meta DNF
hello, and welcome to episode #863 of matt gaffney’s weekly crossword contest, a week 3 puzzle called “One or Two?”. this week’s asked us to find what you’ll get from me if you get it right. okay. what are the theme answers? i don’t know, but let’s start with the longest acrosses:
- {“Two’s company…” ruiner} THIRD WHEEL.
- {Party like a rock star} WHOOP IT UP.
- {Words before a hot take} MY GUT REACTION IS.
- {See if it’ll be worth it} DO THE MATH. based on the puzzle title, we might need to do some math here to solve the meta.
- {U.S. Secretary of Transportation, 2017-2021} ELAINE CHAO.
in addition, there is a suspicious-looking answer in the omega across: {Number in Nicaragua} ONCE, spanish for eleven—but of course also an english word that semantically relates to the title (and the first and perhaps fourth theme answers).
that said, i have no idea where this is going. at first i wanted to look at alternate answers to the clues for MY GUT REACTION IS and the like, but of course the clue for ELAINE CHAO is uniquely identifying, so there’s nothing to be done with that one.
in addition to ONCE and “two’s company…” THIRD WHEEL, there’s {Three-point line} as the clue for ARC. those are synonymous in basketball, but not how ARC is usually clued (and it’s one of the most common words in crosswords). this might be nothing, but with so little to go on, any kind of numeric tie-in is looking potentially important to me.
what about one- and two-word clues? there are seven of the former and a whole bunch of the latter. the one-worders are:
- {“Intriguing!”} OOH.
- {Courage} DARING.
- {-like} ISH.
- {“Cheers!”} SALUT.
- {Galore} AGOGO.
- {Apiece} PER.
- {“Sugar”} HON.
all seven of these are downs. is that important? i don’t know, but it’s rather unlikely to have happened by chance. on the other hand, what are we doing with these? neither the first letters of the clues nor the answers spell out anything intelligible. there’s no one-to-one relationship between these seven downs and the five long acrosses, either, so they’d have to combine in some way to get something relevant, but i’m not seeing what that might be.
there are plausible alternate answers to all these clues (e.g. EACH for {Apiece}), but then what do we do with those? i guess ELAINE CHAO contains all of the letters of EACH in order. is that something? hmm, the remaining letters are LINEAO… so we’re probably not using the remaining letters.
well, i’m stumped. let me know in the comments what i missed.
Each theme answer has a word that if you add S to the end (seemingly making it plural), it can match another clue elsewhere:
WHEEL(S) –> [Ride around town, maybe] –> KIA
WHOOP(S) –> [“That was a mistake …”] –> UH OH
GUT(S) –> [Courage] –> DARING
DO(S) –> [Number in Nicaragua] –> ONCE
CHAO(S) –> [Out-of-control situation] –> SNAFU
First letters of those corresponding answers spell KUDOS.
You make it seem so easy!! Kudos
Believe me, I did not find this easy at all (see: that amazing coincidence I mentioned below). But I appreciate the kudos.
Ack! I forgot to do the puzzle this week, but based off the prompt I guessed KUDOS.
Oh, I think I just got it, ten minutes too late. If we pluralize WHEEL, it matches that weird clue for KIA; OOPS > UHOH; GUTS > DARING. Don’t see the other two right away, but the answer must be KUDOS. (Ah, just now read Evan’s comment with the final two transformations.)
I was interested to find several names by pluralizing other entries: Simone BILES, Howard HAWKS, Rosa PARKS, Bobby RIGGS. No good answer though.
Found some of the same things. SIM[one] BILE[s] was a particularly attractive rabbit hole for me.
A nicely camouflaged meta.
Based on the title, I was trying to make sense of words with “OR” in them to see if that set off a connection somewhere.
TORAH
CORD
ASORE
ORA
All the letters to the left of OR anagram to TACOS
All the letters to the right of OR anagram to AHEAD
But I somehow feel that that’s not it…
This would be a less elegant puzzle but a significantly better reward from Matt for getting it right.
Did not get this. The “One or Two” hint never said ‘plural’ to me, alas. Richard’s alt plural names are pretty fantastic.
+1
I tried to post this twice but the system ate my comment both times; it’s probably sitting in admin approval purgatory. Let’s see if this one gets accepted …
It’s astonishing how all five theme answers have exactly two letters that appear twice where all of the other letters appear just once. Given the title, I couldn’t believe this was all a coincidence, especially with MY GUT REACTION IS having two T’s and two I’s and every other letter being unique.
Same here! Not only that, there were exactly five clues that repeated the bigrams — with a bizarre clue in [LEAthery lEAper] kicking things off! If that wasn’t signal, I would have to make some noise.
Taking the first letters of those five clues spelled out … TIHSD. I spent an embarrassing amount of time wondering what the past tense of “sh*t” might be.
That definitely got my attention as well!
Also flailed around trying to do something with the seven alliterative two-word clues, some of which seemed forced
(Serious swooper??)
Kicking myself for not following through when I briefly wondered about WHEELS and GUTS for Kia and Daring.
Yes! The only word in the puzzle that had a letter repeat 3 times was asana. Wonder if anyone submitted “An A” (something Matt could give in spirit I suppose)
Did anyone else get tripped up by ISS –> [Extraterrestrial vehicle] UFO?
Leathery leaper, Sad sigh, German granny, Rita on records, Number in Nicaragua, Serious swooper, Man of morals, News for the nose, Sommelier’s suggestions, Part of a petunia, Radio revenue, Poetic praise.
I’m shocked this had nothing to do with the meta!
+1 (I made the same exact list)
Thanks, joon! 201 right answers this week, 96 of which were solo solves. This one played tougher than I expected!
If my surname were Chao I would have a sign on my front door saying “Welcome the CHAO’S!” With the apostrophe really small and easily missable. There must be a Chao family somewhere that’s done this.