"Trending Ending" November 4, 2022
- meowmiao71
- Posts: 201
- Joined: Sat Aug 15, 2020 2:20 pm
- Location: New Mexico
We got it but skipped a step! We noticed the bigrams covered all of the vowels so we figured the answer would end _Y_Y. After some thinking, we came up with SLYLY, confirmed it with an onshore person, and submitted.
Well, my partner wasn't satisfied with this and figured there had to be more to it. After looking at it for a few more minutes, he found the other step. Clever as always!*
* Referring to the puzzle here, but my partner is also clever!
Well, my partner wasn't satisfied with this and figured there had to be more to it. After looking at it for a few more minutes, he found the other step. Clever as always!*
* Referring to the puzzle here, but my partner is also clever!
- Bird Lives
- Posts: 2711
- Joined: Tue Apr 09, 2019 6:43 pm
- Location: NYC
- Contact:
It could have been inadvertent. But Matt often uses the last across clue as a place for a hint or an Easter egg, and maybe this was one of those instances. Since themers are all symmetrically located and since 1A does not end in a double bigram, REESES would not have been a loose end or a distraction.
Jay
- eagle1279
- Posts: 309
- Joined: Mon Nov 11, 2019 7:00 pm
- Location: Indianapolis
My daughter's mimosa-infused challenge was that the meta answer was "easy peasy." Ha Ha. Also while I was stumped, my son called to say that he and his kids were having hot cocoa (CoCo?) after an afternoon of kite-flying.
- Flying_Burrito
- Posts: 296
- Joined: Fri Apr 16, 2021 11:24 am
- Location: Johns Creek, GA
Matt specifically states "possessive" in the def for 69A. The possessive 's is never part of a noun. That's why the meta is squeaky clean in my book.
Senor Guaca Mole
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- Posts: 790
- Joined: Mon Jun 22, 2020 8:12 pm
- Location: Seneca SC
Then it would pair with 42a “DULL-ES” and then that would leave us with “DULL”…. Definitely NOT true for Matt’s meta puzzles!
Did anyone notice that the answer “SLYLY” is true in both grid order AND theme answer order? Very SLY !
Last edited by Ergcat on Mon Nov 07, 2022 9:02 am, edited 1 time in total.
- Onaquest
- Posts: 71
- Joined: Sat Nov 20, 2021 7:09 am
It’s been pointed out by someone cleverer than me that down in that right hand corner you have 57A FORGET with 63D ES(T)ES - inadvertent or v clever?Flying_Burrito wrote: ↑Mon Nov 07, 2022 7:23 amMatt specifically states "possessive" in the def for 69A. The possessive 's is never part of a noun. That's why the meta is squeaky clean in my book.
- Tom Shea
- Posts: 603
- Joined: Thu Apr 11, 2019 6:37 am
- Location: Freedonia, NH/VT/HI/Earth
I fell victim to it, but that isn't what really got me. It was my bad penmanship once again. Those mean old dead nuns are all laughing at me right now. But then again, I have ice water and they don't.
Rufus T. Firefly
- Commodore
- Posts: 367
- Joined: Thu Apr 11, 2019 7:12 pm
Ahh. Bigram. He beat me to a pulp on the 5th grade playground.
We possessive'd this rabbit hole: "OH META IS CLUE" Anagram'd letters of the 6 Bigrams. (Yes, including the Halloween treat.)
Arrgh. Off to raid the galley. This should get me through to Thursday.
We possessive'd this rabbit hole: "OH META IS CLUE" Anagram'd letters of the 6 Bigrams. (Yes, including the Halloween treat.)
Arrgh. Off to raid the galley. This should get me through to Thursday.
- pjc
- Posts: 242
- Joined: Sun Apr 25, 2021 10:12 am
No rabbit holes for me this week. LUY jumped out at me as I was solving the grid - and I had already filled in HONOLULU, so I figured that had to be the mechanism. And, voila, it worked! Didn't even notice REESES!
- mheberlingx100
- Posts: 529
- Joined: Sun Jul 14, 2019 11:39 am
I noticed Reese’s, but fortunately it was the last one on the grid. After I got SLYLY through the meta mechanism, I figured that Reese’s wasn’t to be included. And I couldn’t find a three letter answer in the grid with E-S.
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- Posts: 181
- Joined: Thu Jun 04, 2020 6:29 pm
- Location: Fairfax County, Virginia
Did anyone else think at first the answer would be ten letters? I caught on to the mechanism while still solving the grid and kept thinking that there would be two three-letter grid entries starting with each letter pair, since there were two pairs in each of the long entries.
- Bird Lives
- Posts: 2711
- Joined: Tue Apr 09, 2019 6:43 pm
- Location: NYC
- Contact:
And I've heard that it has developed a method of yoga as well.
Last edited by Bird Lives on Mon Nov 07, 2022 11:01 am, edited 1 time in total.
Jay
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- Posts: 175
- Joined: Sun Apr 14, 2019 3:26 pm
- Location: Gaia BH1
I continued to rabbit hole on same three letter triangles with a vertex in the double letter endings, didn’t exactly fit for all five endings and eventually stubbornness gave way to enlightenment. Though at one point I managed to contort enough to suss out “muse” as part of an answer, makes me wonder though, what is the muse of a meta crossword contest creator?
- LadyBird
- Posts: 879
- Joined: Fri Apr 17, 2020 4:20 pm
- Location: Chicagoland
Marquis de Sade
- Mister Squawk
- Posts: 246
- Joined: Fri Sep 04, 2020 9:15 am
- Location: Boston
HA, ME, TI, CO, LU. Five double endings, five vowels. Find a word ending in the form xYxY. Not gonna happen. Look at every word in the grid looking for endings that can be doubled etc etc. Finally notice the presence of the five three-letter words.
- The XWord Rabbit
- Posts: 150
- Joined: Wed Aug 03, 2022 12:00 pm
Should you have any stories worthy of note with the "Trending Ending" puzzle, please
post them sooner rather than later. The Rabbit's internet provider has been out to his burrow
and reports the power company damaged a line when it installed a new pole some weeks ago.
Service is spotty at best and your Rabbit may have to hang out at a nearby Starbucks
for wi-fi connectivity.
Your support would be greatly appreciated.
Meanwhile, another Iced Brown Sugar Oat Milk Shaken Espresso, please.
- SusieG
- Posts: 431
- Joined: Sat Feb 01, 2020 9:20 pm
- Location: Arkansas
Here’s my rabbit hole: I assumed “trending” meant that it had something to do with recent news, especially when I saw LULU, my mind went to Lula, the recent president-elect of Brazil. Of course! I also see TITI, which must be Bibi (Netanyahu). Then COCO must really be Toto (Wolff of formula one fame). The other two did not materialize, and I was not able to backsolve with only _ BT_A. I’m happy that I was able to back myself out of that tunnel.
- jrdad
- Posts: 200
- Joined: Sun Sep 13, 2020 8:42 am
I thought the solutions was kind of meh. I now see the amazing elegance of five vowels and *lyly. Bravo, Mr. Gaffney!
- Henry Paul
- Posts: 153
- Joined: Sat Oct 17, 2020 4:13 pm
- Location: Mountain View, CA
That's what I found fascinating about the construction: -- all the vowels in the theme answers: A E I O U, with the answer vowel being "Y"Mister Squawk wrote: ↑Mon Nov 07, 2022 1:48 pm HA, ME, TI, CO, LU. Five double endings, five vowels. Find a word ending in the form xYxY. Not gonna happen. Look at every word in the grid looking for endings that can be doubled etc etc. Finally notice the presence of the five three-letter words.
Tres cool Matt...
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- Posts: 290
- Joined: Tue Apr 09, 2019 2:46 pm
The contest answer is SLYLY. Each theme answer ends in a double bigram: BROUHAHA, NEFERTITI, TEXCOCO, SUPERMEME and HONOLULU. Find a three-letter word in the grid starting with each bigram: HAS, TIL, COY, MEL and LUY. The added letters spell the contest answer.
This was a great week for our solvers: We had a big turnout with 1876 entries, and an unusually large 91% were correct. A very clever puzzle--with that nice Easter egg in the last entry (REESES), which also used that double-bigram ending.
Other guesses were for HTML (20, using the first letters of 4 of the bigrams), various phrases with THEME/THEMATIC/THEMATICALLY (8), COYLY (2) and a handful of others.
Congrats to this week's winner, Jonathan Lipinski of San Francisco!
This was a great week for our solvers: We had a big turnout with 1876 entries, and an unusually large 91% were correct. A very clever puzzle--with that nice Easter egg in the last entry (REESES), which also used that double-bigram ending.
Other guesses were for HTML (20, using the first letters of 4 of the bigrams), various phrases with THEME/THEMATIC/THEMATICALLY (8), COYLY (2) and a handful of others.
Congrats to this week's winner, Jonathan Lipinski of San Francisco!