meta -2:00 (approx)
hello and welcome to episode #397 of matt gaffney’s weekly crossword contest, “Have an Ice Time!”. for this week 2 puzzle, matt asks us: What (specific!) Winter Olympics event is suggested by each of this puzzle’s theme entries? well, what are those entries?
- {Public assistance high in the Rockies?} DENVER DOLE.
- {Noisy dog outside a clothing store?} ROSS BARKER.
- {That he could come back to life and show Scrooge the error of their ways?} MARLEY HOPE. cute. that’s jacob marley, of course, from a christmas carol.
- {Origami bird made by poet Thomas?} DYLAN CRANE.
each of these is a silly phrase made up by combining the last names of two famous guys named bob, so the olympic event in question is the two-man bobsled. due to the “specific!” warning in the instructions, i imagine “bobsled” by itself won’t be sufficient.
easy but fun meta. most of the bobs are very famous. i didn’t know bob crane, an old-timey actor, but it appears he was the star of hogan’s heroes, a show i’m certainly familiar with, and also that his death is a still-unsolved murder. interesting life, to say the least.
in the fill, i enjoyed the adjacent placement of OH GREAT and O. HENRY. i don’t have the time this week to go into a great deal more detail on the puzzle, but i’d love to hear from you in the comments section.
one last thing: i’m going to publicly plead with matt here for extra time on next week’s puzzle, since the puzzle goes live at noon on friday and that’s also the exact date and time when the mit mystery hunt kicks off. many of us will be furiously puzzling away all weekend and it’s just really hard to muster the energy and concentration for mgwcc immediately after that.
Darn it, I put 4 man bobsled because of the 4 theme entries. Ah, well…
I did the same. I sort of noticed that one answer looked like two Bob last names but didn’t check the others. Oops.
Liked this one a lot. However, mostly commenting because I accidentally rated it ‘3’ when I meant ‘4’. Oops!
I’ll change that for you Jim.
The crossword was solved quickly I spent a lot of time trying to decide the answer. It was more than just BOBSLEIGH but was the answer TWO-MAN BOBSLEIGH or MEN’S TWO-MAN BOBSLEIGH?
I submitted “bobsled” and it was accepted. I figured it was “Bobs led” since Bob led each of the names in the themed answers. Made sense to me. :-)
I followed the same line of reasoning. Also, I had incorrectly assumed that bobsled/bobsleigh was always a 2 person event, so it seemed sufficiently specific. When I actually decided to look it up after submitting I must say that I was quite relieved my answer was accepted.
Enjoyed the puzzle. Briefly thought of just submitting Bobsled before I saw that there were two famous BOB surnames in each theme entry. I knew Bob Crane mostly through my father, and would watch “Hogan’s Heroes” reruns with him among other shows like “Sanford and Son” and “The Honeymooners” before syndication rules changed allowing us to watch re-runs of shows like “Friends” while the show itself was still on the air.
Never knew the name of the “Joy of Painting” guy until this puzzle.
The prompt said “specific!”. I am therefore surprised and outraged that an unadorned “bobsled” would be accepted as an answer.
I will not take this lying down!
That’s the luge where you lie down.
Drat. Another poorly aimed pun. I’m such a luger.
Nice recovery.
Guys, I think that this is just going downhill fast.
I can attest that 4-man bobsled was not accepted.
As in one comment above, the proper term is “bobsleigh”, which would appear to eliminate all those answers with “bobsled”.
A quick Google suggests that the terms are interchangeable and equally valid.
Bob Crane was the star of the unforgettable TV show Hogan’s Heros. His life was incredibly scandal-ridden, especially by the standards of the era, let alone today. I don’t remember the exact details, but anything you would make up would be pretty close. My recollection is that he was sensationally murdered, but I don’t recall by whom, and I don’t even know whether the case was solved. I have a feeling it was not.
http://bfy.tw/3jFS
The movie Auto Focus covers Bob Crane’s exotic/erotic life and death.