Matt Gaffney’s Wall Street Journal contest crossword, “Consider the Alternative” — Conrad’s writeup.
This week we’re looking for a six-letter word. There were six theme entries with clues beginning with “One of…”
- [17a: One of the presidents of the U.S.]: WASHINGTON
- [23d: One of the New England states]: CONNECTICUT
- [25a: One of the sevenths of the week]: THURSDAY
- [38a: One of the months of the year]: JANUARY
- [40a: One of Shakespeare’s plays]: MACBETH
- [44d: One of the Ivy League schools]: CORNELL
I spotted an obvious (and doomed) rabbit hole very quickly: MCFLY, clued as “Back to the Future” surname. (Doc) BROWN is another “Back to the Future” surname, and BROWN is an Ivy League school. I was pretty sure I had the theme… and then spun my wheels for a long time. LIMP (clued as “Walk with a hitch”) sort of matched (the month of) MARCH, but that was a pretty weak link. And nothing else worked.
I tried other ideas, got nowhere, and selected OPTION as my Hail Mary guess (six letter synonym matching “alternative”). Then I collaborated with a solving friend who was also stuck. We kicked ideas around, and he found the rabbit: each theme entry had an alternate answer that was the same length: WASHINGTON/EISENHOWER, THURSDAY/SATURDAY, etc. We triple-checked for ambiguity (studying lists of Shakespeare plays, U.S. presidents, etc.), and there was none. Each theme entry had exactly one match of the same length. The first letters of the matches formed the nonsense string ERSOOH. We tried anagramming that and got nowhere.
WSJ Contest – 10.07.22 – solution
So we needed to find step three, and we did. There were six 3-letter grid entries that contained the first letter of a themer and its match (in order), leaving the third letter:
- 1d: CR(O): CONNECTICUT/RHODEISLAND
- 3d: MO(P): MACBETH/OTHELLO
- 21a: WE(T): WASHINGTON/EISENHOWER
- 58d: CH(I):CORNELL/HARVARD
- 59d: TS(O): THURSDAY/SATURDAY
- 62d: JO(N): JANUARY/OCTOBER
The final letter of each three-letter entry spell OPTION, our contest solution (and my Hail Mary guess). Tough meta, but fair. Readers: let me know how you did, and describe the rabbits you chased. And raise a glass if you chased Doc BROWN back in time.
The fact that Matt was able to find six groups that had only two members with the same number of letters is pretty amazing. I wonder if it was intentional that the first letters of the alternative answers (E S O O R H) could be anagrammed to two possible apt answers if one letter was different: if the R was a C, they anagram to CHOOSE; if one of the Os was a T, they anagram to OTHERS. Seems like a coincidence, but it had me wondering if my methodology was correct in the early stages. Overall, this one was stunning.
While the intended solution is better in every way, there’s a case to be made for CHOOSE (which is what I submitted.) My thinking was that since this puzzle was about alternatives and choice, you could choose the first letter of five of the alternatives, plus one of the originals (Connecticut), and you’d get the letters for CHOOSE. My route was circuitous–I realized the answer length was key when I was away from the puzzle, and I thought California must be the replacement for Connecticut, which would have created CHOOSE perfectly; on later inspection, I realized California is neither a New England state nor eleven letters long. But I couldn’t unsee CHOOSE after that, and found the above justification for it. Great puzzle, wish I’d solved it.
Team CHOOSE here as well, although I never felt good about it. The WSJ often seems to go to the three-letter answers for a second step and I need to remember that.
With the letters in no particular order and exactly one letter simply changed without justification, that seems highly arbitrary.
Yeah, hence never feeling good about it.
I, unfortunately, found a list of plays with Tempest (not The Tempest). I submitted OTHERS.
There is occasionally a bit of arbitrariness to the meta solutions and OTHERS is just as logical an answer as some in the past have been. Anybody who found that had no reason to keep searching.
✅
+1 I found the same list!
Where is this list? I can’t find a single source calling that play just “Tempest.”
“Othello” is unambiguously 7 letters, and one of his most famous plays.
The first hit on Google.
https://www.opensourceshakespeare.org/views/plays/plays.php
Weird. That site leaves “the” off a number of those titles. But if you click on the link it puts the “The” back in.
This list right here has Tempest
https://www.opensourceshakespeare.org/views/plays/plays_alpha.php
But it also has “Merchant of Venice,” “Taming of the Shrew,” and “Two Gentlemen of Verona.” They’ve left the article off all the titles for some reason on that list, but if you click on any of those you’ll see the full title.
All of these titles (including “The Tempest”) are unambiguous. Do a Google Image search on any of them and you won’t find any book covers without the article. I’ve never heard nor seen any of these referred to without their “The” (or “A”).
Othello, on the other hand, is an extremely well-known play of 7 letters. Had to be Othello.
Point taken, Matt.
+1 and I think it should be a legit answer.
Haha, I anagrammed it, got POTION, and thought, that doesn’t go with the theme at all! Whoops.
Huh? This puzzle is out of my league lately.
Team OTHERS here. Seemed to fit just right.
+1
Count me in the Others camp. I knew Tempest was a stretch but the only play other than Othello which almost fit was Pericles. I would never in a million years have looked for that third step. How on earth did you do that?
“I saw’t not, thought it not, it harmed not me.” — from Othello
For me, it was looking at ERSOOH for a while and then realizing I needed something else. So I looked at WE, CR, TS, JO, MO, CH. I wasn’t quite sure what to do with this either, but since J is an uncommon letter, I looked for other J’s in the grid and when I saw JON, I had my aha moment.
I thought this was a great puzzle.
My rabbit hole was that 46A (MAC) was clued as Cheese go-with. I was positive that HAM pointed to HAMlet. I spent a long time looking for other clues that could fit parts of the other themers. Also tried to make THUD work with THURSDAY.
Thud, indeed.
I tried AFFORD.
My thought was that it would be a following item
Washington to Adams
Thursday to Friday
January to February
Macbeth to Othello (doesn’t really work either alphabetically or chronologically)
Connecticut to Rhode Island
Cornell to Dartmouth
Obviously flawed logic but I couldn’t find anything in the grid so just hoped to reverse engineer it. Kudos to those that solved it! Fun to see the real mechanism of a clever and tricky puzzle
You’ve got to be kidding me.
I got the alternates right away (after re-checking the clue and realizing Mississippi wasn’t a New England state). Then I was totally stuck. I’ll have to remember that three-letter words are often used.
Sometimes I think I should try again at learning how to solve metas. Then I see one like this, and I think, nah, life’s too short.
They’re not for everyone
Really, Matt?! I can understand the urge to vigorously defend the solution, but sometimes a little grace is in order.
I’ve reached the point where I’ll spend an hour on it and if I don’t solve it then so be it. As was said, life‘s too short. As a result, my solving rate is gone down to maybe 50% at best. I still enjoy the exercise, whether it’s successfully solved or not.
We’d found the alternative answers and were surprised and disappointed that they didn’t provide the solution. Like others who posted, we tried different approaches to the first letters but couldn’t find anything that worked. After struggling unsuccessfully to find step three I finally saw the light after writing out the answers in pairs, one on top of the other (previously I had them side by side). When they were “stacked”, I saw the letter pairs and it reminded me that three letter words in the grid were often employed in meta solutions. I immediately found WET and realized I might be on the right track. The others fell into place quickly. I was really amazed I’d found the solution. It just shows it’s important not to give up!
Nicely done
Nice meta, though a bit esoteric, and too much Googling for my taste – much prefer knowing that what I need for the solve is on the page in front of me, whether it be grid or fill or clues.
+1
There was a great MGWCC from a few years ago where grid entries suggested cities having the same word length(s), including THE WEST SIDE for New York City and FAT TUESDAY for New Orleans. I still remember figuring that one out… on Tuesday morning after I’d already given up and submitted a wrong guess. Oops. Thanks for the puzzle.
Well, that is not at all how things went for me. I didn’t spin on bad ideas for long, but got the alternative approach and had the same results Conrad described except one: In place of his Othello, I had Tempest. So my letters in across and then down order are (and followed by the anagram):
ESOTRH
OTHERS
That seemed an appropriate answer and so OTHERS is what I submitted.
The comment that there is exactly one alternative for each is not true for Macbeth. HENRYIV and HENRYVI also fit, as does TEMPEST and OTHELLO.
That there is all this looking things up and *maybe* one used OTHELLO and then sought another step on a first week puzzle seems overthinking to the max.
There’s no play called “Henry IV”:
– Henry IV, Part 1
– Henry IV, Part 2
– Henry VI, Part 1
– Henry VI, Part 2
– Henry VI, Part 3
I’ve never heard of The Tempest called “Tempest.” Macbeth and Othello, sure.
In my experience: anagramming for an answer is a pretty sure indicator that you’re in the wrong rabbit hole, unless anagramming is implied by the title or notes. If an anagram does work: I go back to the grid to find the intended order. I’ve done that successfully on a few recent MMMMs. If I don’t find any logical grid order (across then down, left to right, etc): I know I don’t have the answer.
Team OTHERS here however I knew there had to be a step 3 I was missing. It felt forced to use TEMPEST without the article, but I was out of OPTIONS after 3 days of chasing rabbits. Great meta Matt!
One alternate answer that fits? Eisenhower doesn’t really “fit”. I just missed this concept,