MGWCC crossword 2:50 
[4.30 avg; 5 ratings] rate it
meta 0:00 since he told me the answer when submitting
MGWCC #939 — “Moving It Along” by Mike Graczyk — Matt’s review
Matt here, filling in for joon, who’s hang-gliding in either the Alps or the Andes, I forgot which he said. Maybe Apennines? Not sure.
Guest Week 5 Meta from FoMGWCC Mike Graczyk. Our prompt is: This week’s 6-letter contest answer is an adjective I hope you wouldn’t apply to this meta. The answer is SHIFTY, found by 197 solvers, of whom 127 were solos.
They got there via this path: The six starred entries all start with a four-letter word: ANNO, STAR, CHAR, OHMS, DOOR, and ANTS:
17-A: [Words before a date? (*)] = ANNO DOMINI
22-A: [The astronomy student was such a ___ (*)] = STAR PUPIL
31-A: [Cantonese style of barbecued pork (*)] = CHAR SIU
52-A: [Current principle? (*)] = OHM’S LAW
69-A: [Lucky party guest’s reward (*)] = DOOR PRIZE
75-A: [Healthy lunchbox snack (*)] = ANTS ON A LOG
Now what? Tough step: Each of these entries begins with a four-letter word. Unlikely to be coincidence, but what next? Answer: Advance each of these letters in these one forward in the alphabet to get: BOOP, TUBS, DIBS, PINT, EPPS, BOUT. Pretty step!
Now you know what to do next: find alternate answers in the grid:
SHARIF (EPPS / Actor Omar)
HAMPERS (TUBS/ Laundry room sights)
IPA (pub order)
FORD (Boop, famous Betty),
TWIN (bout, match),
YOINK (dibs, “Mine!”).
The first letters to those spell contest answer SHIFTY, found by 199 solvers.
Nicely done, Mikey G! 4.75 stars.
Nicely, done, MG! 198 correct answers, 128 of which were solo solves.
Nice!!
I love it when the first thing you try is the right path. ABC and CODE as the final entries were the perfect nudge!
Believe it or not, the ABC being there was not intentional! When I started cluing, I saw that and was like, “Whoa!”
Took forever to think of an alternate for PINT starting with “I” since everything else was matched by then. “Pub order” would’ve needed an abbrev. tag otherwise, but then it couldn’t have been used for PINT.
Happy with how this one came together – thanks for solving!!
Awesome puzzle! I’m not a constructor but I’m a music (mostly choral) composer, and the fun isn’t just in the final product but in the whole working process of solving little problems and “discovering” things I don’t even intend to do but that add that little something special!
The title of the puzzle made me think of moving a letter within the themers to create anew word that might go with a clue to another word. When I discovered that one of them match led another grid entry instead, I thought I was on to something. But, only five of the six worked:
I think I just went down a rathole. Of the six, these five allow shifting one latter to replace one other letter to create a match to another thing in the grid:
1. ANNODOMINI – ANO
2. STARPILOT – STP
3. CHARSIU – ASI
4. OHMSLAW
5. DOORPRIZE – IRE
6. ANTSONALOG – SLOG
No match for #4. Dead end.
I was heading in the right direction on this, but couldn’t quite hit on the idea of using a Caesar shift. Tough but fair puzzle.
One theory I had involved anagramming the 4-letter words to make NANO/ANON, RATS/ARTS/TARS/TSAR, ARCH, MOSH/MHOS, ODOR/ROOD, and STAN/NATS/TANS, but that didn’t go anywhere. I also thought about changing just one letter in the 4-letter words, but there were too many possibilities for those and it also didn’t lead anywhere.
Another idea was that a few of the clues had words that began with the 4-letter words. 74A [Virtual party ANNOuncements], 48D [If you’re a CHARged particle…], and 63D [Exploding STARs]. But that didn’t work for the other 3, and the reuse of STAR meaning the same thing wasn’t a great sign either.
Nice work, MG! — MG
Saw the 4-letter first word commonality (after looking up CHAR SIU, that was a new one for me), and figured it wasn’t random, but got nowhere, went down the rabbit hole on the anagrams and never came out. Shoulda snapped to CODE, but alas. Cool meta, super tough but anything’s fair for a Week 5.
Can anyone tell if Matt is satisfied with his work on this?
Puzzle: MGWCC; Rating: 5 stars
I was really impressed that Mikey was able to construct a companion piece to Matt’s previous-week puzzle — with an almost-identical prompt, but using a very different mechanism — in just a week. Bravo!
Seems like the only reason the themers started with a four letter word was to draw attention to them. Technically they could have been any length, but I suppose the longer they are, the harder to find.
Seeing Omar SHARIF certainly raised an eyebrow at 1D. But ok, legit. But eventually DOOR came into view and since I was thinking shift the whole time, EPPS fell first. The rest was then simple.
Fine puzzle!!