meta: about 15 mins
[4.33 avg; 6 ratings] rate it
“Space Out!”by Pete Muller, Mack Meller, and Andrew White (Matt G.)
Prompt: The meta for this puzzle is a pop rock band
Answer: Plain White T’s, found by 552 solvers
I started solving and soon got that familiar “something’s not right, clearly meta-related” feeling: a bunch of answers that had to be correct simply weren’t fitting in their logical spaces. I began to sense the presence of an invisible force pushing letters into odd locations; and slowly the pattern began to emerge. When I’d fully solved the puzzle, I could see the idea clearly: Five white T’s in the grid emerged during my solve, the result of answers skipping a letter (and therefore leaving it white).
Now what? These were clearly T’s and possibly “white T’s” since they didn’t have any letters in them. But this could logically have meant either just T’s or white T’s. I couldn’t think of anything, but Googled my way to the existence of the meta answer, “Plain White T’s,” who I’d never heard of before. They had a #1 hit in 2010 called “Hey, Delilah” which didn’t sound familiar to me at all, but then nothing really after that.
Anyway this is a very nice idea, with the shape of the negative space indicating the meta answer. I can’t think of any meta-precedents for this, so could be uncharted meta-territory, which is tougher and tougher to pull off.
4.50 stars. Lovely idea and execution.
I found filling the grid a bit challenging, as even once I realized that I had to skip squares, I wasn’t sure *which* square to skip in each entry. But after the first white T appeared, I realized that the other skipped squares would fit that pattern.
My first guess for the meta answer was a band with multiple T’s in its name: Tommy Tutone. A friend suggested Toto. I also considered whether there was a band with a name like Five T’s, and there is an obscure group called T-Five (https://www.last.fm/music/T-Five). But an Indonesian R&B/hip-hop group from 20 years ago seemed an unlikely answer.
I wondered if there might be a band whose *members’* names all started with T’s — kinda like the Ramones, maybe?
That’s when I noticed, dead-center in the grid, the answer RAINY DAY. That sounded like it might be a song title, and when I looked it up in Wikipedia, there it was: A song by the Plain White T’s. I didn’t know any of their music, but I did recognize the name.
I’m not sure if RAINY DAY is a hint or confirmation of the correct answer, but I’m not sure I’d have gotten the answer without it.
That’s a really nice meta, and not just because I got it.
Thanks Matt
552 correct this month!
@Eric H – that is an unbelievable coincidence…I had no idea the Plain White T’s had a song called RAINY DAY. It’s pretty obscure…
Wow!
I was certain that RAINY DAY had to be there intentionally.
Thanks for the extra help, even if you didn’t intend it!
Puzzle: Muller; Rating: 4 stars
Thankfully I knew of The Plain White T’s, so once the grid was complete (and, yes, it was tough to figure out), I was pretty sure that was the answer. Nice meta!
I guess I’m too old to have heard of Plain White T’s – even though in retrospect they are of course the perfect answer.
Refusing to be assisted by Google, I submitted “Maroon 5”, the closest my aging brain could come up with. Serves me right!
I enjoyed the grid. It was fun figuring out which squares to skip. I hadn’t heard of Plain White T’s, but these days, all you have to do is ask AI. I phrased the question as “What pop rock band is associated with five T shapes?”
Inputting your prompt yields these answers:
chatgpt: 5 Seconds of Summer
perplexity: Take That
grok: “The closest band related to the number five is Five (also stylized as 5ive)”
So, which AI are you using?
a friend of mine knew the lead singer and we got to hang out with him after a local show. 5-ish years after “hey there delilah” so not at their peak popularity or anything, but it was still fun. tom seemed nice.
It must be the platform I’m on, but it wouldn’t see the puzzle as completed unless there was a box with an “X” in the empty squares. It’s a symbol that doesn’t exist on my tablet’s keyboard, so the only way to complete the grid was to use “reveal word/letter”. Of course, there was also no way to guess what symbol to use to indicate an empty square. Otherwise, it would’ve been a fun, challenging puzzle.