"After and Before"

A weekly meta crossword created by members of the forum. Difficulty levels will vary. Hints are usually available starting Wednesday, and solutions are posted on Sunday.
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BrianMac
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Joined: Mon Apr 08, 2019 11:45 pm
Location: Connecticut

#41

Post by BrianMac »

I hope everyone had a happy and healthy 4th of July. Thanks everyone for taking the time to solve and send me your answers for "After and Before."

Screen Shot 2020-07-12 at 5.13.17 PM.png

This one was pretty simple, there were basically three steps: Find a word that could come AFTER the first word of the theme entries, AND a different word that can come BEFORE the second word of that theme entry:

ROLLING PIN, NEEDLE POINT
DROPPED DEAD, BURRIED TREASURE
BINGE EAT, RUN ERRANDS

Second, following the hint given in 67-Across, and the parenthetic clues to the each theme entry, connect these found word pairs into sayings:

PINS AND NEEDLES
DEAD AND BURRIED
EAT AND RUN

Third, spell PANDABEAR with the first letters of each word.

Following a recommendation I read in the Acapulco Lounge, I just finished (and enjoyed) the TV show Bosch on Amazon Prime. That show has a fun-to-watch pair of detectives nicknamed Crate and Barrel, based on their respective shapes. It got me thinking about other ? and ? phrases and whether I could use them to make a meta answer. I needed three such phrases and a word that had the letter pattern ?A??A??A?. My first choice was MANHATTAN, and I spent about a week trying to get that to work. I had HERE AND THERE, and TOOTH AND NAIL, but never could find an "M_____ AND N_____" phrase that I was satisfied with. So PANDABEAR was my second choice.

Originally, the words-to-find were all hidden AFTER the words in the theme entry, but then I found out that DUST AND BONES is not really as popular a saying as I thought; rather, it's just the title of an obscure Guns N Roses song that somehow leaked out of my memory bank. So I tossed that one and went with DEAD AND BURIED, but nothing really precedes BURRIED. There are a few things that can come after it (BURRIED TREASURE, BURIED THE HATCHET), so I switched the other two theme entries to follow the pattern "after the first word and before the second word." I was happy with that solution, which conveniently provided a title for the puzzle, but it required moving NEEDLE to the BEFORE position, and NEEDLE POINT was the only decent thing I could come up with. It wasn't perfect because the phrase in the answer requires plural - pinS and Needle. And "NeedleS Point" is not a thing, so that's a legitimate nit to pick, and one I decided I could live with. I may have just had constructing fatigue by that point. It's also not great that PIN can also come before POINT, which a few of you pointed out. I had not thought of that one, but I'm not sure I would have bothered about it if it had.

Tomorrow's, constructor is a new member, who constructed a puzzle you probably will remember if you've been doing MGWCC for the last year or so.
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Hector
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#42

Post by Hector »

Really enjoyed this one. The mechanism is "simple," maybe, but doesn't jump out at you (at me, anyhow), and even when you latch onto it, there is still work to do.
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boharr
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#43

Post by boharr »

I very much enjoyed this puzzle. Thank you.
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