Title: “How Contrary!”
Prompt: The meta for this puzzle is a famous band.
Answer: Coldplay
Final Muller Meta of the year…or we get one more, right? I always get that mixed up. Someone enlighten me in comments, please!
Spent about a half-hour on my first pass at this one, with no success. Then tonight I sat down with it and managed to figure everything out, and it’s a nice one.
First insight, very easy: there are sixteen clues that end with parenthetical numbers. Insight 1b: these sixteen numbers consist of eight pairs, the numbers 1-8 inclusive. Insight 1c: they’re not all both down or both across or one of each, so acrossness or downness within the pairs appears not to matter.
I circled all these sixteen in the grid and guessed (correctly, as it turned out later) that there was no other relevant info in the grid besides these sixteen, because a) that’s a lot and b) this looked like about what a top constructor would come up with if they had to fit these sixteen entries into a 15×15: the SISTERS/GREYSCALE/TAILS configuration is efficient and knocks out 3 of your 16 pretty quickly.
So assumed we were working with just these 16, the arranged them by numbered pairs, in clue order (all acrosses, then all downs):
(1)SOLIDS
(1)BLACK
(2)GROUND
(2)DEMAND
(3)SISTERS
(3)BAD
(4)WATER
(4)NOON
(5)LISTENING
(5)TAILS
(6)ILL
(6)STOP
(7)PLIABLE
(7)FINAL
(8)GREYSCALE
(8)DEAD
Played some word association games, trying to see if any synapses in my brain fired as my eyes scanned these words. Nothing happened, but then I remembered: look at the title! How often these sage words of advice can get a stuck meta-solver unstuck…
“How Contrary!” suggests opposition, I thought and then…
Second insight, this meta’s nice core element: Take an antonym (or some kind of obvious near-opposite) of each half of these word pairs and you can form the name of a well-known band. SOLIDS / BLACK is what did it for me — Stripes from pool and white yields the White Stripes. The full list is:
(1)SOLIDS
(1)BLACK
The White Stripes. Order of the two words is not given (or at least not that I could see); you just have to suss it out.
(2)GROUND
(2)DEMAND
Air Supply (supply and demand is the second one)
(3)SISTERS
(3)BAD
The Righteous Brothers
(4)WATER
(4)NOON
Midnight Oil
(5)LISTENING
(5)TAILS
Talking Heads
(6)ILL
(6)STOP
OK Go. Clever one.
(7)PLIABLE
(7)FINAL
IRON MAIDEN. Tough one, for me at least. I had 7 of the 8 extracted letters so was able to submit my entry with confidence, but had to e-mail the author to tell me this one, even though I knew one of the words had to start with I. “Iron” as in “unyielding” and “maiden” as in a ship’s “maiden voyage.” I spent 4-5 minutes trying to find a band whose first word was “Initial.” Trust me, there isn’t one.
(8)GREYSCALE
(8)DEAD
LIVING COLOUR. Notice what a clever touch it was to use the British spelling “greyscale” here, since the band’s name is “Living Colour” and they’re British. Well done.
Third insight: Line up all those bands and the first letters spell WARM TOIL:
White Stripes
Air Supply
Righteous Brothers
Midnight Oil
Talking Heads
OK Go
Iron Maiden
Living Colour
Perform the meta trick one last time on Warm/Toil and you get Cold/play, who indeed qualify as a well-known band.
I thought this was an outstanding meta. Clever main mechanism that took me quite some time to see, but then was so obvious in retrospect. And a bunch of nice touches along the way, such as the final eight extracted letters not yielding the answer itself but rather forcing the solver to jump over one more elegant hurdle. 4.60 stars.
Thanks Matt!
177 correct this month – a surprisingly large total for December.
There is one more puzzle coming – the mega-meta reveal on December 24.
It should still be a fun puzzle to solve, even for the many folks who’ve already gotten the mega-meta.
Ah, Iron Maiden. I too searched in vain for Initial ____ bands. Or Inaugural ____, or Immovable ____, or Intractable ____.
Really enjoyed this one though, that frustration aside.
Righteous Brothers & Iron Maiden were too tough for me. Contrary to bad is good and contrary to last is first. But was encouraged reading some people got the answer without having all the right pieces. Nearly an 11th hour solve. Glad for a solve though!
Hand up for thinking for a *long* time that the third band was the Good Brothers and not the Righteous Brothers. (I hadn’t heard of the Good Brothers before this meta, but they’ve been around since the early ’70s and they fit the opposites.)
+1; I had WAGMTO?L and nearly abandoned the whole idea. Eventually got it though! Five stars.
I was with Evan on the Good v. Righteous Brothers one. As for the others, Iron Maiden came easily (probably since they’re from my era) and I never did identify OK Go. But I had plenty of letters already to see WARM/T_IL and thus Coldplay. Outstanding meta, Pete.
I tried really hard to get WICKED in the grid instead of BAD, but it was just too packed. One of my test solvers told me about the Good Brothers, but the band seemed to be obscure enough (a few songs charting in Canada) to encourage continued searching.
I’m glad it didn’t ultimately deter too many folks from getting to the final answer.
[hand goes up]
Hand!
Hand. And since I wrongly limited my search for the intermediate answers to ROCK bands, even when I later tried to look for other better known Brothers bands, I only consider Allman and Doobie, and not Everly or Righteous.
Ok Go made me laugh!
Iron Maiden was the last piece to drop for me. I went down the “initial” route at first, wittily (and wholly unconvincingly) coming up with TENACIOUS/D. Brilliant puzzle!
When stuck at WAGMTO?L, I became convinced that ‘scuba’ from MISSCUBA and ‘green’ from another answer matched with Air Supply and Living Colour. Drove myself crazy with that for a while, my brain still hurting from a weekend of tough metas. Finally got WARMTOIL and actually typed that into Spotify (which I enjoyed using instead of Google, for a change) before I realized I was still looking for opposites. Pulled some hair óut on this one, but enjoyed it a lot!
Pete, the last three pairs in particular were really creative. Super meta!
And for some reason I figured out play before cold. “Rest” also came into my head, and then Car Seat Headrest. Strange how the mind works.
Looking forward to the Xmas Eve puzzle, and really hope you bring this back in 2020!
This was one of my favorite metas ever. It was straightforward but not too easy, it was elegant, and my kids could even get involved suggesting antonyms. Thanks, Pete!
Thanks Amanda!
It’s funny – I was on a safari with my family and my sister’s family when I came up with the original idea, and we all brainstormed to get a few of the first theme entries.
I agree. This is one of the easiest five-star ratings I’ve ever given at Fiend and should be a short-lister at the Orcas in a few months.
Thanks Matthew!
I can’t help but notice that there are at least two people who disagree and have given the puzzle a 1 star rating. Thank you to everyone else who loved it and for the kind words.
Pete
FIRE SPHERE would have worked as an alternative, but Ice Cube is a solo act, not a band.
I was on the right track but got stymied at Good Brothers. Plus, I’m not sure I would have come up with Iron Maiden from pliable/initial. That said, a fun meta!
WOW. What a gorgeous meta, and I’m so disappointed in myself for not figuring it out. You continue to amaze, Pete!
Anxiously awaiting news of a 2020 MMMM. :)