Fireball Contest — May 18, 2022

Patrick Berry’s Fireball contest, “Triple Doubles” — Conrad’s writeup

This month, we are asked, NBA team is hinted at by this puzzle? There were six ten-letter across entries, plus the seven-letter center entry:

• [Ill-fated fishing boat in “The Perfect Storm”]: ANDREAGAIL
• [Studying intently]: PORINGOVER
• [Rank attained by Gerald Ford]: EAGLESCOUT
• [Try to locate]: SEEKOUT
• [“You really oughta look at this!”]: COMEANDSEE
• [Being in agreement (with)]: COMPORTING
• [Hall of Mirrors setting]: VERSAILLES

I pondered how to interpret “triple doubles” (which, in great meta fashion, could be parsed in a variety of ways). I looked for entries containing tripled or doubled letters (I’m looking at you, MMMBOP and BACCHANALIA). I looked for entries containing three of one letter and two of another. Some matched (ADDRESSBARS and GALAGA), but BACCHANALIA had two C’s and four A’s. I reminded myself: this is a Patrick Berry meta, which means surgical precision. Time to abandon that rabbit hole.

FB Contest – 5.20.2022 – Solution

I scanned the grid and spotted COM twice in COMEANDSEE and COMPORTING and I had the rabbit: the long theme entries (plus the center entry) were comprised of the following three-letter (triple) strings: AIL, AND, COM, EAG, ING, LES, OUT, POR, SEE, and VER. Each occurred twice (double), leaving one letter left over:

• (AND)[R](EAG)(AIL):  R
• (POR)(ING)[O](VER): O
• (EAG)(LES)[C](OUT): C
• (SEE)[K](OUT): K
• (COM)[E](AND)(SEE): E
• (COM)(POR)[T](ING): T
• (VER)[S](AIL)(LES): S

The leftover letters spell ROCKETS, our contest solution. We’ll end with Elton John and Dua Lipa.