contest deadline which is midnight Sunday Eastern time.
Bonnibel wrote: ↑Sun Sep 10, 2023 7:00 pm
Solved this after sleeping on it Thursday night.
Forgot to post in the forum.
The trickiest thing for me with this one was, even after solving, was seeing the elegance.
Home after a fun weekend with family in San Diego, we are exhausted.
Could sure use a little Jimmy Buffett right about now. We've been listening to him on XM/Sirius radio Margaritaville channel 24. Check it out! They play his live concerts which are the best because he was always so interactive with his audiences. Lots of memories right there.
Pour me something tall and strong, make it a hurricane....
One of my saved favorite channels.
Last edited by ImOnToo on Mon Sep 11, 2023 4:13 am, edited 1 time in total.
Late trip to shore. I had figured out 2 letters, could get no further, and decided on my Hail Mary. My son and his wife had figured out the meta yesterday and nudged me along. By golly, it was my Hail Mary so I have a chance at the mug!
Raised the white flag on this yesterday. I look forward to seeing the solution and learning from this perplexing puzzle,
Isaac, I appreciate your hospitality and words of comfort.
Oh, and one more thing, I'm enjoying generous pours of cabernet anyway!
Good luck to all for a successful solve. If you see that I'm ashore - rare occasion of late - message me if you'd like a nudge. Be sure to include your progress so I can know better how to assist.
Miki wrote: ↑Sun Sep 10, 2023 8:36 am
Here's a survey to all of the people who were ashore (and may be drinking):
What do you think is the age cutoff at which the elegant element of this puzzle will not be appreciated?
I’d say Gen X would be it given what the elegance is and how it would be used.
So.... I'm too old to see the elegance of it?
Funny story. I was all set to enter Par for the course for the CrossHare midi contest for April but I mistakenly thought midi meant 7x 7 and not 11 x 11. Oops. Well.... Here's a complex but **small** meta on the subject of golf.
Miki wrote: ↑Sun Sep 10, 2023 8:36 am
Here's a survey to all of the people who were ashore (and may be drinking):
What do you think is the age cutoff at which the elegant element of this puzzle will not be appreciated?
I’d say Gen X would be it given what the elegance is and how it would be used.
So.... I'm too old to see the elegance of it?
no, "kids these days" don't write letters and usually don't use email ... so the addition of a post script is foreign to them.
they don't grok anything but insta and tik tok.
I'm about 2/3 of the way through a read of Stranger in a Strange Land - I haven't read this one in ... more decades than I care to admit, it's ok as literature, it's not great writing, but it's a fun and interesting story.
Streroto wrote: ↑Thu Sep 07, 2023 8:17 pm
Ok got there before the plane took off. A few additional minutes of loading helped. Super clever. I just don’t know how he does it.
Stay well all
When I posted this I initially wrote “a few extra minutes” but caught it before I endured the wrath of the censors LOL. OOPS!
The penny dropped about “PS” a couple moments later. The critics over at Fiend are carping as usual but I thought this was an incredibly elegant meta.
I was struggling as usual but what led me to shore was first trying an alternative answer with “Oh….io State”. Then went looking for other alternates that started with Oh. That led to a short list of NBA teams that of course had none but luckily I did not give up as a rabbit hole and found Paul Simon, Phoenix Suns, of course Penn State! Head slap then done.
Being sports illiterate definitely did not help. Even with Google, Passing Shots was nearly invisible. Fortunately with four of the five in place, I could backsolve to the end. But, man oh man, I could not even make sense of the clue for 37A.
Happy to give nudges. If you notice I've solved, please tell me about avenues you've explored so I can nudge you in the right direction and not off a cliff.
Well, I got 40% of it - Paul Simon and Phoenix Suns - and never saw the “PS” connection. The substituted letters of those two, in order of the theme answers, gave me _ X _ _ A. When I had no more time to spend on solving (I’m on vacation in Panama and had more important things to do), I submitted my best guess: EXTRA
I got Extra but I got there in the unelegant way as I initially looked for OHs in the answer. Phoenix Suns and Ohio State got me the RA. I was fixated with Tejas since filling the grid to which I thought "That's John Oates in We are the world": not exactly the clean anagram that gave me the R and A, but it contains an "oh". Good luck trying to create a 5 letter word with JRA. I parked that thought and I moved on to E (i did get passing shot) and T (here instead I used Desert Hot Spring). Ok, those are HOs instead of OHs. But it led really quickly to Extra which had to be right.
P.S. Pardon me MG for the initial 8/10 score as this was much better and subtler than I originally thought.
The “sixon” was such an odd answer that I quickly saw Paul Simon as an alternative to Kenny Loggins. But the others were hard to find. Especially Penn State as I was stuck on Iowa anagrammed in the next answer. Also stuck looking for Denver Nuggets forgetting about the Arizona team in Phoenix. Being a tennis player I knew passing shot was the best alternative to a top spin lob (which I could never master). Had to Google Coachella sites. When I wrote everything out in order to determine which letter was needed, the new one or replaced one I saw the replaced one anagrammed to “extra” but then saw the correct grid order. Then also saw the PS and was amazed at the elegance.
Congrats to those who solved.
