XWord Muggles Forum

Wow. I had all the right ideas just not quite the right execution. A gentle word of encouragement from a kind muggle made me look again and there it was. I have heard of and like this band!

Stay well all

Beamed up!

204. Joe Ross 01/15 - 15:39

I'm glad I took another look! That was fun. Awaiting beam.

I’ve been staring at my filled-out grid for a few days and have no ideas. Any chance I can get a nudge? Thanks!

Edit: got some nudges

CREW P.A. - CROUPIER
42A Casino employee - ODDSMAKER

V.N. KNEES - VIENNESE
83A Native of a certain European capital - KYVIAN

L.M. ENTRY - ELEMENTARY
16A ___ school (K-5 education) - GRADE

TRAY B.N. - TRÈS BIEN
79A "Your terms are acceptable," in Paris - OUI

I really enjoyed this puzzle.

LM entry was the first one I found.

Tray BN was the last. Had to say it multiple times. Even googled traybian and variations:)

I solved the Use Your Head WSJCC with minimal side trips.

I needed someone to kick me 26.2 miles to solve this.

They are very similar.

Joe Ross wrote: ↑Tue Jan 16, 2024 12:31 pm I solved the Use Your Head WSJCC with minimal side trips.

I needed someone to kick me 26.2 miles to solve this.

They are very similar.

And I had the opposite experience. Got this one with minimal fuss. Days of staring at WSJ.

Ditto

I took a similar path to the one described on Crossword Fiend. I saw BN as a good match for 79A, and LM matched 16A, although it bothered me that "Grade" was not an abbreviation, where "Elem" was. I couldn't figure out what Matt wanted with VN ("Viens"? French for come?) and PA (Piet?), but the first two didn't seem like coincidence. It took a bit of staring to see "tray" and "entry".

I saw OK, Go perform in 2006 with The Hold Steady and Sparta as part of a local radio station's anniversary party. At the time, they were known as "the band with that treadmill video", but not yet as "the band with all those elaborate videos".

It was interesting to me that this puzzle and Matt's WSJ puzzle this week both used similar layout structures in the metanism, in that the obvious (longer word) part of the theme entries needed the other grid entry from the same line of the grid to complete the theme.

It is a layout that I've missed (and been burned by) several times in the past when he's used it before, so I've trained myself to look for it whenever there is another entry on the same line as a themer. Just one more of those little signature things you notice when you've been doing puzzles from the same author for years.

When I was a young lad, I was a big fan of the drummer Gene Krupa.

Seeing CREW-P. A., I immediately thought of him since we were in search of a "famous" band. I thought that my hunch was confirmed by the answer to 20A, dol DRUMS!

It took a while, but I finally gave it up.....

I'm just getting around to reading the reveal now - I got the correct answer but I ran the Rosie Ruiz version of the course. Sorry, @Joe Ross! I got BN/OUI and LM/GRADE pretty quickly and then VN/KYIVAN - thought it should be Wiener/Wienerin, but what do I know? I then connected the clue to ODE to PA, and et voila, I arrived at OK GO after a Google consultation. Even a blind hog will find an acorn every now and again!

MarkWoychick wrote: ↑Wed Jan 17, 2024 2:30 pm Even a blind hog will find an acorn every now and again!

Here in the East, we say "Even a blind SQUIRREL will find an acorn...."

I looked it up and, sure enough, hogs eat acorns in the wild. Ya never know what you will learn from this group.

I suppose that while we have an abundance of rodents, in Idaho there is an abundance of swine!

ship4u wrote: ↑Thu Jan 18, 2024 11:05 am
Here in the East, we say "Even a blind SQUIRREL will find an acorn...."

I got the "blind hog" version from my dad, a Minnesota native. I don't know where he got it, though.

Another midwest reference to hogs: