"Just Stop" October 20, 2023

[Googly]

[Sleepy]

Think I’m on shore after some nudges and googling. I’m curious how anyone got this if they had never heard of the show (like I hadn’t). Interested to hear. Seems impossible to me without knowing the name of the show? What am I missing?

I guess if you haven’t heard of the TV show in question, you’d have to Google classic TV sitcoms, and go through them all til you found the one that makes sense. I can tell you that as a 60 year old, I knew the show instantly. I’m sure there is a certain age range where you would probably know the show for sure. If not in that age range, this would be extremely difficult, if not impossible, without some type of internet search.

[woozy]

Think I’m on shore after some nudges and googling. I’m curious how anyone got this if they had never heard of the show (like I hadn’t). Interested to hear. Seems impossible to me without knowing the name of the show? What am I missing?

What makes you think anyone could? You aren't missing anything. Sometime puzzles just aren't gettable if you don't know what the constructor knows (*cough* the one about baseball mascots *cough*)

It does go in the annals as a "classic TV show" although I'd be hard pressed to explain why (I certainly never liked it and remember very little about it). It just touched the pulse at just the right time.

Actually. It's kind of weird how there are often classics no-one remembers. That ought to be an oxymoron except... it really isn't.

I guess if you haven’t heard of the TV show in question, you’d have to Google classic TV sitcoms, and go through them all til you found the one that makes sense. I can tell you that as a 60 year old, I knew the show instantly. I’m sure there is a certain age range where you would probably know the show for sure. If not in that age range, this would be extremely difficult, if not impossible, without some type of internet search.

I'd feel kind of bad about this. But, you know, enough stuff is targeted at other generations that I'll take this.

[Lee-Ann]

This one took me a while. I had two other tv shows in mind, but I was not confident about either one of them. Glad I kept mulling it over! Happy to be onshore after two weeks with Isaac!

[CPJohnson]

Think I’m on shore after some nudges and googling. I’m curious how anyone got this if they had never heard of the show (like I hadn’t). Interested to hear. Seems impossible to me without knowing the name of the show? What am I missing?

I agree. I had heard of this show, but there have been lots of other metas that were unsolvable for me because I had never heard of something...Settlers of Catan, anything where recognizing French words is required, obscure URL extensions, Sue Grafton titles....to name a few. Then there are always the puzzles where the answer is a "well-known" something which was not well-known to many muggles....Margaret Cho, K T Oslin, N K Jemisin, Marie Kondo, etc. Sometimes you can google your way to the answer, but I think that might not have worked for this puzzle.

[MMe]

I dunno, once you discover that the most obvious thing to google doesn't hit paydirt, ... . Still gettable but definitely a big jump in difficulty if you haven't heard of it. I don't often think about how targeted these are to the cultural knowledge of Americans of a certain age until I try one of those puzzle hunts where it's all video game characters and fourth-generation rappers.

[Horsesense]

Nice Puzzle (once again) Mr Gaffney!
Clever and Clean Mechanism… no nudges so will be submitting.

[PQ63]

I’m ashore, I think. I see no other possibility. Bloody Mary please.

[Bob cruise director]

Good Sunday morning muggles

Slow and steady progress to one of several shores. We have 14 on the ship enjoying Isaac's famous buffet and perfect Mimosas and 190 on the shore.

Remaining on the ship are

ladybird
JRS51
Penny_Keatley
muggleunity


And making their way to the shore are:
Nycerjohnnie
Flying_Burrito
hunkra
Tcassutt
Colin
escapeartist
JAQT
Jeremy
Lee-Ann
Homer
Googly
PQ63
eagle1279
Matthew
caf.caf Cathy
phofer
horsesense
Scott M

Good luck with winning the mug this week

[woozy]

I dunno, once you discover that the most obvious thing to google doesn't hit paydirt, ... . Still gettable but definitely a big jump in difficulty if you haven't heard of it. I don't often think about how targeted these are to the cultural knowledge of Americans of a certain age until I try one of those puzzle hunts where it's all video game characters and fourth-generation rappers.

Well, I have to admit whereas one can google the baseball mascots (as long as you don't put them in one particular order to get a bunch of pages about under truck carriages ???? ) or "science fiction writers who go by initials" (I *did* get that one even though I hadn't heard of her; I did like discovering her by the way) this one is iffy because the googling is one stepped removed.

[Janet]

Sunday afternoon straggler reporting in! I will now just stop at the shoreside Tiki Bar.

[Ann]

On the shore!

[burak]

This has been a weird one. Step 1 is quite obvious, but after that I thought I had an answer that kinda worked but gave that up after figuring out something with the clues. That led to nowhere, and then I remembered a TV show that kinda fits but definitely isn't a click by any means.

Let's see how many more times I'll change my mind before midnight.

[Teddybear]

Step 1 was simple, but I'm stuck on having a show in mind that fits just after step 1 but nothing to confirm it, which indicates that it's probably wrong. I need to refocus or try something new...

EDIT: After rethinking it, I think I might have it. And enough confirmation that I feel comfortable submitting. But not enough that I think I'm for sure right.

[BetterMonday]

Taking a leap of faith here and calling it. Onshore!

[LadyBird]

On shore thanks to a nudge so no mug submission--although I know what show I am submitting for fun! And we were literally on the beach this afternoon!

[BisbeeTam]

I hope I’m ashore in time! I got stuck after the first half, then just kind of gave up for a few days. I just now sat down for another desperate stab, reverse-engineered a Hail Mary that popped into my head, and then it clicked!! Woohooo! Feeling happy. It’s been a dry spell, and I know Isaac’s getting tired of my bad jokes.

[Nycerjohnnie]

I got an answer but had to look it up since I never heard of it….

People asking what made me think others somehow got the answer without having heard of the show. I was referring to posts like this. What “answer” could you even google? How could you have even arrived at the actual “answer” if you never heard of the show. Something doesn’t make sense

[woozy]

I got an answer but had to look it up since I never heard of it….

People asking what made me think others somehow got the answer without having heard of the show. I was referring to posts like this. What “answer” could you even google? How could you have even arrived at the actual “answer” if you never heard of the show. Something doesn’t make sense

I *suppose* the dedicated could look up shows by ranking and go through a list 500 shows or so and it could stick out.

Also google does do "suggestions" of things you don't enter.

And if some solvers automatically do analysis. So some people may have noticed the essential thing that most of as at first thought was too mundane to notice.

And... if you do an IMDB search on ##### there was a show in the with that title. But it was *very* obscure. And not in any sense a "classic". But if you had never heard of the show you might not know it wasn't a classic. ... actually as this was a first page poster I suspect the *was* a wrong answer.

[SamKat9]

People asking what made me think others somehow got the answer without having heard of the show. I was referring to posts like this. What “answer” could you even google? How could you have even arrived at the actual “answer” if you never heard of the show. Something doesn’t make sense

Yeah my initial google searches were not very helpful. It wasn't until I added something I noticed about the mechanism to my search that I happened to come across it.