Title: “Every Dog Has Its Day”
Prompt: The meta for this puzzle is something you might say to a dog that’s also a pop hit from the ’10s.
Answer: “Outside” by Calvin Harris
Streak keeps going! Tougher one with just 237 right answers with an hour left to play. I looked at this one for about 45 minutes after solving and got the first step, but couldn’t find the second. Put it down for 3 days, picked it back up — and saw the last step in about 3 minutes. You hear this all the time from solvers and it really does happen a lot.
First thing I noticed was a number of dogs in the grid, clearly meta-related from the title and the fact that there were so many of them. I found 8, though one turned out be a pseudo-dog (POO in SPOOF) so there were really 7. Each is hidden in a longer entry, like so:
2-D: POMMEL, with POM concealed
7-D: PUGET, with PUG concealed
10-D: SMUTTY, with MUTT concealed. Not a breed but still a dog.
25-D: ASCOT TIE, with SCOTTIE concealed. Nice find. Maybe it’s been used before but it was new to me.
35-D: PULITZER, with PULI concealed. Google Image Search it if you’ve never seen one.
45-D: ZIDANE, with DANE concealed.
63-A: SPEKE, with PEKE concealed. Clued as [English explorer whose name sounds like something you might say to a dog]. That’s the Omega-Across, so combined with the dog reference, probably a hint. And indeed I noticed the PEKE it concealed and went from there.
Got my seven dogs, so now what? Looked around. Clues 4-D through 10-D all start with “B” except one. Meta-related? Clues 36-D and 38-D are [Wood chopper] and [Wood chipper]. Meta-related? 37-A and 46 both mention “Lady Liberty” Meta-related? Answers: No, No, and No. I put the puzzle down for three days.
Picked it up tonight and saw the idea quickly. Key question to ask: what about the “has his day” part of the title? Ohhhh…saw MON(day) crossing POM, then THU crossing MUTT and was off to the races. In full they are:
SUN crossing PUG
MON crossing POM
TUE crossing PEKE
WED crossing DANE
THU crossing MUTT
FRI crossing PULI
SAT crossing ASCOTTIE
The seven letters where each dog and its day intersect spell out, in grid order, contest answer OUTSIDE.
I liked this one a lot. Unique idea based completely on the phrase “every dog has its day,” and then hidden nicely in the Mullerian way. Lots of fun stuff in the grid, too, like JILLETTE, ZSA ZSA, BABY BRO, PULITZER, the whole south-central area of the grid, and NORTH BAY.
4.57 stars. My streak is now I think 26? I’ll have to check. Thanks Pete and see you back here next month. My second perfect year in a row is now half-complete…dare I boast? I DARE NOT (34-D).
I had the opposite experience—I found the day abbreviations fairly quickly, but didn’t see the dogs for a while. With about 10 minutes left, I had the final aha and was able to sneak it in just ahead of the buzzer.
There’s also a PIT (bull) crossing SAT at 6D which had me panicking for a minute (I didn’t see PULI and had put SCOTTIE with FRI), but thankfully I was able to untangle that in time before the deadline.
Thanks Matt!
A total of 282 solvers found their way to the right answer this month. Woof! Good job! Who wants a biscuit?
Our video cover this month was really fun to film – check it out on Tuesday at the site…
Didn’t get this one, but really wanted the answer to be HARLEM, SHAKE.
I went around in circles here about was a dog that counted and what didn’t count. There’s a BAY hound in addition to the PITbull that didn’t end up counting. The first four I got were POM, PUG, SCOTTIE and PEKE, and their unused letters spelled MALTESE, which was just a coincidence but sent me in totally the wrong direction.
Oh, well, it was nice to get the first five metas this year! Ready to try again in July!