#628 - "A League of Their Own"

[Jacksull]

It looks like Matt carefully worded the hint. “..answer is a team in the National Football League.” This limits the possible answers to teams presently in the league. If he had written “the answer is a National Football League Team” it could have opened the doors for the Muncies and Frankfords of the world.

[spotter]

Took me a long time to see the answer but when I really thought about why the league names were spelled out and not abbreviated, it happened pretty quickly for me.

[DrTom]

Well at least I get to have a little fun with my predicament. Over on the Muggle board we are prone to rewrite songs (or create poetry) to express our delight, or as is all too frequent, our dismay. So, I have adapted a familiar tune to fit the situation, and will get double duty out of it in that I plan to put it on the Muggle Board as well. So with no further adieu, with apologies to Sir Andrew Lloyd Weber and T.S. Eliot, and with the lilting notes of Memory from Cats playing in the background:

Midnight, not a thought in my whole brain.
I have chased all my rabbits? I’m not smiling at home.
In the lamp light the scribbled sheets collect at my feet,
And the death knell starts to tone.

Memory, all alone in my office
I can dream of the old days, life was beautiful then.
I remember, the time I knew what solutions were.
Let the memory live again.

Every timepiece seems to beat, a fatalistic warning.
An idea flutters, ends up in the gutter, and soon it will be morning.

Midnight, I must put off the sun rise,
I must think of a new plan, and I mustn't give in.
When the dawn comes, this META will be a memory too,
And a new streak will begin

Burnt out ends of #2 pencils, the stale cold smell of morning.
An idea dies, another night is over, another day is dawning.

Nudge me, its so easy to nudge me
All alone with the memory, of my days in the sun.
If you nudge me, I may yet understand what happiness is.
Look, a new week has begun.

[BarbaraK]

I wonder if my not knowing much about sports was actually an advantage this week - no extra info to create rabbit holes, so the league initials were more apparent.

I’m much more familiar with piano keyboards, and that one took me much longer as I was seeing herrings everywhere.

[DrTom]

Wow, so I open up my e-mail and this is what I saw from my local PBS station:

Scuse me, might I have a bit of salt to rub in these wounds....

[Joe Ross]

I tried to apply a Week 4 mechanism to a Week 2 puzzle with DALLAS COWBOYS, reasoning thus:

Across 15. 50.Qh6+!! is odd (as a clue), the winning chess move of the 2016 World Chess Championships, & the exact title of an article on Slate.com written by - OH, HEY!! - Matt Gaffney.

Down 50. REARER is odder, still (as an answer), should be COWBOY (I mean, come on!), and - if you overlay a chess board onto the crossword grid where (if you allow grid space 61 = chess space a1) chess space h6 (from Across 15) = Down 50.

In other words, I let my boredom from staring, lack of progress, and an emotional high from finding SOMETHING - AT LONG LAST - get the better of me by submitting a much-gnarled answer where a much-simpler Week 2 answer was needed.

[damefox]

I have one minor nit that I won't go into now for fear of giving too much away.

Now that the deadline has passed... this nit truly is very minor, but I think the prompt would have been better phrased as "the NFL team that completes the theme." Perhaps Matt felt that would've pushed the difficulty down to week 1 level. I think it's possible using the league initials instead of the full name would've counteracted that though, because the only reason I was able to figure this out without diving down a bunch of rabbit holes is that having the full name of the league written out in every clue was so awkward that the initials had to be relevant.

[DrTom]

Wow, I am in awe of all of the deductive reasoning. I completely missed any connection with eh full names versus the initials. I know that. given my profession, I ought to be initial aware, but in truth I try to avoid them as much as I can because they lead to uncertainty (HCTZ is both hydrochlorothiazide - a diuretic and hydrocortisone - a steroid, STD can be Sinus Tachydysrryhtmia, Save the Date or something you get from your date). I'm just going to have to be more observant!

[Streroto]

As promised here is my lame line of thought that preceded the correct one and truncated my all too short streak. Liverpool was only entry without a nickname. Theirs is REDS. So I thought “Cincinnati is the city” and since it’s an NFL team it’s BENGALS. I thought I was so clever! But no even in illness the evil Mr Gaffney caught me out.

Clearly the correct solution is far more elegant and had I just waited a bit before posting I would have realized that.

Now trying to renew a (small) streak in week 3. Not a good place to be.

Pencils sharp. Friday soon come, as they say on St John

Stay well friends

[Streroto]

It is quite an observation, unfortunately not one I made. I'd have to say that of all Matt's puzzles so far this was probably my least favorite; not because I missed it, I do that a lot, but because the usual 'elegance' was not there. The letters came from different parts of the names and were easily dismissed. But obviously REAL solvers didn't get led astray so , as the old saying goes, "it's not you its me".

Whiffed on both WSJCC and MGWCC - hooray, a brand new streak to start, and with a week 3 coming up. Might be a short streak...

OK, I'm going back to work and do something I CAN do, I've been paying far too little attention to patient care...my excuse, I had a META on life support and I was trying my darnedest to save it, unfortunately it finally had to be sent to some kids in China (I hate it when youth in Asia is the only option).

A favorite phrase of mine! My lame meta also went the way of children in China.

[Bird Lives]

Across 15. 50.Qh6+!! is odd (as a clue), the winning chess move of the 2016 World Chess Championships, & the exact title of an article on Slate.com written by - OH, HEY!! - Matt Gaffney.

Thanks for this link. The last paragraph seems very Gaffneyesque -- seeing a commonality or theme that to most people wouldn't notice.

[Al Sisti]

Well at least I get to have a little fun with my predicament. Over on the Muggle board we are prone to rewrite songs (or create poetry) to express our delight, or as is all too frequent, our dismay. So, I have adapted a familiar tune to fit the situation, and will get double duty out of it in that I plan to put it on the Muggle Board as well. So with no further adieu, with apologies to Sir Andrew Lloyd Weber and T.S. Eliot, and with the lilting notes of Memory from Cats playing in the background:

Midnight, not a thought in my whole brain.
I have chased all my rabbits? I’m not smiling at home.
In the lamp light the scribbled sheets collect at my feet,
And the death knell starts to tone.

Memory, all alone in my office
I can dream of the old days, life was beautiful then.
I remember, the time I knew what solutions were.
Let the memory live again.

Every timepiece seems to beat, a fatalistic warning.
An idea flutters, ends up in the gutter, and soon it will be morning.

Midnight, I must put off the sun rise,
I must think of a new plan, and I mustn't give in.
When the dawn comes, this META will be a memory too,
And a new streak will begin

Burnt out ends of #2 pencils, the stale cold smell of morning.
An idea dies, another night is over, another day is dawning.

Nudge me, its so easy to nudge me
All alone with the memory, of my days in the sun.
If you nudge me, I may yet understand what happiness is.
Look, a new week has begun.

My buddy Andy would approve

[Big Mac]

As I mentioned I arrived at the right answer the wrong way initially before correctly. I was looking for connections between the other teams listed and an NFL team.

1. Liverpool -> bird mascot, red and white colors
2. Milwaukee Brewers -> Milwaukee Braves had moved to Atlanta in 1966
3. Portland Trailblazers -> Red and white colors. I was also thinking maybe the bird mascot thing could be the Seahawks because Paul Allen also owned that team. That seemed like something important.
4. Nashville Predators -> This was the big one, they lost their league championship in 2017, as did the Falcons (the infamous 28-3 collapse in the Super Bowl)

I thought, "nah that's the most inelegant and random set of connections ever" but by total coincidence it was the right answer. Liverpool is what gave away the real mechanism for me, as it was all in one entry which simplified things.

Also, for the fellow sports addicts out there, it is extremely weird to see the names of the leagues listed out fully like that - almost ALWAYS they are abbreviated to EPL MLB NBA NHL, so I thought that it HAD to do with something about the league names in the clues. That's why I think knowing sports was a really big advantage here, otherwise that might not stick out as odd.

[Streroto]

I’m hoping Matt goes a little easy on us today so that I’m not tearing my hair out all day on Father’s Day. Too much to ask for?

[spotter]

I’m hoping Matt goes a little easy on us today so that I’m not tearing my hair out all day on Father’s Day. Too much to ask for?

So far it seems like a big ask

[Streroto]

No was actually ok!