MGWCC #832 — “Name-Dropping”

[Bird Lives]

Well that took longer than it should have.

[dk letter]

Solved, also with a lot of googling!

[GGX]

I’m not seeing it and I don’t have much time this weekend to puzzle over it. Would some kind muggle send me a nudge in DMs?

Thanks to those who reached out for help. woozy gave me just enough to get me to see it!

[Dr.Buttbeard]

Finally just had my aha moment - awaiting beam!

[rjy]

Had to sleep on it and keep coming back, then wow! Love that aha moment, and great puzzle, Matt!

[HunterX]

Beamed.

Needed a little nudge, which at first didn't help. Until I wrote out all the reasons it didn't work. Then it did. And it was fun working through it, though I needed to do some web searching for parts of it. Fortunately, the answer didn't require any.

[Streroto]

Started yesterday and saw...nothing. A little post enlightenment sesh...and there it was. Very clever. Once again the way in was something I have learned from many of you clever muggles.

[Katiedid]

Beamed up. Thank to a little nudge which told me I already had the right ideas, just had to put them together the right way.

[Joe Ross]

[Bird Lives]

Back in the day (Dec. 1988, but who’s counting?) , a New York Magazine competition asked for name chains — this sort of thing: Mike Shenk/ Marie Kelly/ Al Green/ Kermit the Frog, and so on. Ten names, beginning and ending with the same one. The winner included the sequence Madam Butterfly/ Mark Spitz/ Sam Goldwyn. I thought it was brilliant.

[SewYoung]

Darn it.... I didn't get this one, but my first thought when I saw the prompt was Mark Spitz. Shoulda submitted ....

[BarbaraK]

I never got this one either. Saw the big hint in the title to focus on partial names. Also saw the parenthetical about part of the name that's often in crosswords. And I interpreted that totally the wrong way. I went looking for athletes who shared part of the name with the theme entries.

Looking for just olympic medal winners who shared a last name (as with non-olympian hockey player Orr) I found Brooke Bennett, Jessica Monroe, Vickie Orr, Jonathan Horton, and Alice Bridges - that gives... nothing. (And there were a couple other options for some of those.)

Also tried first name last initial matches and first initial last name matches. Found people but no useful complete set.

Got tired of all the uninteresting sports googling. Never thought of googling theme entry alternatives.

Expecting a five letter name, I also immediately thought of Mark Spitz, but I'm glad I didn't submit the wild guess. I never do that with any other metas, and while I have on occasion with MGWCC, I don't like getting it that way.

[woozy]

Hey!!

Was the title to this always "'Name dropping' by Matt. G"?!

If I had *ever* noticed that the title had "by Matt. G" this would have been a solid 2 instead of the 5 I gave it.