crossword 6:16
meta approximately 0
hello and welcome to episode #258 of matt gaffney’s weekly crossword contest, “Site Unseen”. in this easy week 2 puzzle, matt challenges us to name a familiar website. what are the theme answers?
- {Quit receiving updates about one of Obama’s posts on this site?} UNFOLLOW THE LEADER.
- {Events where everyone forgets past grudges on this site?} UNBLOCK PARTIES.
- {“Hurry up and make a decision about that post on this site already!”} UNLIKE IT OR NOT.
- {Make one of the children’s posts visible again on this site?} UNHIDE YOUR KIDS.
- {Particularly painful dis on this site?} UNFRIEND OF A FRIEND. is “unfriend”, meaning the act of unfriending someone, a noun? i would’ve said no.
the answer is facebook. the first two theme answers had me thinking twitter, but like/hide/friend pointed me the right way.
it’s not much of a meta, but it’s a pretty funny theme, if you ask me. matt has taken a bunch of phrases beginning with facebook verbs and prefixed UN- to them, because anything you can do in facebook, you can undo. cute!
nice grid this week, too. it’s 17×17 to accommodate the long first and last theme answers, but it’s only 92 words, which is on the low end for a grid that big. there are some terrific long answers in the corners, like LAMEBRAIN and MIAMI HEAT. my son sam has been watching the heat-bulls series, the first time he’s taken an active interest in following the NBA. i wonder if he will grow up thinking that basketball games necessarily entail bench-clearing brawls.
okay, i’m running a little behind, so i’ll sign off here. what did you think of the puzzle?
Hilarious theme entries. Well done all around!
Re: 26 D – Since 1991 was the last year of the USSR, should we assume that fresh oranges were particularly rare and valuable in Moscow, especially in January?
I don’t recall them being fresh. Whenever anything at all remotely desirable was available (Pepsi, oranges) my guide suggested we get them quickly. The Pepsi bottles had seen better days.
575 correct answers this week, 12 incorrect.
Not being au courant with social media for the most part, I was unsure whether Twitter (or Insta-whatever or any of the others) had all five features as well, but I figured that taking the “un” off the title was a nudge toward FACE-book.
Great theme. I was first surprised by the 17×17. “Have I opened the wrong file,” I thought, “This looks like a Sunday.”
One old peeve, though. ADIEU is not the same as “a bientot.” Adieu means either “drop dead” or “I am so sorry you’re going away, I’ll never see you again.”
Really? Then I’m gonna start saying to people, “I bid you a fond drop dead.”
“575 correct answers this week, 12 incorrect.”
On behalf of the other 11: sigh.
Adieu.
I could only give about 2 seconds to the meta this week and submitted un.org. sigh indeed.
Personally I thought my answer was just as closely tied as Facebook ;)
UNFOLLOW also gave me pause as to whether it could be twitter, as I don’t think of “following” people on fb.
Same here. Thought Twitter for UNFOLLOW, confirmed it made way more sense for Twitter and sent it in. Meh.
Yes, but if you read the clue carefully, it refers to following posts, not people, and that’s a difference between the two media. Tricky.
Oof, I definitely overthought it as well. “It can’t be *that* easy, could it?”
“HIDEYOURKIDS, hide your wife, hide your husband too…” <– YouTube classic.
Nothing else fit my guess, but whatever, it was 5 minutes to 9AM PST.
And of course the Autotune version:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hMtZfW2z9dw
The answer was so obvious that I thought it couldn’t be right; I set it aside and forgot to come back to it.
Did the same thing, but remembered I hadn’t entered and got it in near the end. I need to make sure to check the leader board every Tuesday morning.
Hey all – just tried to go to Matt’s weekly contest site (xwordcontest.com) using the browser on my Android phone… and got something about a database error… anyone else? Matt’s on holiday (somewhere in the Caribbean) and his site is down? Or is just me?
Toby
Some more interesting results: I get the “database error” message using Firefox for Android. When I use the built-in browser, most of the xwordcontest.com page loads, but not the data entry form where you can submit your answer.
Hi Toby, I help Matt out with the technical stuff behind his site. Everything looks ok to me and we are getting submissions (last one was at 3:12 pm EDT, or just 8 minutes ago as I write this.)
If you are still having issues, please email me at evadnavillus@gmail.com.
Dave