MGWCC crossword 3:08
meta DNF 
[4.14 avg; 7 ratings] rate it
hello, and welcome to episode #885 of matt gaffney’s weekly crossword contest, a week 3 puzzle called “Taking the Fifth”. this week’s puzzle challenged us to come up with a five-letter word. what are the theme answers? well, i don’t know, but perhaps they are the five longest acrosses:
- {Pacifico or Dos Equis alternative} NEGRA MODELO.
- {Himalayan cutie} LESSER PANDA.
- {What an unusual problem may require} SPECIFIC APPROACH.
- {Curacao’s capital} WILLEMSTAD.
- {Sisters with wealthy grandparents, maybe} COHEIRESSES.
what do these answers have in common? about the only thing i can come up with is that they all feel a little off. two of them are obscure: i’ve never heard of NEGRA MODELO, which actually seems to be called MODELO NEGRA. but then, i don’t drink beer, so maybe this is just something i don’t know. i do know a lot about geography and animals, and WILLEMSTAD … sure, that’s a city i’ve heard of. but capitals of non-independent island territories are, in general, not that famous. LESSER PANDA seems to be another term for red panda, which is quite familiar, but i’ve never heard it called a LESSER PANDA. (i agree with “cutie”, though.) and both SPECIFIC APPROACH and COHEIRESSES suffer from “i can see what it means, but is that a thing?”
i’ve actually just noticed that the grid is slightly asymmetrical—LESSER PANDA is 11 letters, but WILLEMSTAD only 10. the 180° rotation moves one black square over one spot. i’m not sure what to do with that, but it does suggest that these five theme answers are important, because matt chose them even though the lengths don’t pair up as theme answers normally do. the central 16 necessitates a 16-wide grid, which i had noticed on the initial pass.
given that i’ve gotten absolutely nowhere with this meta in three days, i’m going to take a look at the hint. okay: “Several of the clues are oddly worded.” well. that is not something i’d noticed, honestly. and, now, looking at the clues, … i don’t know which ones i’d call oddly worded. even knowing that i’m supposed to be looking for something in the clues, i’m not seeing it. if “oddly” is supposed to be a hint for clues with an odd number of words or containing only words of odd length, i don’t know what to do with that, either. i certainly tried looking at the fifth letter of each clue, or of each word that’s 5+ letters, but they don’t seem to spell anything. (the latter would be an extreme constraint; the former could probably be pulled off without being too glaring.)
perhaps {Large Malbec blend holder} CASK is one of the oddly worded clues; i don’t see why “blend” needs to be in there. {It senses an aroma} for NOSE is also slightly stilted. {“Such a revolting person!”} ICK stands out a little bit, because i wasn’t expecting “person” to be in the clue, and indeed, why should it be? but that’s really all i’ve got, and i don’t know what to do with any of these. if “blend” is a hint for anagramming, i can almost anagram “large Malbec” into NEGRA MODELO, but not quite.
“taking the fifth” could refer to removing the letter E. or, i guess, the letter V (as in “Henry V” = henry the fifth). i’m not really getting anywhere with either of these, though, either from the grid or the clues.
okay, i think it’s time to throw in the towel. i have gotten nowhere on this, even with the hint. let me know in the comments what i missed.
I got as far as Joon. My solving buddy said something was hidden in the 5 themers step 1. Makes sense. But didn’t see anything. And I looked a lot!
Hidden in reverse in the long answers are members of groups of 5: MARGE, PRESS, PACIFIC, SMELL, ERIE. The first letters of the other members of the groups make for 5 oddly-worded clues, including the very 3 you realized: “It senses an aroma” has the initial letters of Indian, Southern, Arctic, and Atlantic. The initial letters of the answers to those clues, in grid order of the associated long answer, spell CINCO.
I had to celebrate my eleventh-hour solve by blasting War’s jam “Cinco de Mayo”: https://youtu.be/1yfemhj3AIk
Each step of this was prone to distractions. Before seeing the groups of 5, there were OMA, OMAR, MARG, SERIE as possible revere substrings. Then even with those 5, there were distractions among clues: was it semantics, e.g. wine presses/casks, nose/smell, Erie/Tahoe? Was it syntax, e.g. Pacific[o] in 18-A and [E]erie in 30-A? Was it another member of the group of 5, e.g. [L]ISA in 5-D, ASSEMBLE as an alternate answer to 43-D, or INDIAN as an alternate answer to 25-A? None of those!
I got as far as you on several passes, only to finally notice something that the right-out-of-the-gate solvers probably noticed right out of the gate: The word SMELL appears backward in WILLEMSTAD. Surely that has something to do with the janky NOSE clue!
And hang on — all the long themers contain interesting words backwards: MARGE (??? are the Simpsons in here somewhere?), PRESS, PACIFIC, SMELL, and ERIE.
Next step: Each of those is a member of a famous group of *FIVE* (including, yes, the Simpsons). So where are the other four? I had noticed originally that all the janky clues are four words long (though not all four-word clues are janky, which I think must have been avoidable, and therefore slightly regrettable?)
So, last step: MARGE = Simpsons, and the initial letters of the other four are in the clue, therefore CASK
PRESS = First Amendment rights, leading to ICK
PACIFIC = oceans, leading to NOSE
SMELL = senses (weird that “senses” appears in the NOSE clue, but hey), leading to CLEAN
ERIE = Great Lakes, leading to ODIE
So, CINCO, in honor of May. Great meta IMO!
Puzzle: MGWCC; Rating: 5 stars
Each of the five themers holds a backwards word, which is a single item from a group of five:
NEGRAMODELO -> MARGE (5 Simpsons family members)
LESSERPANDA -> PRESS [maybe? I didn’t figure this one out]
SPECIFICAPPROACH -> PACIFIC (5 Oceans)
WILLEMSTAD -> SMELL (5 Senses)
COHEIRESSES -> ERIE (5 Great Lakes).
There were some “oddly” phrased clues that were made of four words that started with the same letters as the missing 4 items from each group.
11-A: Large Malbec blend holder -> Lisa, Maggie, Bart, Homer -> CASK
40-D: “Such a revolting person!” -> [Not sure about the group here, but assuming this was the missing I word since it’s a weird phrasing] -> ICK
73-A: It senses an aroma -> Indian, Southern, Atlantic, Arctic -> NOSE
61-D: Tidy the house, say -> Taste, Touch, Hearing, Sight -> CLEAN
63-A: Hound of many strips -> Huron, Ontario, Michigan, Superior -> ODIE
In themer order, they spell out CINCO…. at least I hope! I just submitted right before the deadline and the results aren’t updated, but it sure feels right!
I spent days stuck on the fact that “Pacifico”, “Eerie”, and “Large” were the first words of three clues (the backwards hidden words plus one letter, thinking the nymph ARGE was hidden in 18-A). Would not have gotten past that without the hint, thanks Matt!
Week 3? More like Week 33…
My thoughts exactly. Tremendous meta, apt and timely and all that, but might as well have been written in Klingon for all the progress I made on it.
Puzzle: MGWCC; Rating: 4.5 stars
Yeah, what Mikie said. I’m also relieved that joon had trouble differentiating the “oddly worded” clues and it wasn’t just me. The clues for CASK and NOSE were the only ones that stood out. And of course the more I read the clues, the less I could tell which might be oddly worded because they ALL sounded oddly worded after a while!
+1
Just to spell out the step of finding the other members of the sets of five in the first letters of four-word clues more fully:
MARGE –> Simpsons family –> Lisa, Maggie, Bart, Homer –> [Large Malbec blend holder] –> CASK
PRESS –> First Amendment rights –> Speech, Assembly, Religion, Petition –> [“Such a revolting person!”] –> ICK
PACIFIC –> oceans –> Indian, Southern, Atlantic, Arctic –> [It senses an aroma] –> NOSE
SMELL –> senses –> Taste, Touch, Hearing, Sight –> [Tidy the house, say] –> CLEAN
ERIE –> Great Lakes –> Huron, Ontario, Michigan, Superior –> [Hound of many strips] –> ODIE
(ETA: Sorry, looks like Andy beat me to it, though hopefully this clears up the category for PRESS.)
Thanks, joon! 184 correct answers, of which just 62 were solo solves. So at least a Week 4/5 and possibly passably as a Week 5/5 (hence the hint). I thought the backward PACIFIC in particular would stand out more, but perhaps a hint to the backwards embedding might’ve been appropriate. Will dial Week 4 down a bit this week (especially since there’s a Week 5 to follow).
I noticed the backwards spellings way too late this morning (not long before the deadline and after staring at too many other things last night) but got hung up with PACIFIC thinking there was something going on between it and 18A clue’s Pacifico that I should note the E from SPECIFIC in 42A’s entry. Of course, ran into trouble and out of time trying to do something similar with the other long entries. Great meta, Matt, but, in retrospect, I almost wish I hadn’t looked at the hint to possibly avoid so many dead ends.
Puzzle: MGWCC; Rating: 5 stars
Loved, loved, loved it.
This is one where “You solve a meta gradually, then all at once” – I was lost for hours, though kind of like Joon, thinking that the restrictions mainly came from the themers. The rest of the grid seemed unconstrained, and the main changes in the grid (16-by-15 and the 10/11 split on a set of themers) seemed only to confirm that.
I think I caught CIFIC and PaCIFICo in the clue (five-letter string) but never saw much more there. Then, like a bolt of lightning, and I have no idea how, I saw the SMELL backward in WILLEMSTAD. I very gingerly went to COHEIRESSES and saw ERIE next. Took a bit afterward for “Pacific,” “Eerie,” and “Large” also threw me, until the CASK clue revealed it.
So much fun and a memorable journey!
Puzzle: MGWCC; Rating: 5 stars
Agree with the love for this puzzle. The one thing that helped me crack it relatively quickly was the “Hound of Many Strips” clue at 63A. Not only was it very close to the hidden ERIE, it also echoed the HOMES mnemonic because it was provided in that order, just with the E missing. Since it felt like a strange clue, it really jumped out at me. Then I realized that 11A (large malbec blend holder), which I had noticed when solving, worked with Marge, and I was “off to the races” – quotes because it took me a long time after that to figure out if PRESS was right, and what set of 5 it belonged to. So Matt, if putting the 63A clue in HOMES order was intentional, thank you!
Fun to see the title referencing the Fifth Amendment as a little extra nudge toward matching PRESS with the First.
Argh, I was very quick to see the hidden backward entries and realize they were pentads, but I couldn’t make the jump to the initials of the clues. Clues starting with Eerie, Pacifico, Large played as a red herring as they were one letter away from Erie, Pacific, Marge etc.