XWord Muggles Forum

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Totally off topic but ... this! (My nephew just committed to the Villanova Wildcats!)

BarbaraK wrote: ↑Mon Dec 09, 2019 8:37 am I wonder if Matt/Mike considered wording the prompt as "a cartoon duo that would complete the theme" or something like that. This seems particularly tough for newer solvers who haven't seen something like it before.

I thought the same thing. Would this meta have been more palatable if the prompt was "A cartoon duo that could be the fifth theme entry"? Or would it still be criticized by most for having too obscure an answer?

(For the record: Though I'm GenX and remember this cartoon, I still couldn't have solved this without Googling. But I thought it was a great meta!)

Wendy Walker wrote: ↑Mon Dec 09, 2019 11:53 am Totally off topic but ... this! (My nephew just committed to the Villanova Wildcats!)

I have a nephew who started there this year. So you and I are practically related now

Bob cruise director wrote: ↑Mon Dec 09, 2019 8:44 am For muggles who are baby boomers who solved this by googling something, could you tell me what you googled that stumbled on Wonder Twins. I spent half the weekend googling and came up with nothing of value.

I'm an old Boomer (1954) and my kids were born in the '80s, so I had never heard of this cartoon before. I spent some time googling cartoon characters with “win” or “won” in their names. I thought of Winnie the Pooh and Willy Wonka, but neither has a suitable sidekick. Then I stepped away from the puzzle to take a shower, and it occurred to me that “Twins” would work and could be the name of a duo. Since I would then need a first word with “won,” I wondered whether there were cartoon characters called the Wonder Twins. Back to Google, and there they were!

As always, the best ideas happen in the shower.

I have never solved a WSJ contest rated this high before!

I am a later boomer (64) and I have heard of and watched the Wonder Twins.

Figured out the “Then and Now” pretty quickly. I tried the used remaining letters in a few ways. Didn’t notice I hadn’t accounted for won/win. Came to message board to see how other people were doing with it. Saw DrTom’s original post about two words not being used. I didn’t think it was a spoiler. Just confirmed I had two words I couldn’t do anything with in the grid.

Saw many post about being older being a help. Little did I know that meant me!

Did a google search. Came up with the answer but kept looking for a mechanism to get there. Finally noticed won/win again which made me feel pretty certain I was right even without a mechanism.

KayW wrote: ↑Mon Dec 09, 2019 1:56 am
........ wade through that. (Brilliant strategy, BTW. Wish I thought of that. But that process would just be very tedious proofreading rather than an inspired meta solve.)

After you get to a page, you don't have to wade through it or proofread it. All you need to do is search for WIN or WON on the page; let the browser do the work for you.

Bob cruise director wrote: ↑Mon Dec 09, 2019 8:44 am For muggles who are baby boomers who solved this by googling something, could you tell me what you googled that stumbled on Wonder Twins. I spent half the weekend googling and came up with nothing of value.

I went on Google to search for cartoon duos and included WON or WIN or both in the search terms and went nowhere. I finally just searched for cartoon duos and up came the wikipedia page that others reported and WONDER TWINS was there. I suppose the lesson learned is that more things in the search term doesn't mean better results.

Since Matt deems Google as a valid meta-solving tool, I am WONdering if he meant for us to put in "cartoon duo" as the search term.

Commodore wrote: ↑Mon Dec 09, 2019 9:27 am Anchors Away!
1. The old Commodore currently keel-hauling himself. Grump, grump, grump.
2. Boolean Schmoolean, I need a masterclass from Mr. G.
3. Gave up on Won & Win. And One & Win. Juan & Win. And…etc.
4. Snip & Snails was my Hail Mary. Nip? Nail? Rhyme with Prevail? Uggh.
5. Will our 80% be graded on a curve?
6. My Wonder Twins are Jim Beam & Bud Wiser.
7. “Gotta play better. Coach better. All 3 phases. We’re on to Cincinnati.”64 80 col.jpg
Congratulations to all solvers. You X rascals, tho' - Get off my lawn!

I'm too lazy to decipher the Hollerith card. What does it say?

Once I persuaded myself that the past tense of NANCY was not SLUGGO, I figured it had to be that iTCHY was the past tense of SCRATCHY. You scratch now because you itched before.

I think I may have chosen the wrong week to sign up. I got the grid on Thursday but then couldn't do anything with the clues to find the meta answer. Maybe next week.

anjhinz wrote: ↑Mon Dec 09, 2019 9:02 am A great tool for metas like this (where you're searching for letter patterns instead of actual words, which Google is terrible at) is https://www.onelook.com/
I used the "*" wildcard to search "*WON*WIN*" and the answer came up very quickly as 3 of about 35 results, even though I've never heard of them.

Thanks for the link. I had something like this back when I was composing the occasional crossword, but I lost it probably in some computer change-over when I forgot to copy my bookmarks. Things were much harder for crossword constructors in the pre-Internet era, which is when I started.

CruciLexiPhobia wrote: ↑Mon Dec 09, 2019 12:49 pm I think I may have chosen the wrong week to sign up. I got the grid on Thursday but then couldn't do anything with the clues to find the meta answer. Maybe next week.

You started your meta career facing a Nolan Ryan 100 mph fastball. Next week will probably be easier as this was one of the toughest ones that we have had.

Under any circumstances, welcome to the world of the muggles. It is always great to have another one.

BarbaraK wrote: ↑Mon Dec 09, 2019 12:43 pm

Commodore wrote: ↑Mon Dec 09, 2019 9:27 am Anchors Away!
1. The old Commodore currently keel-hauling himself. Grump, grump, grump.
2. Boolean Schmoolean, I need a masterclass from Mr. G.
3. Gave up on Won & Win. And One & Win. Juan & Win. And…etc.
4. Snip & Snails was my Hail Mary. Nip? Nail? Rhyme with Prevail? Uggh.
5. Will our 80% be graded on a curve?
6. My Wonder Twins are Jim Beam & Bud Wiser.
7. “Gotta play better. Coach better. All 3 phases. We’re on to Cincinnati.”64 80 col.jpg
Congratulations to all solvers. You X rascals, tho' - Get off my lawn!

I'm too lazy to decipher the Hollerith card. What does it say?

A few translations
1) I assume that you are familiar with keel-hauling which they used to punish sailors
2) The commodore is dismissing Boolean algebra in deference to getting better at his googling skills
3) He threw in the towel on searching the other the right words and went on to any random search - unsuccessfully
4) I am assuming that you know a Hail Mary is a football term of throwing a long pass at the end of the game in the hope something good happens - usually it does not
5) The hope of the student that does not get the correct answer in the belief that he/she is only better than the other miserable students
6) his wonder twins to drown his sorrows
7) a quote from Bill Belichick (Patriots coach) after they lost to Kansas City a few years ago and then went on to play the Cincinnati Bengals the next week. Basically it says you can't do anything about the last meta so focus on the next one

And the X rascals is for those X generation youngsters who solved the meta. From a grumpy old Baby Boomer

(Barbara was asking what's on Commodore's pictured punch card.)

Wendy Walker wrote: ↑Mon Dec 09, 2019 11:53 am
Totally off topic but ... this! (My nephew just committed to the Villanova Wildcats!)

Congrats - great school! My wife went undergrad there and my son got his MBA there last year. And they have a pretty good basketball team!

Hector wrote: ↑Mon Dec 09, 2019 1:11 pm (Barbara was asking what's on Commodore's pictured punch card.)

Oops - probably true. I missed that.

I wonder how many people on this list knew what a punch cards were and had ever used them. And how many had dropped their deck

FrankH wrote: ↑Mon Dec 09, 2019 12:37 pm

Bob cruise director wrote: ↑Mon Dec 09, 2019 8:44 am For muggles who are baby boomers who solved this by googling something, could you tell me what you googled that stumbled on Wonder Twins. I spent half the weekend googling and came up with nothing of value.

I went on Google to search for cartoon duos and included WON or WIN or both in the search terms and went nowhere. I finally just searched for cartoon duos and up came the wikipedia page that others reported and WONDER TWINS was there. I suppose the lesson learned is that more things in the search term doesn't mean better results.

Since Matt deems Google as a valid meta-solving tool, I am WONdering if he meant for us to put in "cartoon duo" as the search term.

Googling the phrase “cartoon duo” returned nine pages of results, but not that wikipedia page. Searching for the phrase “animated duo” returns that page as the number one result.

Bob cruise director wrote: ↑Mon Dec 09, 2019 1:22 pm

Hector wrote: ↑Mon Dec 09, 2019 1:11 pm (Barbara was asking what's on Commodore's pictured punch card.)

Oops - probably true. I missed that.

I wonder how many people on this list knew what a punch cards were and had ever used them. And how many had dropped their deck

I know. And I too, was too lazy to figure out what was on the punch card.

I once wrote a IBM-029 keypunch emulator for our mainframe back in college. We had pretty much gotten rid of the need for punch cards but still used them because that is what one of the operators was used to. She'd create the deck, and we'd run it through the card reader just to get the data onto the system. (They used to get sent to a local University, but not anymore). Unfortunately, the emulation took so much processing power that she quickly filled the type ahead buffer on the mainframe and dragged down the system for the rest of the users as the system desperately tried to keep up.

Hector wrote: ↑Mon Dec 09, 2019 1:11 pm (Barbara was asking what's on Commodore's pictured punch card.)

Yes, I meant the card. I _think_ it starts with PI, but I'm not that confident that I remember the coding or can keep the columns straight in that small photo.

Inca wrote: ↑Mon Dec 09, 2019 11:50 am Actually, google works in mysterious ways....and depending on what other searches you did before trying that, you may or may not get what someone else got on their initial search with the same parameters. Clear as mud....yeah about as clear as the crazy, very secretive google algorithms

When I'm googling for a meta, I often use a private/incognito window so that any initial bad paths will not contaminate my later results.

anjhinz wrote: ↑Mon Dec 09, 2019 9:02 am A great tool for metas like this (where you're searching for letter patterns instead of actual words, which Google is terrible at) is https://www.onelook.com/
I used the "*" wildcard to search "*WON*WIN*" and the answer came up very quickly as 3 of about 35 results, even though I've never heard of them.

Well that is pretty slick and I will bookmark that page for future use, though I sincerely hope I do not have to use it again anytime in the near future.

I doubt that I would have ever gotten to Googling WON/WIN anyway because I was trying to use all of the letters (A,E,L,L,R,R,W,I,?,?) and make a duo of them, I suppose I should have tumbled to the fact that two words from those letters were going to be difficult but I thought it was just that I did not have the correct last two. If I used ALI/CLAY I could get ARIEL, CRAWL, CLAW, RAWLIE and if I used BEAT/BEAT I could get BELL, BALL, LABEL – all of which have a “cartoonish” sound to them.

I have to say that I find it a bit unfair that the clearest way to the solution was if you were a Generation Xer and had watched cartoons. I know there will be X’ers who protest that they have to know a lot of Boomer Speak/Data to solve a crossword, but that is the grid not the META and any crossworder has run across the standards (YMA, ALI, TERN, ERNE) and can look up MOVIE DOG, or POLLY POCKET PRODUCER using the famed Mr. G. But to have to have special knowledge to arrive at the solution seems to have tilted the field somewhat. That said I know that the famed PAGEANT META demanded more than a passing knowledge/Interest in sports, but remember that was the last great collective slap in the ego and garnered many “fie on you Mike Gaffney/Marie Kellys” and has been inculcated into Muggle history with the pejorative term “I GOT PAGEANTED”. I would imagine this META will also take its place as either a WON/WIN/LOSE or more likely a WON/WIN WONDER.

Please, I implore the Meta Masters no more special interest METAS, I feel inadequate enough with these already. Don’t make those with accumulated experience (i.e. oldsters) carry a generational anchor while we navigate the Rabbit Paths. Its hard enough already to pull ourselves out of those holes.