XWord Muggles Forum

Only having a few letters in ELEVEN, I thought the first word in the phrase was a first or last name, not a number. Edward?Egbert? Fortunately, reality hit.

OGuyDave wrote: ↑Mon Dec 16, 2019 4:05 am The other two possible words the search revealed were "edemas" and "enemas."

Leading to this list, maybe?

Saw this mechanism but couldn’t get the words together so gave up too quickly (again). Went instead with Steve Nelson. Two offenses in the grid that result in 5-yard penaltIes (per clue in 57A) are OFFSIDE (57A) and certain infractions of OOB (or out of bounds - 27D). Each has an extra letter - S in 57A (seemed that way to me at least) and N in 27D, forming the initials of STEVE NELSON, whose number “57” was retired by the Patriots in 1988. Another rabbit hole (decoy?) was Eddie George, whose name appears scrambled in 1D and 5D with the addition of R and N respectively.... RAY NITSCHKE #66 from the PACKERS in 1983. Oh well! Very nice meta!!
PS - I’m no football fan, Wikipedia’s list was great!

Ok, here’s my quibble. Phil Simms didn’t play in the second Super Bowl the Giants won while he was on the team - he was injured about 13 games into that season, and Jeff Hostetler finished out the year and played (and won) the final game. While you could argue that Simms helped the team get to the Super Bowl, he didn’t actually help them win it. So the Lombardi trophy clue is technically incorrect since the trophy is awarded for the game, not the season. (We often have the same debate here in Philly about Nick Foles and Carson Wentz - i.e., who was more responsible for the Eagles Super Bowl win). But the “eleven” made it clear that Simms (not Lawrence Taylor) was the answer. When I only had pieces of the “eleven” I thought maybe it was “ELL TEE” until I sussed out the remaining letters.

That said, this was a great meta - I like when they go, literally, off the grid. Matt Gaffney did one like this earlier this year called “Island Time” which is one of my all-time favorites.

I was slowed down initially - after seeing we were going to find a name by adding the offside letters- by thinking we were not going to use ALL the outside words or it would be an impossibly long name. But which words to use?? Only a few positively jump out, including debark. Much later I discovered a major grid error, having keened instead of kenned ( don’t ask), which gave me the crucial “y”. Then I was on it. Stopped in my tracks at upper left, just as Mike had planned it for us. No name, no nickname- AHA- a number!
So clever, Mike. Take a bough

There are nine former players in the NFL who have had their number retired by the teams that they played for and who have won two and only two Super Bowls. They are

John Elway #7 for the Denver Broncos
Ray Nitsche #66 for the Green Bay Packers – tremendous linebacker
Bart Starr #15 for the Green Bay Packers
Peyton Manning #18 whose number was retired for both the Indianapolis Colts and the Denver Broncos
Bob Griese #12 for the Miami Dolphins
Larry Csonka #39 for the Miami Dolphins
Phil Simms #11 for the New York Giants
Lawrence Taylor #56 for the New York Giants
Dwight Clark #87 for the San Francisco 49’ers

Many other players who have had their numbers retired played on teams that won more than two Super Bowls, like the49ers and the Steelers.

And there is a couple of asterisks that can be applied such as was pointed out with Simms above by TMart. The trophy currently called the Lombardi trophy was awarded for Super Bowl I but only called the Lombardy trophy in 1970.

So at worst, you could have had a 1:9 chance of being right.

One of the letter combinations I had instead of ELEVEN was EDGRAN. Applying the out of bounds title to it, I immediately thought of rED GRANge. But the gimmick wasn't neat and Red didn't play for the Giants, so I kept looking and I eventually found ELEVEN.

Ok, so i debated submitting PHIL SIMMS or ELEVEN FROM THE NEW YORK GIANTS and went with the latter thinking SIMMS may viewed as gettable (via the Lombardi reference) without getting the mechanism. I wonder if “ELEVEN...” will be viewed as an acceptable answer..

So the extra letters on the outside are simulated fill? Like fill sims?

(Toldja it was a stretch)

Ok, you can use all of the letters from BART STARR to complete words off the sides of the grid, so even if it was NOT called the Lombardi trophy at that time, it is now, so I would argue that BART START is another valid answer.

I was on the right track but was very busy and did not have the time to complete the process. Did not make it to shore this time. Looking forward to Thursday afternoon.

Bird Lives wrote: ↑Mon Dec 16, 2019 6:52 am

oldjudge wrote: ↑Mon Dec 16, 2019 12:49 am

Bird Lives wrote: ↑Thu Dec 12, 2019 8:54 pm I’m looking forward to the Monday morning quarterbacking — Margaret-Cho-Yma-Sumac complaints about whether this number should have been retired. Hell, the Steelers haven’t officially retired Bradshaw or Franco.

Bird-Please be careful with your posts. When you referred to a QB you limited the possibilities, I believe, to three players: Elway, Simms and Payton Manning (When Starr lifted the trophy it was not named the Lombardi trophy). By further saying it was debatable whether his jersey should have been retired you eliminated both Elway and Manning, leaving only Simms, the answer.

I understand your point. But in my defense, I did not refer to "a QB." I used a very well-known football phrase that perfectly describes what I was talking about--- people on Monday morning making criticisms of the game that ended the day before. Also, in response to someone who, very soon after I posted that comment said that it was something of a spoiler, I said that if Brian agreed with that view he was welcome to remove the comment, something only he can do (I think). He didn't.

As everyone knows, I'm a stickler for spoilers, but I didn't think Bird's post was one at all -- in fact, the use of "quarterbacking" didn't even jump out at me until I re-read it!

Wendy Walker wrote: ↑Mon Dec 16, 2019 11:32 am

Bird Lives wrote: ↑Mon Dec 16, 2019 6:52 am

oldjudge wrote: ↑Mon Dec 16, 2019 12:49 am

Bird-Please be careful with your posts. When you referred to a QB you limited the possibilities, I believe, to three players: Elway, Simms and Payton Manning (When Starr lifted the trophy it was not named the Lombardi trophy). By further saying it was debatable whether his jersey should have been retired you eliminated both Elway and Manning, leaving only Simms, the answer.

I understand your point. But in my defense, I did not refer to "a QB." I used a very well-known football phrase that perfectly describes what I was talking about--- people on Monday morning making criticisms of the game that ended the day before. Also, in response to someone who, very soon after I posted that comment said that it was something of a spoiler, I said that if Brian agreed with that view he was welcome to remove the comment, something only he can do (I think). He didn't.

As everyone knows, I'm a stickler for spoilers, but I didn't think Bird's post was one at all -- in fact, the use of "quarterbacking" didn't even jump out at me until I re-read it!

I agree with Wendy. I read Bird's comment and did not think about it being a potential spoiler. I just got off the phone with a friend of mine and all we were doing was Monday Morning Quarterbacking of the Pats

Was not seeing ELEVEN, so resorted to:

awk '/^e[bdfghlnprstw][eg][bfmnprtv][ae][bgjlnpsvw]$/' words
eleven

I liked this one a lot; probably wasn't easy to construct, given the necessary symmetries.

Bob cruise director wrote: ↑Mon Dec 16, 2019 11:45 am

Wendy Walker wrote: ↑Mon Dec 16, 2019 11:32 am

Bird Lives wrote: ↑Mon Dec 16, 2019 6:52 am

I understand your point. But in my defense, I did not refer to "a QB." I used a very well-known football phrase that perfectly describes what I was talking about--- people on Monday morning making criticisms of the game that ended the day before. Also, in response to someone who, very soon after I posted that comment said that it was something of a spoiler, I said that if Brian agreed with that view he was welcome to remove the comment, something only he can do (I think). He didn't.

As everyone knows, I'm a stickler for spoilers, but I didn't think Bird's post was one at all -- in fact, the use of "quarterbacking" didn't even jump out at me until I re-read it!

I agree with Wendy. I read Bird's comment and did not think about it being a potential spoiler. I just got off the phone with a friend of mine and all we were doing was Monday Morning Quarterbacking of the Pats

Agreed. That term is used quite often and unless you had the answer, it probably didn’t even stick out.

Between the title and the off sides clue, that KENNED was obviously calling for a Y. But I thought that meant I was to find football player names by adding a letter to the sides. For Kennedys, there were Allan, Bob, Cortez, and Lincoln and nothing obvious to me to indicate which was the right one. Also found a Bob Oetting, and then decided that was getting to be more trouble than this was worth.

I also thought about the RAVEns and the bEARs but a list of NFL teams didn't turn up any others that worked.

When I saw that non-football people were getting to shore, I decided to give it another look and found all the off side words. In a sense, just knowing who has and hasn't solved can be a spoiler, or at least a nudge. (And that happens just from leaderboards too, even if people never post here.)

I did not see the "Monday morning quarterback" comment as indicating that the answer was a quarterback, in fact I wondered how that comment could be a spoiler since he said the mentioned players had not had their numbers retired.

Sometimes saying something is a spoiler is itself a spoiler.

Toby wrote: ↑Mon Dec 16, 2019 12:49 pm Sometimes saying something is a spoiler is itself a spoiler.

My sentiments exactly. If you think something is spoilerish, alert Brian.

Someone mentioned this site last week and it's worth mentioning again in relation to this puzzle: onelook.com. It made figuring out the first word of the meta clue so much easier. If you know only a few letters of a word, you can use the question mark as a wild card for the unknown letters, and the site will give you a list of all possible words. I knew that the first letter (E) and the fifth letter (E) were the only certain ones. I also knew that the possibilities for the third letter were limited to E and G. So I did two searches on the site: E?E?E? and E?G?E?. "ELEVEN" was the most logical word that came up.

A brilliant and challenging contest! We had 1613 entries,with an unusually low 63% were correct. We suspect a lot of solvers got the right side's message (NEW YORK GIANTS) but not the left side's. (ELEVEN FROM THE) We had an enormous showing (152) for Lawrence Taylor, another Giant on two Lombardi teams with a retired number. (Is that a PAGEANT? Not quite?) Plus lots of other guesses for players with those distinctions on other teams, starting with BART STARR (121!) and including PEYTON MANNING (28), JOHN ELWAY (17) and Bob Griese (15).

Congratulations to this week's winner: Karen Graber of Niskayuna, NY!