"In The Country" April 12, 2024

[KrisHendo]

Well, golly, I think I solved it in the nick of time. Having a glass of water and headed to bed. Have a great night.

[haydendog]

Solved on the flight home. It was a quick swim!

[hcbirker]

[woozy]

Potential red herrings:

The title is IN the country so one would thing we look for things within the countries. But octet hint says "hint to the number of letters IN each country that you need". So maybe that doesn't mean we need countries with eight letters but countries where we use eight letters

Look at the clue "GERMAN steel citY". Inside GERMANY are ... !eight! letters STEELCIT. Maybe we have to do something with them. But the closest we can get to repeating that is Fill with cARGO with eight letters inside FARGO.

But look, there is RUSSIA scramble in ASSURIng... which has eight letters

And there are a lot of pairs of entries with the same clue. Look at tracking systems RADAR and SONAR. They anagram to ANDORA with an extra RSNA.

And look at CREMONA. That's one letter short of CAMER(O)ON. Which is eight letters! Maybe find other seven letter entries that are eight letter countries missing a letter and the letters spell something.

And B(out)IQUE looks a lot like MOZAMB-IQUE if you take out the OUT and precede with MOZAM.

As well as DJI-BOUTI if... we do something. (Combine DJI-MOZAM-B-OUT-IQUE???)

And look in taPERed over asparagUs we have PERU cradling a G.

And the MOma going up and turing right into MINICAmps is (d)OMINICA but with the D missing.

And look we have the D on the other side arDOr. So we have DO(r)--MINICA with an extra R and ... oh, wait. That isn't a rabbit hole.

[Streroto]

I realized after the fact I had posted a visual spoiler
Oops but grass is everywhere!

Flying home today. Here is another "spoiler" except the grass is on the sides not in the gap...

Stay well all

[Miki]

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

[Miki]

Thank you, Joe, for showing me the way to attachments.

Here's what I've been waiting to share...
Last week cryptic crossword was constructed by a new person, Fraser Simpson.
And I just couldn't resist asking AI if they know each other...
Apparently, they do, very well.

[Yoda66]

I always thought that the plural of asparagus was asparagi. Two things happened upon checking: I learned I was wrong; wait a sec, that's Paraguay...

[MaineMarge]

I didn’t get the meta, but I sure got the grass!

[Colin]

I got tied up for a bit with the 26 3-letter answers, many (not all) of which had international 2-alpha country codes surrounding a letter… eg F(I)R for France. But none of the countries had eight letters. Saw much of Paraguay in ASPARAGUS, but looked for similar in the other themers and didn’t see any, so I gave up and succumbed to a lazy afternoon watching The Masters and mentally punishing myself for being average at best, both on and off the course! Drowned my sorrow in an Athletic Brewing Co. “Free Wave” hazy IPA… the best non-alcoholic (<0.5%), 65 calorie beer I’ve tasted!

[turbotron]

They should've saved this puzzle for next weekend, so the meta answer would tie in to the unofficial holiday on Saturday (4/20).

[Lyman]

I spent time trying to find the name of a country in KNEEBONESHEENA and ETRADEEXPOSURE before realizing that it was very unlikely (and probably impossible) that adding a letter before and after GRASS would result in anything better than GRASS.

[MikeMillerwsj]

The contest answer is GRASS. Each of five names of countries, eight letters long (as indicated by the clue for OCTET), can be found crossing a black square in a row of the grid, with one extra letter “in the country”: SURINAME (with a G), DOMINICA (R), MONGOLIA (A), PARAGUAY (S), DJIBOUTI (S). The extra letters spell the contest answer.

We thought this construction was brilliant. It was in the upper middle range of submissions (1663) and off the charts for correct answers (98%), so good work solvers! The small number of incorrect guesses included CAPITALS (2), STARS and WILDLIFE.

Congrats to this week's winner: Lois Marques of Greensboro, Ga.!

[The XWord Rabbit]

A 98% success rate is good news for Mike Miller and Muggles, but not so much for rabbits. For the sixth time in 11 weeks: No nominees and nothing to work with.

Your Rabbit could belabor the analysis of Mr. Shenk’s “In the Country” puzzle, but frankly, he’d rather go into the vault and offer you something he’s been holding for a long dry spell.

No, it’s not about Carmen Miranda or Spike Jones. It’s about Richard Maltby, Jr., one of his biggest idols. You may recognize Maltby’s name as the director of the 1978 Tony Award winning musical, “Ain’t Misbehavin’”. Like his good friend Stephen Sondheim, Maltby also constructed cryptic crosswords in his spare time (and brilliantly, your Rabbit might add.)

In 1976 Maltby wrote the lyrics to the off-Broadway review “Starting Here, Starting Now”. Barbra Streisand made a hit of the title tune on her Color Me Barbra” album, but there’s another song in the show you may not even know existed.

It’s “Crossword Puzzle”. Never heard of it? Well, no longer. There’s a number of versions of this tune on You Tube, but your Rabbit’s favorite is this one from Deb Allee. Until next week, then.

[Flying_Burrito]

Congrats to this week's winner: Lois Marques of Greensboro, Ga.!

Nice, fellow Georgian, you are now the most famous person in Greene County!

[steveb]

rsz_paint_dry (1).jpg

A 98% success rate is good news for Mike Miller and Muggles, but not so much for rabbits. For the sixth time in 11 weeks: No nominees and nothing to work with.

Your Rabbit could belabor the analysis of Mr. Shenk’s “In the Country” puzzle, but frankly, he’d rather go into the vault and offer you something he’s been holding for a long dry spell.

No, it’s not about Carmen Miranda or Spike Jones. It’s about Richard Maltby, Jr., one of his biggest idols. You may recognize Maltby’s name as the director of the 1978 Tony Award winning musical, “Ain’t Misbehavin’”. Like his good friend Stephen Sondheim, Maltby also constructed cryptic crosswords in his spare time (and brilliantly, your Rabbit might add.)

In 1976 Maltby wrote the lyrics to the off-Broadway review “Starting Here, Starting Now”. Barbra Streisand made a hit of the title tune on her Color Me Barbra” album, but there’s another song in the show you may not even know existed.

It’s “Crossword Puzzle”. Never heard of it? Well, no longer. There’s a number of versions of this tune on You Tube, but your Rabbit’s favorite is this one from Deb Allee. Until next week, then.

I just finished Maltby's May cryptic in Harper's. It was tough going at first, not knowing where any of the answers went. After solving a few clues a day for several days, I finally had enough information to start entering some answers in the grid. After that, the rest of the puzzle followed eventually. Very satisfying solve! I'd like to see solving statistics for those puzzles.

[M and M]

Very clever and quick. We made it harder than we needed to!