"Round Five" February 23, 2024

[Miki]

And another tiktok with the solution

https://www.tiktok.com/t/ZPR3psDK8/

[Relic]

Had the target idea with the five rings but only thought of shooting.

I chased shooting for a long time and then got a nudge from Google when I searched the colors.

[meowmiao71]

Nope. Anybody else fatally distracted by the fact that, except for white, those colors are the same as the Olympic rings? And a paper plate could be green. No idea what to do from there, but I couldn't let it go.

I'm with you! I got stuck and couldn't get out. This is my second week in a row that I hung out with Isaac. I hope I can get the next one or my confidence will be shot!

Was there a pointer I missed?

[woozy]

I was doomed from the beginning. I figured every step of the way there had to be word play and there never was. When you get to the point that "Okay, it's an olympic even that has colored circle in it and white is the largest and yellow is the smallest and I have a list of all olympic events and ... break-dancing? There's going to be a break-dancing event ... " and you stare at it four 24 hours and all you can think is "Calvinball's not an olympic sport, is it" and you actually have better luck creating a meta with the same title and theme for scratch than you do with thinking of a sport with colored circles when the list you have has archery as third in the list... then it's just not going to happen.

[benchen71]

Look what arrived this afternoon! Thanks @The XWord Rabbit!!

This is my first crossword mug, so it will be a very treasured possession:

[Gman]

Nope. Anybody else fatally distracted by the fact that, except for white, those colors are the same as the Olympic rings? And a paper plate could be green. No idea what to do from there, but I couldn't let it go.

Just to make the rabbit hole more fiendish, MG threw in a clue ___ of GREEN gables!!!!! 5 rings on the flag, with a white background!!!!

[woozy]

Nope. Anybody else fatally distracted by the fact that, except for white, those colors are the same as the Olympic rings? And a paper plate could be green. No idea what to do from there, but I couldn't let it go.

Just to make the rabbit hole more fiendish, MG threw in a clue ___ of GREEN gables!!!!! 5 rings on the flag, with a white background!!!!

Yeah, but there was also "ORANGE sunfish" and ""The color PURPLE" movie credit".

I was doomed, I tells ya, doomed. My first concern was that I thought lemon slices didn't *have* to be round. The could be wedge shaped or little segment shapes or semi-circles (I didn't realize that people distinguish between "wedges" (segments and wedges) and "slices" (full or semi or quarter circles)) and that pepperoni and Opah are round.

And that Opah and Op(r)ah were both color clues and one was round. And P(l)uck? What's going on? When I figured that "two ball" as opposed to one ball or 4 ball or twelve ball had to do with the two ball being blue I figured BLUE PLATE SPECIAL and I google Blue Puck and Blue mars and they *do* exist as concepts. And Blue Ice.. oh, yeah, I had played around with words withing enterie and maybe Per Plate = Per capita was the "largest" and ICE having to do with hockey was the "smallest" so I had gotten ICE rather than SLICE stuck in my head. So EVERYTHING is BLUE!

And there's POHL crossing TWOBALL. Replace the H with the ROUND letter O and you get POOL and oh, boy the words you can get when you replace letter with Os. Maybe thing to do with Baseball (Plate) and Hockey and Golf (slice) and ... MARS... Calvinball again?

Oh and the clues and entries: picnic ITEm has the last few letter of whITE and so does plaTE so maybe I need find a WH in the grid. "one of fifteen on the taBLE" has three of the letters of BLUE. For the black puck "fLAmes" is not good but look! in hook shape from the B in SOBA and the L in plate and the A in SOBA and the CK in HOCKEy and that spells BLACK!

Doomed I tells ya.

And Paper Plates are eco friendly so we have Green for the fifth Olympic ring. How can we have five round things of colors and it *not* be the olympic rings?

[mikeB]

While working the grid, we notice the oddities contained in Clues 17A and 65A – “(largest)” and “(smallest)”, respectively. They are oddities in the sense that they provide key information about only two of what we soon realize are five theme entries. It’s not clear what they’re telling us, but those nudges certainly are noticed: We know that gratuitous parentheticals appearing in clues can be counted on to provide direct and crucial hints about the mechanism. Once the grid is done, we turn our attention to seeing what we can glean from the title. Titles can be tricky, because sometimes they help the solving from the get-go, while at other times they’re happy to sit tight until they deliver the final click. This meta’s title jumps into the fray right away, and the message is not at all subtle. There is a roundness about the five (not two) theme entries. As is often the case, we instinctively start by looking for what those entries might have in common. The title is very helpful in this regard, and before we know it, we’re looking at five entries, each of which describes a round object. Here is where a very creative ambiguity kicks in. Each of those five entries consists of two words. In each case, one of the words by itself represents a round object: PLATE, PUCK, BALL, PLANET, LEMON. Hmmm, five round objects. That is tempting. However, other than roundness, these objects have nothing in common, so we’re stuck. On the other hand, when coupled with their companion words, the five entries become more specific, and they do have something in common: each has a characteristic color. We’re on our way. Here is where those parenthetical oddities – “largest” and “smallest” – help us close the deal. We’re looking for five items having those five respective colors, which are progressively smaller from white to yellow. Well, it can’t be the objects named in the entries, because PLANET MARS is indisputably the largest, not a PAPER PLATE. That settles it: we’re looking for five items that are NOT synonymous with the entries themselves, but rather five items which share those entries’ respective colors, and which are sequentially smaller. The first thing that popped into my mind was an archery target, and that was that. One final note about those “oddities” in Clues 17A and 65A: They have the effect, not only of tying the solution to the five theme entries, but also of implicating progressively decreasing sizes in the solution. This one-two punch quashes looking at the Olympics logo (five round rings), which otherwise could be a tempting rabbit hole. I confess to considering that logo, but it was a brief excursion considering the largest-to-smallest requirement involving the five theme entries.

[Tom Shea]

Count me in the group that initially thought the answer was "rings".

I was gruntled about the Olympic rings not being the same colors as the theme entries.

A re-look brought me to the correct answer.

[Joe Ross]

Was there a pointer I missed?

While working the grid, we notice the oddities contained in Clues 17A and 65A – “(largest)” and “(smallest)”, respectively.

...

We’re looking for five items having those five respective colors, which are progressively smaller from white to yellow. Well, it can’t be the objects named in the entries, because PLANET MARS is indisputably the largest, not a PAPER PLATE. That settles it: we’re looking for five items that are NOT synonymous with the entries themselves, but rather five items which share those entries’ respective colors, and which are sequentially smaller.

[Ergcat]

Count me in the group that initially thought the answer was "rings".

I was gruntled about the Olympic rings not being the same colors as the theme entries.

A re-look brought me to the correct answer.

My initial thought also was the Olympic Rings! 5 Rounds! So I assigned the ring colors to the themers : blue plate, black ball, red Mars, etc. and then looked for alternative grid entries “blue plate” special at a diner? “Black ball” actor in Hollywood? Nope! But the colors gave me an idea ! So I apply the matching color to the themer… and coupled with the hints ( largest and smallest) finally led me to the answer.

[Wendy Walker]

Rabbit hole from Mark: The five themers are all round. Round round round round round ... hey! that sounds a lot like "I Get Around," the classic surf rock tune by the Beach Boys, so the meta answer must be the Olympic sport SURFING.

[Renee]

zvc cg

[debbierudy]

This must have been a fun one for the successful solvers, but I looked at this a few times over the weekend and nothing clicked, not even the roundness of each long answer. Funny how different things jump out at us. How bout some more hexadecimal code?!

[LadyBird]

I can make a plausible case for PENTATHLON. Each of the 5 events in that sport can be linked (sometimes a bit creatively ) to the 5 themers:

FENCING--surrounds you as you enjoy a picnic lunch in your yard
SHOOTING--a hockey puck into the goal
RUNNING--the table in a game of pool
RIDING--a rocket ship to the planet Mars
SWIMMING--after you "fall into the drink" (a vodka sour, perhaps).

And that is what I submitted.

[KayW]

And another tiktok with the solution

https://www.tiktok.com/t/ZPR3psDK8/

Wow! Very nice. For my own paranoid reasons I refuse to create a tiktok ID, but I would give this

[KayW]

I got hung up for a short while in the "could PAPER PLATES be green?" rabbit hole. That is, after I had to google to see what color the Olympic rings were. But I still couldn't see how that could lead to an event answer. Then I saw GREEN ORANGE PURPLE in the other clues and figured that was a subtle way of signifying that colors were important, but that PAPER PLATES are not green.

I started thinking about the "largest" and "smallest" parentheticals. And that's when very vague memories of my 8-week high school archery stint popped the solution into mind. Confirmed that the colors matched and it WAS a summer Olympic sport before submitting.

[Momo]

Made it at 11:46pm with a nudge from Tom Shea! Finally hit me - bullseye!! Thanks Tom. Don’t go far!!

[Darth]

Hey there,
If you'd like some more meta fun, hop on over to the "Other Metas" section...

If you haven't done it, I'd love you to give last week's MEOW (Madhatter's Enigma on a Wednesday) a try. Thanks! :)

There are quick links to it at post #1 --> viewtopic.php?t=2709

[MikeyG]

Statement made at least ten times by me before getting out of a rabbit hole:

"But paper plates aren't green!"