MGWCC #813 — “Ring in the New”

[Andrew Bradburn]

For me, this is the one (across) that got away. Was in on the Discord chat on Friday, as this was such an obtuse puzzle, and ideas galore were being bandied about. Lots of discussion of Auld Lang Syne, even ALS was an entry. But that afternoon, I noticed that one could move up from W to X on the Wray clue (APE)*, and from Waxes to X-axes on the clue for SEALANT. "Waxes on paper, e.g." was just such a weird clue. The new clue here could lead to LINES, but I couldn't see what "Xray film menace" could be, even though it was grammatically a legit clue. And so...I did not pursue it. (Hindsight is 20/20!) The clicks that failed to go off in my brain were: look for other Ws in the clues, not just at the beginnings of clues (I tried other letters moving up one alphabetically, with no success, as I thought it was about moving up one letter across the board.) And most importantly, why W only? The 23rd/24th letters of the alphabet did not come into my mind. Drat. That was the most important piece.

This was about as close as I will ever be to a 1-Across badge! Congratulations again to Oggy for being first with the 23/24 click, and first in on the last meta of the year.

*The reason why this even occurred to me at all with W/X, independent of the numerical significance is weird, and goes WAAAY back to living in Colorado briefly in the late 1970s. In Steamboat Springs, all the cars in that part of the state had license plates that began WZ with four numbers after. Then, during the year, some cars started having license plates that started XA with four numbers after. It occurred to me then that what comes next alphabetically after WZ would be XA. Somehow this nugget stayed a live ember in the deep recesses of my brain all these years, but not that they were specifically 23 and 24 in order. Go figure.

[eisense]

Tough one. My rabbit hole was in pursuit of psi to omega (23rd and 24th letters of the alphabet to which 58D belongs). A big nudge rescued me from my terminal conditioning (which I illogically blame on last week's WSJCC).

Wishing you all a good year.

[pchow13]

Kudos to everyone who solved this - I got nowhere close I really thought I was on the right track… when I first opened the puzzle “ring in the new” I interpreted it as making new words in the grid by replacing a letter with the word RING… “Squad becomes squaring, Beau becomes bearing, Car becomes caring, atone becomes ring-tone, and stag becomes staring”… the replaced letters spell out “GUARD” in the shape of a ring… and NYE shows beef up their security with guards! (I know they're not a prop but in my head I was desperate to make the meta work)… such a deep rabbit hole I couldn’t get out of because of the alt clue DITTY for “ringtone” and seeing TENDER in contender for “caring”

[oggy]

This one reminded me of CHAMPIONS. One because it eluded the usual fast solvers, two it involved using year numbers as indices into the alphabet, and three it turned out to be deceptively straightforward.

I hope Texans realize that this is their year! (20 24 -> TX)

For me, this is the one (across) that got away. Was in on the Discord chat on Friday, as this was such an obtuse puzzle, and ideas galore were being bandied about. Lots of discussion of Auld Lang Syne, even ALS was an entry. But that afternoon, I noticed that one could move up from W to X on the Wray clue (APE)*, and from Waxes to X-axes on the clue for SEALANT. "Waxes on paper, e.g." was just such a weird clue. The new clue here could lead to LINES, but I couldn't see what "Xray film menace" could be, even though it was grammatically a legit clue. And so...I did not pursue it. (Hindsight is 20/20!) The clicks that failed to go off in my brain were: look for other Ws in the clues, not just at the beginnings of clues (I tried other letters moving up one alphabetically, with no success, as I thought it was about moving up one letter across the board.) And most importantly, why W only? The 23rd/24th letters of the alphabet did not come into my mind. Drat. That was the most important piece.

You were soo close! Your observations there were an important piece for me. I saw BMW -> BMX, but also didn’t get the “why.” After mulling at what you’d shared in response I noticed that there were a lot of Ws here. And only after I found all 5 did it finally click that W -> X meant 23 -> 24.

I’ll take the W, so to speak.

[KayW]

I spent hours going round and round in circles. I noticed the ambiguity in several of the clues and entries (BIKE and CAR are both rentable rides, LINES and VERSES are both poem parts, etc.) but couldn't find any rhyme or reason to link them. Then I saw the hint. Amazing to me that Matt could think of 5 clues where you could exchange X for W and get another griddable entry.

[MMe]

Ring in the new, huh? Let's see. In a list of Vegas casinos, the top two were MGMGRAND AND BELLAGIO. A boxing CONTENDER is a BELLigerant. To GLAMORIZE (make more attractive) is to EMBELLISH. From there it became stretchier: "Retrieve," an ACTIONVERB, is to BRING. "Got in the path of" means STONEWALLED. And "Waxes on paper" means ... EXTOLLS! There, must be almost done...

[Joe]

I don't even understand it after reading the explanation (I've had a (2) cocktail(s)).

New year, new streak.

[woozy]

So trying to figure out what Goodbye 23 Hello 24 could mean and not able to do anything with the letters O and A, I thought replacing Ws with Xs but where? The grid got nowhere. The clues gave some clever coincidences such as seXed up and boXed out but those were obviously just coincidences and bmx and xaxes were nonsense and there were several cases where the clues with x'es still had x'es so this obviously wouldn't go anywhere. But if I pretended x-axes was a meaningful word and pursued the seXed up->glamorized idea that was obviously unintentional, I could jokingly spell out the the arbitrary word GLOBE. GLOBE has nothing to do with New Years but if you consider the icons on teevee screens it makes a funny joke answer. So I submitted it hoping to get so recognition for a funny far fetched but really clever misinterpretation for a funny joke answer.

... that recognition never came.