"In A Comprehensive Manner" September 22, 2023

[JoeS]

Although I was troubled by the number of "z"s in the grid, I clung to the phrase "from A to z" and chose Alphabet as the answer. Though not a construct supported by a pattern of letters in the grid, occasionally answers do reflect more lateral thinking (recall the answer Hey Jude as suggested by the syllables na na na na...in the grid).

[LadyBird]

My son noticed that one of the titles for the dictionary was Webster's COMPREHENSIVE Dictionary.

[Jeanrosz]

Although I was troubled by the number of "z"s in the grid, I clung to the phrase "from A to z" and chose Alphabet as the answer. Though not a construct supported by a pattern of letters in the grid, occasionally answers do reflect more lateral thinking (recall the answer Hey Jude as suggested by the syllables na na na na...in the grid).

I got alphabet too!

[mattythewsjpuzzler]

I submitted Alphabet and thought it was a 100%. I thought the a and z clues was to lead you to the phrase. Huh. Maybe an alternative acceptable answer?

[Joe]

The hyphens!!! Made me crazy. Couldn't see ANYTHING other than the hyphens forever. When I finally noticed all the Z's it fell into place.

[MaineMarge]

I submitted Websters but look at Alphabet’s url!
https://abc.xyz/
Good thinking, guys!!

Sorry. Guess you can’t take the 2nd grade teacher out of me

[CromsFury]

As those of you (un)fortunate enough to have to listen to my weekly pain-filled journeys to shore at our weekly Zoom meetings already know, regardless of the level of ease that MOST people have with the Metas, I see rabbits.

Like Elwood P. Dowd, I am constantly beset by a Rabbit.

There have been very few weeks where I have not found at least 3 alternate answers that can be defended.

So, each week, whether you are sitting enjoying a drink with Isaac or sunning yourself on the beach, spare a thought for someone preyed upon by rabbits.

This week, before finding my way to the beach, my mind lingered (far too long) on Alpha-Bits cereal.

[chatger]

I was first on to AMAZON. If you mistakenly use the O from ZOA (yes that's backwards) instead of the S from KUVASZ, you can spell WEB STORE. I.e. AMAZON, but personally don't consider that a "classic brand". It bothered me enough to not submit right away and I t to the proper letter S.

[sweetc]

My first inclination was Amazon as well, but it didn't feel "classic" and a clean answer. I then saw the A_Z connection in the grid and started spelling out Webs. Immediately thought of Webster's and was thrown off when I also put down ZOA on my list. I was so confused how it WASN'T Webster's at that point, and didn't see the potential "web store" that others mentioned when also accidentally using ZOA. Finally spied my ZOA issue, re-ordered the words and got the Webster's I was expecting.

[HunterX]

It's Sunday morning here in the Cotswolds and I am up early sitting in the great hall of an old abbey:

abbots-great-hall-daytime.jpg

https://www.abbotsgrange.com/

Breakfast is not until 9 am so I have time to read and reflect before other guests rise. It is a beautiful part of the world!

House hunting? It appears to be in good condition....

[bhamren]

I wondered it was like a pageant in earlier comments. To me it was.
I also highlighted the one Z to A (between the z in Kuvasz and the a in Paez). This made my highlighted letters to be webstoers which I took to be an anagram of Web Stores which to me just confirmed Amazon (since I have never heard of Websters).

[HunterX]

My only pause (pawz?), or nit, in submitting was the question of the specific form of the answer. Noah Webster's first dictionary was titled "American Dictionary of the English Language." There were other names as well. "Webster's Dictionary" was first used in the third printing of the second edition. US courts ruled by 1908 that "Webster's" entered the public domain, so it became a "genericized trademark," and as a result there were lots of different versions published by different companies. And now "Merriam-Webster" is the corporate heir to the original works. So what, technically, is the "brand"? If anyone can use the name "Webster's," due to its being in the public domain, then is it really a brand? Should we have submitted "Webster's," "Webster's Dictionary," or even "Merriam-Webster's Collegiate Dictionary"?

Given that the randomly picked email is supposed to be viewed by a human eye (or two eyes, hopefully) in order to determine whether it is correct, I quickly stopped thinking about it and figured that so long as it said "Webster's," they'd know I got it.

[Nycerjohnnie]

the hyphens were clearly just a mistake right?

[haari]

i took the "o" from 37D instead of the "s" from 35A... had no idea what WEBOTERS could be, but it did anagram nicely to TWO BEERS... that was comprehensive enough for me!

[schmidzy]

I wondered if the hyphens were supposed to hint that the root of "comprehensive" is "comprehend"?

[BethA]

Regarding the hyphens — some versions of the puzzle have hyphens in the middle of a word in the line, while some versions use hyphens as expected, at the end of line to continue a word. If the hyphens were important, it would be quite unfair to the solvers, to expect them to notice a word continued by a hyphen at the end of a line.

A commenter on the WSJ site seems to have a reasonable explanation of it. See below —

——————————
Donald Ferrell
21 September, 2023
OK, I get the comprehensive idea, but why the hyphen in the clues?

SCOTT SATHER
2 days ago
I was wondering the same thing, but the reason just hit me last night. It's just a software bug in the WSJ's publishing software. Those of us who noticed the mis-hyphenated words ("comprehen-sive" and "congress-woman") had to have done the puzzle online. If you look at the printed puzzle (or PDF version), those words are properly hyphenated because those words span two lines. The same bug frequently appears in articles when you read the print edition of the WSJ online.
There are two ways you can view each WSJ article: sort of a word processor version, and a PDF version. It seems that the word processor version is kind of an OCR of the PDF version, so that when words need to be hyphenated to fit the column width, sometimes that hyphen is mistakenly left in the word. I notice it frequently when I read the online print edition. Sometimes the hyphen gets removed, sometimes not.
In today's paper (Sept 23/24), page A7 ("Ukraine Strikes Russia’s Base For Black Sea Fleet in Crimea"), there is the phrase in paragraph five:
"The Russian Minis-try of Defense..."
that didn't get corrected, yet "head-quarters", "billow-ing", "resi-dents", and "hit-ting" correctly had their hyphens removed.

————————

[RobM]

My first clue was the third across entry -- PAWZ, which crossed with ZEE. I thought "There had to be a deliberate decision not to use PAWS, crossing with SEE" -- so Z is important to the meta. As I continued solving, and more than the average number of Zs kept showing up, it further validated, and it didn't take long to realize that they were all separated by one letter from an A.

[flyingMoose]

baeZ and abZug told me to be on Z lookout.

[mheberlingx100]

My only pause (pawz?), or nit, in submitting was the question of the specific form of the answer. Noah Webster's first dictionary was titled "American Dictionary of the English Language." There were other names as well. "Webster's Dictionary" was first used in the third printing of the second edition. US courts ruled by 1908 that "Webster's" entered the public domain, so it became a "genericized trademark," and as a result there were lots of different versions published by different companies. And now "Merriam-Webster" is the corporate heir to the original works. So what, technically, is the "brand"? If anyone can use the name "Webster's," due to its being in the public domain, then is it really a brand? Should we have submitted "Webster's," "Webster's Dictionary," or even "Merriam-Webster's Collegiate Dictionary"?

Given that the randomly picked email is supposed to be viewed by a human eye (or two eyes, hopefully) in order to determine whether it is correct, I quickly stopped thinking about it and figured that so long as it said "Webster's," they'd know I got it.

I had the same issue. I ended up on Webster’s based on the last across on the grid. I thought that might be a clue that the meta answer was eight letters long.

[Joepickett]

Regarding the hyphens — some versions of the puzzle have hyphens in the middle of a word in the line, while some versions use hyphens as expected, at the end of line to continue a word. If the hyphens were important, it would be quite unfair to the solvers, to expect them to notice a word continued by a hyphen at the end of a line.

A commenter on the WSJ site seems to have a reasonable explanation of it. See below —

——————————
Donald Ferrell
21 September, 2023
OK, I get the comprehensive idea, but why the hyphen in the clues?

SCOTT SATHER
2 days ago
I was wondering the same thing, but the reason just hit me last night. It's just a software bug in the WSJ's publishing software. Those of us who noticed the mis-hyphenated words ("comprehen-sive" and "congress-woman") had to have done the puzzle online. If you look at the printed puzzle (or PDF version), those words are properly hyphenated because those words span two lines. The same bug frequently appears in articles when you read the print edition of the WSJ online.
There are two ways you can view each WSJ article: sort of a word processor version, and a PDF version. It seems that the word processor version is kind of an OCR of the PDF version, so that when words need to be hyphenated to fit the column width, sometimes that hyphen is mistakenly left in the word. I notice it frequently when I read the online print edition. Sometimes the hyphen gets removed, sometimes not.
In today's paper (Sept 23/24), page A7 ("Ukraine Strikes Russia’s Base For Black Sea Fleet in Crimea"), there is the phrase in paragraph five:
"The Russian Minis-try of Defense..."
that didn't get corrected, yet "head-quarters", "billow-ing", "resi-dents", and "hit-ting" correctly had their hyphens removed.

————————

Similar problem with today's online crossword. Each clue is followed with the number of letters in the answer in parentheses as if it was a cryptic.

A cryptic on Monday would just be mean.