crossword 3:44
meta 2ish
meta 2ish
hello, and welcome to episode #871 of matt gaffney’s weekly crossword contest, a week 2 puzzle called “How Sweet It Is!”. this week’s instructions asked us to find a candy bar. what were the theme answers? four grid-spanning acrosses:
- {Come close to lying} STRETCH THE TRUTH.
- {Its airport is named for Sen. Ted Stevens} ANCHORAGE ALASKA.
- {Five-line funnies} KNOCK-KNOCK JOKES.
- {“I will honour Christmas in my heart, and try to keep it all the year” speaker} EBENEZER SCROOGE. spoiler alert!
the theme was a bit subtler than i was perhaps expecting for a week 2: each of these 15-letter answers contained five of the same letter. okay, yes, it’s fairly conspicuous for the K in KNOCK-KNOCK JOKES, but the others? not so much, because they are very common letters: T in STRETCH THE TRUTH, A in ANCHORAGE ALASKA, and E in EBENEZER SCROOGE. taking them in order spells TAKE, which brings us to TAKE 5, the meta answer. i’m going to go have one right now while listening to dave brubeck.
busy morning for me, so i don’t have time to add much, but i’ll say i was a bit surprised that TAKE ME was in the grid, clued as {“I wanna go too!”}. a subtle hint? or just an oversight?
that’s all from me this week. how’d you all like this one?
Nice meta in retrospect! I’ve never heard of this candy, and the subtleness of the theme as Joon mentioned made it impossible for me to solve it. I was trying to make something out of WHO (knock-knock jokes) and BAH (Scrooge) for the longest time.
The deepest rabbit hole I went in involved Baby Ruth (partly hidden in truth), Baked Alaska and Bah Humbug but it was too much of a stretch for Week 2 so I had to rule it out. (Also, there aren’t any candy bars called BABABABA or BABAHUBA as far as I know)
Oof!!
Never heard of Take 5 candy, although to be fair I don’t have much of a sweet tooth. I noticed the repeated letters but didn’t think to google them for a candy bar name.
Thanks, Joon — 390 right answers this week.
It’s wild that EBENEZER is half E’s. It doesn’t sound like it should; all four E’s have a different sound! To my ear at least.
TAKE ME went unnoticed until too late, so I’m going to try to pass it off as an Easter egg.
So other than describing an aspect of the contest answer, ‘How Sweet It Is’ was apparently just a giant red herring? I feel like I’m missing something, since almost 400 people got it right despite that.
Shameless self-promotion, haha; my obligatory candy meta in October had the same answer – it’s one of my favorite candies, after all!!
https://punofakind.blogspot.com/2024/10/113-wheres-rest.html
Fun meta – made me hungry, which is always a plus!