MGWCC crossword 3:15ish
meta 2ish 
[4.00 avg; 6 ratings] rate it
hello, and welcome to episode #921 of matt gaffney’s weekly crossword contest, a week 4 puzzle called “Let’s Turn This Around”. this week’s instructions ask for something you can turn on. i have to confess that after reading the instructions but before solving the puzzle, i was thinking, “a dime”. but no matter; let’s actually solve the puzzle. what are the theme answers?
- {Retain a memory in detail, say} FEEL IT STILL, which seems slightly less than phraseworthy.
- {Host of a forthcoming World Cup party series} TREVOR NOAH.
- {Food named for an Australian opera singer} MELBA TOAST.
- {Austrian Economics school} HAYEKIANISM. whoa, fancy word! friedrich hayek, the vienna-born economist who wrote the road to serfdom, shared the 1974 nobel in economics with gunnar myrdal.
the mechanism here is fairly well signposted by the title and instructions: we’re looking for strings hidden in reverse in the themers. TABLE in MELBA TOAST was the first one i noticed, and then i realized it can follow “turn”. the others are turnSTILE, turnOVER, and turnKEY. so that’s the first step.
the second step is quite standard by now: look for another clue in the puzzle that our new words could fit:
- {It can keep farm animals from escaping} DITCH, but also perhaps a turnSTILE. this is the last one i found, because i do not really think of a turnSTILE as being something found on a farm, but rather in a subway station or stadium entrance.
- {Patisserie deliciousness} is a vague clue for ICING, but it makes sense when you realize it’s also meant to clue turnOVER.
- {Standard equipment for a DJ} is a MIXER, but also a turnTABLE. it’s interesting that {Source of tunes} RADIO is also a valid clue for turnTABLE, so there is a mild ambiguity here, but the overall puzzle instructions sort that out.
- {Very simple to execute, as a one-step operation} is EASY, but also turnKEY.
taking the first letters of those other answers reveals the meta answer, which is, in fact… DIME. so maybe i didn’t need to solve the crossword at all! taking RADIO instead of MIXER would have given us DIRE—a word, but not a word that satisfies the prompt.
this struck me as being quite a lot easier than week 2 this month, and moderately easier than week 3. how did you all find it?
Puzzle: MGWCC; Rating: 4 stars
Saw SINAI backwards in the last themer, which made the clue for 24A, “Peninsular place” seem really relevant, and it was off we go down the ol’ rabbit hole yet again, looking for clues to fit TILE(S), ROVE(R), and TABLE. Also immediately thought “dime” when I read the hint, but never snapped to the back-words all following “turn.” Alas.
Puzzle: MGWCC; Rating: 4.5 stars
I fell into the same trap with SINAI. I’d found the hidden STILE, ROVER, and TABLE and naturally assumed all of the hidden words be 5 letters, but I hadn’t yet made the connection to the turnX phrases.
The word STILE by itself actually fits the clue [It can keep farm animals from escaping] better than TURNSTILE (IMO), so that felt rock solid to me. I decided that TABLE was a reasonable answer too to [Standard equipment for a DJ], and in my head I was even picturing a turntable, but I didn’t actually think of the *word* turntable quite yet.
Those two had convinced me the answer was going to be DIME, so the SINAI->FLA connection made be doubt that SINAI was correct, and of course there’s nothing even close for ROVER. Eventually I got there and found the turnX words with some more pondering.
Ditto what Mikie said. Prompt suggested “(a) dime”, but there was too much noise. Saw LIT/STILE/TILE, ROVER/OVER, TABLE/ABLE, SINAI/KEY; never noticed that some of those could follow “turn”. Did notice the weird clues for DITCH and ICING; maybe I should just attempt to guess metas without solving by looking for the most stilted clues.
Thanks, joon — 321 right answers this week, 263 of which were solo solves.
I was hoping solvers would read “something you can turn on” as in “an appliance or similar that has an on-switch” instead of the much different “turn on a dime” meaning.
Puzzle: MGWCC; Rating: 5 stars
My mind kept wanting OOZE instead of OKRA, so that’s where a couple minutes went for me. I chuckled at the answer, perhaps doubly so since it never even once crossed my mind based on the prompt (I wonder if it did for others!). Never caught the RADIO thing.
Fun one, Matt! Thanks…but nervous for the upcoming Week 5, of course!
Puzzle: MGWCC; Rating: 4.5 stars
Also thought of “dime” right off the bat. Same with the STILE confusion – I knew that a regular STILE is often used on farms, so at first went looking for clues that would fit OVER, TABLE, and KEY as well… but that clearly didn’t make sense. Looked it up afterwards and I guess turnstiles were actually used on farms as early as the 18th century!
FEEL IT STILL is definitely phraseworthy, but mainly when clued as https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pBkHHoOIIn8
Am I missing something, but turnOVER to me was “really digging” as in turning over the soil.
INTO and ICING both start with I so it doesn’t affect the answer, just seems neater.
maybe TURNING OVER, but TURNOVER (or TURN OVER) does not match {Really digging} grammatically, so it is not a valid alternative answer to that clue.