MGWCC crossword 3:09
meta very DNF 
[4.61 avg; 9 ratings] rate it
hello, and welcome to episode #922 of matt gaffney’s weekly crossword contest, a week 5 puzzle called “Divide and Conquer”. the instructions tell us that This puzzle contest’s sixteen-letter answer is what you did to solve the meta. okay. well, what are the theme answers?
… i don’t know. what are the theme answers? this might be a good time to admit that i haven’t got the slightest idea what’s going on in this puzzle. there aren’t any long answers. it’s a 16×16 grid, with nothing longer than 8 (ADHERE TO and ISOLATED); the word count is 92, which is quite a bit higher than you’d normally see in a grid of this size (which typically maxes out around 84). nothing in the clues jumped out as being especially thematic; i was surprised to see both 9d ASEA and 61d AT SEA, a pretty glaring dupe, but i don’t know what to do with that if it’s a hint.
what about the title? surely we’re supposed to make something of “divide” rather than “conquer”. perhaps mathematical division is the key; we’ve got 81 numbered squares in the grid, which is 9×9 (or 3 to the 4th), an interesting number that might explain why the grid is a little oversized. or we could divide the grid into 16 4×4 blocks—actually, that seems even better, since we are looking for a 16-letter final answer. okay, yeah, i feel pretty good about that as a first step. let’s draw some lines on the grid:
well, what now? on a good day, we’d already be looking at the answer, maybe in the top left letter of each 4×4 block. but no such luck. another mechanism that occurs to me is that the lines have chopped 3d SIGHTS down to just SIGH in the northwest block; that’s interesting. but nothing so good has happened in the northeast block; just ADRIAN I to IANI (which is nothing) and BASIS to BASI (also nothing).
are we supposed to maybe cut up the puzzle into 16 pieces and then rearrange them like a jigsaw puzzle? heaven forfend. i haven’t got any idea how i’d do that.
well, i felt somewhat okay about the first step, but it hasn’t led anywhere, so it could be totally wrong. i’ve had absolutely zero other ideas about how to proceed, so i’m going to throw in the towel. i hope the answer isn’t just DIVIDE AND CONQUER (16 letters!). what’d i miss?
Thanks, joon — you were getting really close! 164 correct entries this week, of which a mere 48 were solo solves. So definitely Week 5 territory.
The idea was: 16×16 grid, so divide it into 16 four-by-four blocks. Tricky step: then note the one square in each of those sixteen that represents that block’s place in the larger grid. So for the upper-leftmost 4×4, you take the W from WASH, since that’s the upper-leftmost 4×4 there.
For the next 4×4 over, you take the O from ONSTAR, since that’s in the (1,2) position in its 4×4 square.
The sixteen of those spell out WORKED THOSE QUADS, found by 164 solver, 48 of which were solo.
Puzzle: MGWCC; Rating: 5 stars
What I thought was interesting mathematically: as a result of this, the 16 key letters themselves form a perfectly evenly spaced set of elements, each with exactly four horizontal and vertical spaces between it and other relevant letters.
And any dad joke answer is okay in my book! Fun one!
Puzzle: MGWCC; Rating: 5 stars
I saw the crossing of ADHERETO & THERETO and thought that had to mean something!
From then on that’s all I saw … and I couldn’t un-see it.
Puzzle: MGWCC; Rating: 5 stars
I got as far as the 16 sectors, but that was it.
Wow Matt, what an amazing meta. Really tough, yet hiding in plain sight. And a brilliant punchline! Wonderful.
What’s with all these things?
29A IOS
67D IONS +N
31A ADHERETO. +AD
26D THERETO. +T
70A COOS
24D ROOS. CR
76A LANE
59D BLAINE +BI
and there were more (ASEA ATSEA that Joon mentioned, and others).
random noise
I tried many lines of inquiry before stumbling upon the right one. Inspired by MGWCC #873 “Sweet Sixteenths”, one of the first things I did was divide the grid into those 4x4s, but my initial choices to “conquer” did not bear fruit and I did not return to it for days.
An unsorted list of things I tried/noticed:
-No Ms at all, though MASH/MARBLE, DRAM/HEMS, DENIM/MILO could have worked;
-All sorts of anagram/letter shifts, e.g. A BIT ODD having the letters of 75-A OBIT within ADD, which could have been an alternative answer for 20-A “Recipe instruction”, or noticing that TRINIDADIAN, an alternative answer for 69-A (and even closer to South America), contains all the letters of ADRIAN I;
-Dividing the group into 8×8 or 2×2 subgrids and trying to conquer those;
-Flagging the clues for ROOS, THERETO, SILO, BBQ, BOBBIN, LANE, SIEGE, CAREERS, YOUR. Why so much corn? Or charming, circle, and critters? Why do 81-A “Your” and 26-D “Yonder” seem to clue THINE and THITHER more than ONES and THERETO?
-DENIS and SARI, two clues that did not need to start with Vs, crossing. Same with the W-starting clues crossing A BIT ODD;
-Trying to extract letters from the 16 6-letter entries, or pairs from the 8 7-letter entries;
-Examining entries associated with nations, especially Australia and Italy.
Puzzle: MGWCC; Rating: 5 stars
I got stuck on seeing alternate answers spanning two entries (“divided” by a black square). First, saw B_IO in row 5 (alternate answer to 75A Life story); TO_GA in row 6 (37D Very long garment) and ER_A in row 8 (74D Historical period)… but couldn’t find any more. And then, of course, there was the curious incident of the Letter M in the grid…
Puzzle: MGWCC; Rating: 5 stars
Sure, if you say so. JK. I got nowhere on this. A solving mate of mine noted the 16×16 grid (which I missed) late in the game but I was over trying to keep banging away at that point. Seeing the solution I am blown away at the skill and art. 5 stars!