MGWCC crossword 2:19
meta DNF 
[3.70 avg; 5 ratings] rate it
hello, and welcome to episode #933 of matt gaffney’s weekly crossword contest, a week 3 puzzle called “Map Quest”, in which matt challenges us to name a geographical region of the United States. okay. what are the theme answers? i don’t know, but let’s start with the four longest acrosses:
- {Grape used in dessert wines} PINOT BLANC.
- {Restaurant request} CHECK, PLEASE.
- {Too-cool-for-school kids land on it} TRUANCY LIST.
- {WKRP’s city} CINCINNATI.
what do these have in common? uh, other than the letters C and A, nothing that i can see. CINCINNATI is, of course, a place in the united states. is that relevant? probably not—certainly this isn’t the meta mechanism.
in addition, i don’t know whether 1-down, {Tourist guide feature} MAP, is supposed to be relevant. one the one hand,it’s not telling us anything not already present in the title, but on the other, usually the key word from the title isn’t duped in the grid, so who knows. i do suspect something thematic is constraining the northwest corner, because there’s no particular need for random roman numeral LVI, french word AVEC, and less familiar proper noun COPT to all be in this one little corner otherwise. i’m going to take matt at his word when he says that 1a MLB has nothing to do with the meta, though.
whether 1-down is specifically relevant or not, we are presumably supposed to be thinking about maps, probably US maps specifically. but what to do with that? i have no idea. matt has turned crossword grids into US maps before, but that time we had a little more to go on. here? really nothing.
i don’t think i’ve ever made less progress on a meta, but i have to throw in the towel. there’s just nothing i’ve noticed that looks like it might be relevant to the solve. what was i supposed to see?
The *outer* ends of the themers spell *banks*: PNC, CHASE, TRUIST, CITI (I’d never heart of PNC or TRUIST; apparently they lent their names and money to baseball stadiums)
Thanks, joon — 166 right answers this week, 61 of which were solo solves. So, close to a Week 4.
The key was noticing that each of the four theme entries’ leftmost and rightmost parts form the name of a bank:
Pinot blaNC = PNC
CHeckpleASE = CHASE
TRUancu lIST = TRUIST
CIncinnaTI = CITI
Leading to contest answer the OUTER BANKS.
The reason for the very odd 1-A clue is that when Consigliere was testing he, as a big baseball fan, noticed that these banks are four of the five banks after which an MLB stadium is named. The odds of that happening, as he calculated, was 1,827-to-1, so it sure would’ve looked meta-related to those who noticed. Would’ve been super-evil not to block off that dead-end.
Regarding the clue at 1A. Not only did MLB seem to hint at the stadiums, note that the grid had to be made asymmetric in order to even put MLB at 1A. So the fact that the clue for 1A said it had nothing to do with the puzzle’s answer read like some sort of wink that it actually did in some way (because why go to the trouble of making the grid asymmetric in order to put MLB there?).
The clue for 1A and the asymmetry both sent me down several of the ol’ rabbitholes, and nothing pulled me out.
Wouldn’t 61 solo solves be more like a week 5?
And, also for the 2nd week in the row, the 1D entry seemed like it had to be thematic, but was not. I actually found the 4 banks, but tried to do something MAP-ish with them using the stadiums’ 4 cities (Pittsburgh, Phoenix, Atlanta, NYC) and foolishly never made the leap to Outer Banks.
But it didn’t have to be asymmetric — the opposite square, the beginning of 71A, could easily have been a black square. This is the first time I’ve seen one of Matt’s puzzles not be symmetric when that wasn’t part of the meta.
This one was bound to play nearly impossible for non-US residents, and, because it relied on some specific regions of the country, difficult for a lot of other people.
Hidden within the four themers; left to right, but non-consecutively, were 4 major US banking institutions: PNC, Chase, Truist and CITI. The manner in which they were hidden gave rise to the contest answer.
Not only were they banks – they were concealed with the beginnings and ends of the themers – at the outer edges, and therefore Outer Banks.
If you don’t know US banks, including the somewhat regional PNC and Truist, you were in trouble, but even as a US resident, you might well be unfamiliar with the Virginia/North Carolina coastal region known as The Outer Banks, most well known, perhaps, as the location of the Wright Brothers’ famed Kitty Hawk.
I completely agree. I moved (from the West Coast) to South Carolina over 20 years ago, and am very familiar with the Outer Banks…but I still didn’t get it. Matt likely had this semi-blind spot because he is a long time RESIDENT of North Carolina.
Believe Matt lives in Virginia but close enough!
It certainly played impossible for this UK ‘solver’. I have heard of Chase and Citi (well, Citibank), but none of the others; and I still wouldn’t have known what to do with the themers as I have never heard the phrase THE OUTER BANKS either. Oh well, ignorance is no excuse, and, more than that, it’s bliss.
I didn’t solve this puzzle, but I’d never heard of Truist and I’m not sure I connected PNC Park with a bank. Hadn’t heard that the Braves’ stadium was now called Truist. Oof!
Good meta, wasn’t gonna happen in a million years for me lol. Definitely a Week 4 or Week 5 level meta in my book without any hints in the title or the clues towards the mechanism.
Remembering this one gave me an “edge”
https://www.xword-muggles.com/viewtopic.php?t=2240&hilit=postcards+from+the+edge
When you relate the banks to the city their stadia are in, you get NAPA (though anagrammed). Thus, I believe the clue at 1A
The fact that TABLEHOP and TISAPITY crossed, between them, all four obvious theme answers had me focusing on those intersection areas.
I stupidly had MDB (and DVI for the Roman numeral) for 1-across instead of MLB which I googled and got as “multilateral development bank” which is why I wanted the answer to be east coast (ie all four banks are based in east coast states instead of say Wells Fargo).
Then I got a nudge and figured out Outer Banks was much more apt…. Very strange coincidence!
Puzzle: MGWCC; Rating: 3.5 stars
A little East Coasty if you ask me, and agree that Truist and Outer Banks are more regionally than nationally known, but hey, at least it wasn’t NYC-centric.
Puzzle: MGWCC; Rating: 5 stars
The MLB entry actually helped me get a foot in the door. Without it, I might not have noticed PNC and CHASE and CITI on the edges. (I thought the fourth might be TRUST, before consulting a list of ballparks.) Once I realized they were all banks, I spent some time trying to make sense out of the interior letters running like a river “between the banks.”