Mike Shenk’s Wall Street Journal contest crossword, “Drawbacks”—Laura’s review
This week we’re looking for a group that plays a part in the art world.
WSJ Contest – 10.2.20 – Solution
No clear long-entry themers, but this last across entry clearly has some relevance:
- [60a: Drawing medium]: PASTELS
Took me what seemed like forever, though, to make anything of it, until a comrade suggested reading it aloud “as a direction.” Aha — look for letters that are PAST Ls in other entries. So, across entries that have L as the penultimate letter are:
FATCELL
ISRAELI
SELF
DELE
HELM
TANGELO
FIELD
PASTORALS
PELE
BOSWELL
PASTELS
The last letters of those spell out LIFE MODSELS — which I assume indicates that the answer is LIFE MODELS, which one could say is a group that plays a part in the art world and hopefully the answer. But what is the extra S at the end of PASTORALS doing there? It’s definitely the right letter, [45a: Bucolic stories] crossing [33d: Brother of Poseidon]: HADES. Hmmm, and it’s not like Mike to overlook something like that. What am I missing?
If you need me, call me. Here is [44d: Entertainer Lola]: FALANA in her 1970s Vegas glory:
It’s the letters after the ELs.
I had the same confusion, but it’s actually “PAST EL” – PASTORALS ends in “AL_” so it doesn’t count, whereas all the others end in “EL_”. Luckily, even if you miss this, the meta is still solvable.
The title is Drawbacks. Read like Draw back “S,” it instructs you to ignore the S. At least, that is how I interpreted it. Of course, I see now that the real mechanism is to look past “el”s.
Stumped. Kept looking for hidden backwards words. Noticed A’s and T’s in the longish entries but completely missed the ELs.
Maybe I’m just a grumpy non-solver, but phrases like, “No clear long-entry themers, but this last across entry clearly has some relevance,” are infuriating. What made that “clearly” relevant?
Because it’s an oft-used place, in meta puzzles, for a hint, and one should note that it ties strongly in with the directions to the answer. Knowing that, I knew that it related, but I utterly failed to deconstruct and see how.
The “draw” in the clue made it clear to me.
For me the draw in the clue led me to know that it was important but because there was medium in the clue as well as medium in 16A. I thought there were others as well, like graphic. I think that the additional medium was either a mistake or an intentional red-herring. It did stop me from focusing solely on PASTELS.
In the non-solver group here after also trying to find legitimate backwards entries (like EDIT/TIDE) but then couldn’t divert focus away spanned words (backwards or forwards) like row 3 (israelI/MAIMing for MIAMI backwards), and cols 8 (FADE/Stop), 11 (trioDE/TAILends), and 12 (camuS/HADES). I had a hard time looking past all that. Nice puzzle of a different color, though.
I chose to just ignore the S in PASTORALS; I didn’t get the PAST ELS so that one confused me. LIFE MODELS then made the title DRAWBACKS pun-y. DRAW BACKS. :) As a professional artist I was getting nervous that I wasn’t going to get this one. It took quite awhile and a variety of rabbit holes before that aha moment.
I’m the wrong person to speak about my failed process, as I never get these and really wish I knew what I should do differently. But I did keep thinking I was getting close while not at all doing so.
To me, there were no obvious themers based on length. Like others, I looked for words to do with drawing running back, but that wasn’t going to work. I of course saw PASTELS and thought, hmm, that can be used in drawing (or at least in art), so then what? Right away I saw quite a few of the same letters in PASTORALS, so I looked for other pairs that might suggest a pattern of wordplay. Nope.
Looking for more to do with art, I soon enough hit on LINE and GRAPHIC. There was no symmetry in placement, but it seemed like too many already to be a coincidence. Maybe even PASTORALS was in there as an art form (the long gone form of poetry). But then that too was a dead end. I looked some more and gave up.
Never occurred to me to treat PASTELS as “past ELs.” I could make the excuse as it has nothing to do with drawing or back, but again I’m totally the wrong person to judge, as this frustration hits me every week. I still feel like someone who just isn’t tuned into someone else’s sense of humor and don’t quite get the jokes, but I keep hoping. I guess if not by now, won’t happen, alas.
Future reference: the central across grid entry and the final across entry are often important.
The final across entry’s clue was “Drawing medium.” Based on the title (“Drawbacks”): that’s screaming: “This is the right rabbit hole!”
Non solver but I love it. Aside from the title, Ron which I ascribe my failure to complete. I still don’t see any real tie in between the title and mechanism. I still gave this high marks for cleverness.
The last word in the grid has often become a stand in for a second hint and that was clearly the case here. I saw pastels and pastorals and went down many of the same rabbit holes as others, all to no avail.
The funny thing is I was just having a conversation about prefixes and wondered if “past” was ever used as one (it isn’t—only post.)
Thanks, Mike —
After failing to see anything helpful, I did a letter distribution check, which drew my attention to the L characters. I soon saw the EL_ word endings, and made a list of them in grid order. Voila! LIFE MODELS.
Later, I considered the hitherto useless title and decided it must be a veiled reference to the backend of PASTELS — because you draw with them, and because PAST ELs is itself a clue to what we are looking for in nine other places.
But hey — that’s just a guess, and neither the title nor PASTELS helped me in solving this meta, other than providing me with the tenth letter of the answer.
I don’t think I’ve seen this mechanism before, and I thought it was clever. Mine was a solo solve, and it took me almost exactly an hour once the grid was complete.