MGWCC crossword 3:31
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hello, and welcome to episode #925 of matt gaffney’s weekly crossword contest, a week 3 guest puzzle from Andrew Linzer called “Put a Ring on It”. the instructions this week tell us that we’re looking for a song that was popular around the same time as “Single Ladies.” right away, i thought the answer might be “halo”, another beyoncé hit from the same album (i am… sasha fierce). after all, what is a halo if not a ring that you’re putting on … it? anyway, let’s (try to) solve the actual puzzle. what are the theme answers?
… well, i really don’t know. there are six 9s in the grid, but they aren’t obviously the themers. for one thing, they are two acrosses (GROUP HUGS, ADAPTABLE) and four downs (TAG-TEAMED, GOULASHES, THUMBNAIL, CD WALLETS), grouped in intersecting sets of three. that’s not usually the way you arrange theme entries in a grid.
so what else is there to look at? based on the title, i wanted to try to put O’s on things, or add O to things. but i didn’t see any entries that would cooperate with that plan. there are a handful of double-O entries that would still be valid answers with a single O, like DROOP -> DROP, LOO -> LO, POOLE -> POLE… but that was all of them. (LOSES -> LOOSES would go the other way.)
what about sus clues? i found a few that looked like they could be plausibly be written to afford alternate answers:
- {Concern for a hydrologist, maybe} DEW. this seems like not the kind of thing a hydrologist would be especially concerned about. but maybe a DAM? not sure.
- {Order at an Italian eatery} HERO. i mean, sure, depending on the kind of eatery. but normally i’d expect this to be a pizza or pasta dish.
- {Popular toy} LEGO. clue is vague enough that it could be anything, but on the other hand, LEGO is one of the toys most likely to show up in a crossword.
- {Collection in a kitchen} MUGS. was very much expecting this to be either POTS or PANS.
i haven’t been able to connect these clues or answers to anything else in the grid, though. maybe there’s something with DEW and the fact that DOW appears in the clue {Dow alternative} for S AND P? i don’t see where that’s going, though. it’s mildly interesting that changing DEW to DOW in the grid produces NINOS going down, which is at least a valid answer. there doesn’t appear to be anywhere else in the grid you could replace a letter with O and get real words in both directions.
hmm, is this interesting? you could change 62d BAYS to BOYS which is a synonym of NINOS. ELENA -> ELENO is less of a thing, though.
how about adding the actual tetragram RING to something? there are lots of ways to change one word into another like this (e.g. TAPE -> TAPERING), but i don’t see anything conducive to this in the actual grid.
i still don’t really have anything that resembles an aha on this meta. i guess i’ll try halo and see if it’s right. what’d i miss?
There are four ?IT entries in the Down direction, with the ? directly below a single black square. Circling those black squares are ring-shaped things, so the puzzle literally puts a ring on IT.
Northwest corner: CALAMARI
Northeast corner: HULA HOOP
Southwest corner: BUNDT PAN
Southeast corner: BRACELET
Then find four other clues in the puzzle that correspond with those four rings. In grid order, the answers to those clues are:
CALAMARI –> [Order at an Italian eatery] –> HERO
BUNDT PAN –> [A bakery might have a good one] –> AROMA
HULA HOOP –> [Popular toy] –> LEGO
BRACELET –> [Object handcrafted in ancient Greece] –> OAR
And HALO ended up being the right answer!
(I actually missed the ?IT entries in the grid while solving until another solver pointed them out to me later on.)
that’s fabulous, and now i actually feel quite sheepish about guessing the right answer on just vibes.
Puzzle: MGWCC; Rating: 4.5 stars
I found the four ?IT entries (placed symmetrically no less), figured the answer was 4 letters, and submitted HALO last night without fully grokking the mechanism. Then I found the rings this morning and everything clicked into place. Just brilliant.
Puzzle: MGWCC; Rating: 5 stars
I submitted Halo late yesterday afternoon as a guess without understanding how to get there
I took many of the paths you chose . I had to look up songs that were popular around that time and saw that Halo was one of them. Still not sure about the mechanism.
Puzzle: MGWCC; Rating: 4.5 stars
If I had known pop music better (or at all) I may have gotten this. I had everything right except the clue for Bundt Pan which I thought was ‘Collection in a kitchen’. I was aware of the mismatch with pluralization but felt nothing else fit. so I had H-M-L-O. I did a google search of top songs from 2008 hoping that something with most of the 4 letters would appear, but Halo was not in the list. So close.
Puzzle: MGWCC; Rating: 5 stars
Good thing I got a “round” to this one.
Brilliant meta! Everything about it was perfection.
Such a cool puzzle. I wish I had video of solvers the moment they realized that the title “ring” wasn’t just the square atop the ITs, but the entire 8-letter ring of letters atop it.
I completely missed the IT aspect of the meta. I change my rating from 4.5 to 5 stars.
Same. I found the rhyming words (aided by what I assumed was a hint provided by the matching cl ues for DOUBLE & HIT). I first tried changing the i’s to o’s. Then I saw that the first letters were the base of the rings and solved from there. I thought the title matched the answer but totally missed the literal instruction of on “IT” until reading Matt’s comment. Awesome!
Wait, what?
Rhyming entries? IT entries?
I didn’t see any of that. I just figured that with the title “Ring” in had to be circles in the grid around singleton black squares. There were the singleton black squares, and although I had a hard time spelling Calamari (“Captain LAMARICA” is a nickname for Lamar Jackson) they all spelled somethings so that was that.
There were ITs and rhyming entries?
☺ Rit, hit, pit, and lit jumped out and their symmetric placement had to matter. I realize now that the first step should have been to look for all instances of “it” in the grid. But “it” in the title seemed so natural, I never thought to take it literally. I really love this meta. And now to read that in REAL LIFE there is even more to take literally about the title! Thanks for letting us share the fun, Andrew and Sarah.🎉
Yeah, I also inferred HALO without understanding the mechanism. My first thought was that it might have something to do with HERO, AERO, and LEGO all being legitimate three-letter entries, with a O placed at the end. Their first letters come to HAL, another legit entry, then you put a ring on it to make HALO. Of course, I knew this was much too trivial to be the mechanism, but the answer was very likely HALO, anyway. Great job, Andrew. Loved it. Five stars.
Puzzle: MGWCC; Rating: 5 stars
Awesome meta, bravissimo. Never even found a rabbit to chase in this one.
Puzzle: MGWCC; Rating: 5 stars
I saw the ?IT answers and couldn’t get any further.
But then I saw NINES running down the middle of the grid and figured that the 6 9-letter entries must be the secret.
Oh well.
Nice meta!
Thanks for writing the EXACT post I would have written!
I saw the ?ITs and thought I needed to put O on top of the word, which changed them all into new valid words: ROT, HOT, POT, LOT. I really thought I had the first step locked in. But of course I couldn’t figure out what to do next! Really cool meta!
A quick update on this meta:
This week’s puzzle was part of a proposal. She said yes!! (And solved the meta)
My fiancée Sarah and I have been solving MGWCC puzzles since 2021. The puzzles are a special thing for us and a highlight of our weekend routine.
For this puzzle, Sarah received a slightly different version that also asked for a “6-word lyric that could double as a proposal line.” A hidden timestamp revealed the answer: “You’re everything I need and more.”
Thanks for allowing us to share something important to us with you.
-Andrew
Puzzle: MGWCC; Rating: 5 stars
Wow!! Congratulations to you both!!!
This is so cool!! Congratulations!!!
Can I change my rating to 6 stars? This is amazing.
Congratulations!!
Oh wow what a wonderful story! Congratulations!
Thanks all!!!
Thanks for letting us share in the big moment! Congrats! I have been doing these since the first weeks of MGWCC and I would never have dreamed a proposal and acceptance would ever be a part of this long journey.
Puzzle: MGWCC; Rating: 5 stars
After trying to make something out of O’s concentrated in the top half, I finally saw the IT entries and said “oh for sure this is step 1”, and then I got stuck there. Tried all sorts of ring-related activities, missed the very obvious one :facepalm:
Since there were four of them, and HALO is a 4-letter word that fits the title and prompt perfectly, I just went with that guess like Joon. Does that count as solving? Probably not, but at least good for partial credit.
Puzzle: MGWCC; Rating: 5 stars
Got to step 1, but no further, which I now regret even more, because this is such a cool meta. Minor correction on 30-A: former Congresswoman Elissa Slotkin is now Senator Slotkin of Michigan. Congratulations to Andrew and Sarah!