A place to discuss the weekly Wall Street Journal Crossword Puzzle Contest, starting every Thursday around 4:00 p.m. Eastern time. Please do not post any answers or hints before the contest deadline which is midnight Sunday Eastern time.
HunterX wrote: ↑Tue Oct 11, 2022 2:19 pm
I bet they are relieved that they didn't have to adjudicate that one! At least they considered it.
Not a chance.
What we got was lip service to calm the waters.
I won't argue with that. And it's why I think they breathed a huge "Phew!" when they picked the "OPTION" email first.
(Or second, or third.... "That one didn't count because I coughed when I hit the button. Try again!")
Joe Ross wrote: ↑Tue Oct 11, 2022 3:40 pm
Read @MattGaffney's replies to THE OTHERS on crosswordfiend. He correctly and firmly defended OTHELLO & debunked THE TEMPEST. Matt may not be a part of the selection process, but there's no way @MikeMillerwsj & Mike Shenk are going to go against his emphatic & repeated objection to a bad answer.
Saw. And agree with his defense. (How could I not? It's his puzzle after all!)
DAMN… got close. Obviously way late, for some reason I didn’t start this one until today. I figured out the alternatives- Eisenhower, Saturday, October, Othello, Rhode Island, Harvard… but couldn’t figure out how to make those into a word. I don’t think I would have managed to figure out the next step- taking the first letter of the real, plus the alternative, and finding a 3 letter grid entry that started with those 2. Oh well. At least I got halfway there!
Well as a Lost fan I am not sure if I am happy to be with the OTHERS or not and I appreciate the nuances re play titles and anagramming. This was a truly elegant meta even for Matt who is at the top of the game. That said I wonder if we might be ready to add a new term alongside being PAGEANTed given the stats. I will propose that a result like this where the incorrect but identical answers outnumber the correct (and yes more elegant) one be referred to as anOTHER (or something like that-you all are far more clever than I am) and I for one will now occasionally sweat not only being PAGEANTed but anOTHER of “those” metas.
I learned a lot from this discussion thank you all. And thanks Matt, as always. stay well all. Tomorrow is another Thursday.
kurtalert wrote: ↑Tue Oct 11, 2022 6:28 pm
DAMN… got close. Obviously way late, for some reason I didn’t start this one until today. I figured out the alternatives- Eisenhower, Saturday, October, Othello, Rhode Island, Harvard… but couldn’t figure out how to make those into a word. I don’t think I would have managed to figure out the next step- taking the first letter of the real, plus the alternative, and finding a 3 letter grid entry that started with those 2. Oh well. At least I got halfway there!
In the case of these puzzles it seems that Occam's Razor does not always apply.
Merest of nudges got me to the full beach… thanks to @Wendy Walker and the gang! I think I would have seen this tonight if I had the freedom to sit and look at it, but 3 little granddaughters are about all Nana can handle today! ( :