"Of Sound Character" December 29, 2023

[otlaolap]

Good God. I said .9 confidence, because I could not find the clue yielding the E. All I could come up with was nioME, helpME, and thrEE in a row: three E sounds (Sound Character, right) in a row right in the middle of the grid. Never ever saw ROW. The other greeks, yes, aided by Google for PSI, but not ROW. Good God.

[DaveKennison]

I didn’t have much time to spend on this, but I did submit the following (knowing that it was probably wrong):

“Given the title (“OF SOUND CHARACTER”), the central Across entry (“THREE IN A ROW”), the fact that the last words of four other long entries rhyme with the names of Greek letters, and the fact that three of those letters occupy consecutive positions in the Greek alphabet, I’m guessing that the requested five-letter word is GREEK.”

Wrong, but not that bad a guess, maybe? …

[Flying_Burrito]

Four HS years of greek studies paid off. Not sure about Benchen Ai rhyme explanation (and I love that movie) since we have a rho, but the beauty in life and with metas is that sometime you can take different paths to lead to the same holy grail. BTW, as with the past 4 or 5 metas, MG gave us a little nudge with 30A (Zed). Happy new year everybody.

[harhanlake]

The key words are

Fi Sigh Row Pie Kai which are homonyms of the Greek letters

Phi Psi Rho Pi Chi which are found in the puzzle grid in

IHOP Simp Hero Pig Chai with the extra letters

O M E G A ( zed is a hint)

[benchen71]

Have I confused people with my entry for the Xword Rabbit? I waited until Heidi had posted the correct answer!

[Aragorn]

"PIE" and "KAI" had me on greek letters right away, but it took a nudge from @ship4u to point out that FI isn't an outlier. My brain wasn't mapping FI to PHI. Also took a nudge from @BarbaraK to point out that Omega could refer to the last puzzle of the year, which gives me the final lock.

[clonefitz]

Happy New Year to all Muggles!

[krf]

How many people went down this rabbit hole: Pi, Rho, Phi, Chi, Psi are the letters 16, 17, 21, 22, and 23 in the Greek alphabet and then found
that clues 16,17, etc started with the letters O M E C A. Not only that, but 21-23 are "Three in a row" and 16-17 are "One pair". I'm guessing that it might have been quite a few because of the number of people who said that had 4 of the 5 letters. Would have been an engineering feat if IHOP, SIMP, HERO, PIG, and CHAI had been in the grid positions 16, 17, 21, 22, and 23, but that would have made things more obvious, maybe.

Didn't get this one until late Sunday afternoon. Was too buzy looking at ordinals to look at the other mechanisms.

[debbierudy]

I rang in 2024 at Isaac's bar, drinking champagne and singing Auld Lang Syne (not Styne!) Saw all the important clues but had no clue what to do with them, being unfamiliar with the movie. Happy New Year, dear Muggles, and may it bring you joy and peace!

[Colin]

2024
Began with Isaac. See thee,
2023!

Happy & Healthy New Year Muggles! Hope you had fun on 123123!

[chatger]

Here is my little rabbit hole... It wasn't until the very last step that things got shaky.

I took the 5 long answers and replaced three letters (THREEINAROW) with another 'close' grid answer:

semPERfi - (49A) PEA -> A (letter from other answer)
LETsoutasigh - (32A) RET -> R
thrEEInarow - (69A) ELI -> L
blueberryPIE - (45D) PIG -> G
COBrakai - (46A) NOB -> N

Now this is where it gets shaky since the answer letter order is not quite clean...the first letter of the answer does not come in grid order as is typical (but hey, the first rule of Metas is there are no rules). So in order, you get ARLGN, but you can get GNARL!

GNARL.

Now you also have GNASH (starting with the same three letters as my answer) with the difference fron GNARL being SH... SHH (34D) which are like 'SOUND CHARACTERS'. However, the 'G' is not OF (a) SOUND CHARACTER...now that feels a little clicky, too!

Anyway, sketchy enough to get ask for a confirmation from @Wendy Walker, who kindly informed me I was NOT on the right beach...

[Merry Potter]

How many people went down this rabbit hole: Pi, Rho, Phi, Chi, Psi are the letters 16, 17, 21, 22, and 23 in the Greek alphabet and then found
that clues 16,17, etc started with the letters O M E C A. Not only that, but 21-23 are "Three in a row" and 16-17 are "One pair". I'm guessing that it might have been quite a few because of the number of people who said that had 4 of the 5 letters. Would have been an engineering feat if IHOP, SIMP, HERO, PIG, and CHAI had been in the grid positions 16, 17, 21, 22, and 23, but that would have made things more obvious, maybe.

Didn't get this one until late Sunday afternoon. Was too buzy looking at ordinals to look at the other mechanisms.

I went down that rabbit hole before clawing my way back up to the correct answer

[Nlobb]

I don’t understand what the answer omega has to do with the title Of Sound Character?? There has to be a connection but it eludes me.
Happy 2024 to all!!

[krf]

How many people went down this rabbit hole: Pi, Rho, Phi, Chi, Psi are the letters 16, 17, 21, 22, and 23 in the Greek alphabet and then found
that clues 16,17, etc started with the letters O M E C A. Not only that, but 21-23 are "Three in a row" and 16-17 are "One pair". I'm guessing that it might have been quite a few because of the number of people who said that had 4 of the 5 letters. Would have been an engineering feat if IHOP, SIMP, HERO, PIG, and CHAI had been in the grid positions 16, 17, 21, 22, and 23, but that would have made things more obvious, maybe.

Didn't get this one until late Sunday afternoon. Was too buzy looking at ordinals to look at the other mechanisms.

I went down that rabbit hole before clawing my way back up to the correct answer


Cameo.jpg

I saw that and said, "a cameo could be sorta like a locket", but decided that there was no good reason to order the letters that way.

[SewYoung]

FI, SIGH, PIE, KAI - All I could think of was "The Frito Bandito". But that did not satisfy the instruction. Also if you add in CHAI and ELI; that makes 6 not 4. Also, THREE IN A ROW messes up that theory.

[Grover]

I don’t understand what the answer omega has to do with the title Of Sound Character?? There has to be a connection but it eludes me.
Happy 2024 to all!!

I think the "Of Sound character" refers to the use of homonyms - i.e. "fi sounds like the Greek character phi"
Also, an interesting aside that Matt chose a meta answer of Omega for the final puzzle of 2023.

[Bob cruise director]

Happy 2024 muggles

We just got back from St. Albans VT scouting for the perfect locations for photographing the April 8 total solar eclipse. We also had a great dinner at the Hen of the Wood restaurant in Burlington.

And check out the "Cute Picture of the Year" at https://www.xword-muggles.com/viewtopic ... 00#p152319. @LadyBird is the proud and probably very tired grandmother.


Here is our Sunday and final report. We changed the calendar with 17 on the ship and 174 on the shore. That includes our newest muggles @JeffS and @harhanlake . And welcome back to several muggles who we have not seen in a while

Keeping Isaac in business (and paying off their bar bills by busing tables and washing glasses) since Friday are

Scott M
SewYoung
whimsy
ladybird
Janet
Franky_T
Debbie
rjy
Colin
Mirage
jawinks

And getting to shore are

MajorDomoTom
SJMck
BigPear
HunterX
Nlobb
Aragorn
Olof
John77
Adajeo
relic (and Maggie)
LittleGood
MaineMarge
Cinny
Archfrog
KscX
EmilyW
bread-girl
Ann
haydendog
heroine.chic
BetterMonday
shays
Ben B and son
Bonnibel
David K
krf
M and M
diplomatt
SingleMalt
Isw
Colin&Chuck
harhanlake
JeffS


And the song of the week has to be The End by the Doors. End of the year and end of the alphabet for a meta.

[woozy]

I did not think Greek letters were obvious and it took me a relatively long time to figure that's what was up. (Don't see how "zed", a reference to an English prononciation, could be a hint). The "alphabet quintet" of vowels had me convinced the mechanism was about long vowels. I finally convinced my self it just couldn't possible be as that would be doing *everything* wrong (for too many representation of long E and only one other rep (O) in the "real" themers too many sub themers and no uniformity; no clear distinction between intentional when a long Vowell at an end is a themer one when it is just a long vowel in the middle of the word). All along I was dreading it'd be another atrocious "mumble the names of pasta while you are drunk" mechanism [that one should NEVER have gotten past the selection committee] but eventually I bit the bullet of "okay with consonants and accents what do they sound like a drunk might mutter" and greek letters was pretty clear.

Then what. Well, I tried looking for clever and never seen before but then went through the standard bag if tricks and if you think of greek letters as short words this was about 3 or 4 on the standard list of favorite tricks and consistently presented. The it was a famous greek letter was a clencher. Although if the meta has a "message" or larger rationale (one expects one at holidays) I don't think I know what it is.

Once I gave up on long vowels is was a good fair puzzle bit that salted chocolate dipped red herring of "alphabet quintet" kept me sniffing at the wrong tree for nearly ever.

[woozy]

I don’t understand what the answer omega has to do with the title Of Sound Character?? There has to be a connection but it eludes me.
Happy 2024 to all!!

I think the "Of Sound character" refers to the use of homonyms - i.e. "fi sounds like the Greek character phi"

That's what I figured as well but it seemed kind of a weak hint. Especially as the more crucial Greek alphabet aspect was never hinted or alluded at in any way. This is sort of a "Welcome to Tokyo with a population of over 17!". I mean... it's true; Tokyo *does* have a population of more than 17 but....

[MajordomoTom]

FEE FI FO FUM
I smell the blood of frustrated muggles
I'll break these words to make my bread
And throw out greek nonsense until I'm fed