MGWCC #903

MGWCC crossword 2:48 
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hello, and welcome to episode #903 of matt gaffney’s weekly crossword contest, a week 3 puzzle called “Character Swap”. this week, we’re looking for a famous movie of the 1980s. what are the theme answers? the five long answers all have a parenthetical number in their clues,

• {Gave more details (1)} ELABORATED.
• {Doohickey (4)} MECHANISM.
• {Words before words of wisdom (3)} SOMEONE ONCE SAID.
• {Beer type that’s French for “raspberry” (2)} FRAMBOISE.
• {Emphatic denial (5)} NO WAY, NEVER. feels slightly forced to me, but sure.

okay, so i think i know what the first step is: these each contain a famous movie character. there’s BORAT in ELABORATED, RAMBO in FRAMBOISE, and WAYNE in NO WAY NEVER. i am not sure if that last one is bruce wayne (i.e. batman) or wayne campbell from wayne’s world. i’m also unsure of which character is intended in the other themers: probably NEO from the matrix in SOMEONE ONCE SAID, and probably either CHAN or ANI in MECHANISM. i’m sure these ambiguities will be cleared up by some later step, but for now, this is enough to go on.

however, it’s quite unclear what the next step is. i think i know the step after that—the parenthetical numbers are a permutation of 1 to 5, so that looks like it’s the ordering of the five letters we’re going to extract somehow. i suspect we’re going to get a 5-letter answer at the end, or maybe a 5-letter movie character from an ’80s movie (e.g. MCFLY would get us to back to the future). right now, putting our movie characters in 1-to-5 order gives BORAT, RAMBO, NEO, CHAN/ANI, WAYNE.

okay, well, let’s see if we can figure this out. the title is character swap—we’ve found the characters, but what are we swapping? my first thought was the character’s last name, or perhaps first name if the last name is already used. so BORAT <-> SAGDIYEV, RAMBO <-> JOHN, … well, this is where it breaks down, as NEO is neither the first nor last name of the keanu reeves character (thomas anderson), but rather his online handle. so this probably isn’t it.

my next idea was to swap in another famous character played by the same actor:

1. BORAT is sacha baron cohen, who also played BRUNO and ALI G.
2. RAMBO is sylvester stallone, so we probably want ROCKY (BALBOA) but there are some other options—he’s had a long career.
3. there are perhaps even more options for NEO/keanu reeves, of which john wick is likely now the most iconic, but there are plenty of others (theodore s. logan, esq. is probably my favorite).
4. if #4 is CHAN, as in charlie chan, that chinese-american detective was most famously played by (*wincing*) swedish actor warner oland, who also played (*more wincing*) fu manchu. if it’s ANI, as in anakin skywalker, that’s either jake lloyd (episode 1) or hayden christenson (2 and 3)—though neither one has other famous roles.
5. finally, there are of course many actors who have played bruce WAYNE, but if it’s WAYNE campbell, that’s mike myers, so the other role to swap in is likely austin powers (or dr. evil) or perhaps shrek.

i think these are all at least somewhat promising. if i were writing this puzzle, then the way it would work is at this point there would be other clues in the puzzle that could be satisfied by the swapped character names, like if there were a clue like {Mustache type} for PENCIL that could also work for FU MANCHU. but i don’t see those in the actual puzzle, so i think that’s not what’s happening.

if it’s not “satisfies the same clue”, could it be something else like matching another grid entry, possibly with an anagram and/or adding or deleting a letter? i do think it’s likely that there are five more theme answers hidden throughout the grid, since the fill is creakier than you’d have a right to expect in some places based on the constraints of just the five overt themers. i’m not seeing this either, though.

other ideas… well, character swap could also refer to swapping letters. is this what we need to do? EILEEN in the grid is clued as {Olympic skiing star Gu}, which is only one letter off from FU. but i don’t see anything else to give us _runo, _ocky, _ustin, or _ick.

i suspect i’ve come somewhat close, but i have to admit defeat here. what’d i miss?