(You should figure out the answer pretty easily from the highlights!)
When I got to SLEIGHING, I thought, "Okay, three consecutive letters" - and then I saw CRABCAKES, and I was like, "Oh, I think I used that before." It still took me another 10 minutes or so before I realized, "Oh, this also is phone-related."
I was thinking letters next to the three consecutive, reversing the three consecutive, etc. The fact that there were five combinations and, with the phone link, that got me to ZIP codes after that.
The answer (I'll still play coy even though it's past the deadline) wasn't exactly one that I've seen a lot in crosswords, though the letter combination makes sense. When I think of common crossword cities, I gravitate toward AMES, ORONO, UTICA, and the like. So that (plus the multiple ZIP codes for the city in question) still gave me a trickle of uncertainty, but I still took a tiny chance and got the beam.
@Andrew Bradburn makes an interesting comment earlier on click and even prompt to some extent. If the answer to a meta is, say, PARIS, you obviously have to gravitate somewhere between "The answer to the meta is the capital of France" and, to a lesser extent, "The answer to the meta is a capitalized word."
In my hypothetical PARIS example, I might have to see the puzzle in question to see how I would gauge the prompt. I notice that occasionally on Jeopardy!, little qualifiers like "4-letter" or "2-word" will be in a clue, perhaps to solidify a click that the answer they want is the answer they're looking for.
It was like the other day in Jeopardy!, the final Jeopardy! was "The Wild West." So I wagered very little, and then the answer tends to be pretty adjacent to presidential trivia. So I'm like, "Well, if the category were 'Presidential Journals,' I might have wagered more!"
I'm just waffling now. Another fun puzzle from the Gaffney, and I'm on vacation for Week 4, so I'll already start getting prepared! Hope we're having a good holiday season so far!
Mikey G
