Matt Gaffney’s Wall Street Journal contest crossword, “Think Different” — Conrad’s writeup.
This week we’re told The answer to this week’s contest crossword is what you might be in if you’re unable to solve the puzzle. There were seven starred theme entries:
- [*Sickle or scythe, say]: FARMTOOL
- [*Time-tested method]: RIGHTWAY
- [*Drinks before leaving]: LASTROUND
- [*Phrase before a counterpoint]: WELLBUT
- [*Tennis or table tennis, e.g.]: BALLSPORT
- [*Avoid the spotlight?]: DUCKDOWN
- [*Defeat easily]: SAILPAST
I whiffed on this one and was dragged ashore by my friend Gridmaster J. The theme entries become matching “different” entries with two letters swapped:
WSJ Contest – 08.13.23 – Solution
- (F)ARM(T)OOL -> (W)ARM(C)OOL
- (R)IGHT(W)AY -> (N)IGHT(D)AY
- L(A)ST(R)OUND -> L(O)ST(F)OUND
- (W)ELLBU(T) -> (S)ELLBU(Y)
- (B)ALLS(P)ORT ->(T)ALLS(H)ORT
- DU(C)KD(O)WN -> DU(S)KD(A)WN
- (S)AILPAS(T) -> (F)AILPAS(S)
The new letters map to three letter grid entries:
- WC(S): Liverpool lavs
- ND(A): Hush-hush compact, briefly
- OF(D): In the key ___ (how Pachelbel’s “Canon” is played)
- SY(M): Prefix with metric or phonic
- TH(O): However, briefly
- SA(O): __ Paulo
- FS(D): Tesla’s autonomous mode, for short
The mapped letters of the three-letter entries spell our contest solution SAD MOOD. I danced around the edges of this one (including noticing OFD and FSD, and swapping letters letters in the themers), but I never locked it down. Congrats to all solvers, I suspect your odds of winning the mug will be higher this week. Please share your thoughts in the comments.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gVuRuq6eD3I
Wow. Never in a million years. I see now that “different” in the title is supposed to clue the changed letters and the fact that the new words are opposites, but for me, the title needed to have something specifically hinting at opposites for me to have any chance. As it was, “different” just had way way too many possible meanings for me to stumble on the right one.
Nice meta though. And so dense with meta material! Must have been a tough construction. I like that SAD MOOD also follows the theme (BAD GOOD).
Alternate title: Too Different To Enjoy
I now realize that these metas are not for me. I might switch to the daily NYT Connections puzzles.
Ciao.
My sentiments exactly. Too frustrating, not fun.
No idea how we were supposed to figure out the asterisks entries needed 2 letters changed to then make a pair of words that were opposites of different associated pairs. I do like that the meta answer SAD MOOD does match the mechanism: BAD / GOOD. However, for me making the leap from the usual “change 1 letter to get a new word” to “change 2 letters to get two new words”… I needed another nudge. At least I didn’t spend days and days on trying to solve it. Had I done that, I probably would have been in a BAD MOOD upon seeing the solving path.
Entered BAD MOOD. Soooo close, but alas, no mug for me.
The only answer I came up with was BAD MOOD (based on absolutely nothing). The “Think Different” title didn’t suggest switching letters to me.
Among my dead ends: DUCK DOWN could have a different meaning (soft feathers for pillows or coats or whatever), but none of the other theme answers did that; “Think Different” is/was an Apple slogan: you can move some of the theme words around to create new phrases, like DUCK PAST or RIGHT BUT.
I did think OF D and FSD were odd fill, but I didn’t know what to make of that.
Congratulations to anyone who solved this. It’s kind of a clever mechanism, but I needed a much bigger hint than I got.
I had a strong pull down a bad rabbit hole: WELL BUT wanted to become WELL PUT, and the cross SOB became SOP still fitting its clue. Likewise DUCK DOWN could change to the much more in-language BUCK DOWN, and the cross DSIX becomes BSIX matching its clue!
BUCK DOWN is more in-language? I’ve never heard that phrase before, and when googled in quotation marks nothing shows up except screen names of users on various platforms. What does it mean?
+1
I got it; felt it was more difficult than the usual fare. LOST/FOUND was the first antonym pair I saw.
Kudos for another successful week (you must have quite a streak going). Can you share a few tips and techniques with the rest of us who struggle every weekend? Thank you.
I’m surprised this one played so tough. I figured you just needed to see one of the easier antonym pairs (Right Way = Night/Day or Ball Sport = Tall/Short, say) and then off to the races.
Did anyone spot the seven pairs and still miss the meta?
What I’m not understanding is why we would be led to the notion that we were looking for antonym pairs in the first place.
I see how it works now, but no one has really explained what brought them to that critical first step.
Well it’s common for metas that the initial solving path begins with “look around and see if there’s anything unusual and then investigate”. Like if you’re playing hide and seek and you see a shoe sticking out from under the bed, you look — could just be a shoe, or there could be a hider wearing it.
My intention was that “Think Different” (as opposed to “Think Differently”) would make the solver think about differences. With seven theme entries each comprising exactly two words, maybe that’s important? With four or five theme entries maybe maybe not, but with seven, the two-word-ness might play a role. Maybe
there’s a difference between the two words in each?
And then I placed the two entries with two-first-letter changes at the top of the grid (FARM TOOL/ WARM COOL, RIGHT WAY/NIGHT DAY), since solvers would look at those first and it’s easier to spot those than the others.
Anecdotally I don’t think anyone who found the pairs didn’t solve the meta. Maybe a few, not sure.
I agree that the leap to letter switching was a bit large for many. Usually there’s a hint or example hiding somewhere…
And what about all those odd clues: Pair of tablets = Dose? (not Torah!). Great potential.
Seems like you wasted a LOT of odd/interesting clues on a meta that didn’t even use them!
I guess “two tablets” would be a more expected clue for DOSE, but “Pair of tablets” doesn’t strike me as particularly odd.
But then, a clue has to be really unusual for me to find it odd. (For example, some of the wordy, self-referential clues you see in puzzles that aren’t in mainstream publications.)
Hi Matt, Yes. I spotted the 7 pairs. Thought -mistakenly- WCND OF SYTHSAFS what is a truncated version of the weekend of Sisyphus. I see now where I blew it.
BAD MOOD would have been a much more satisfying answer. “Sad mood” as a phrase isn’t a thing, getting next to zero search hits, and it apparently has never been used in a major venue crossword. Thus, the low rating scores have justification. It seems like Matt settled for less than his usually-brilliant best for this one.
“Sad mood” gets 1.6 million Google hits. It’s another example of the theme idea (becomes BAD /GOOD)
Sorry Matt…I was totally stumped as well. But it was cool to see how it worked.
+1
Another very nice, clean construction from Matt…my admiration is not diminished by my failure to come even close to a solve. I thought that I was on to something when I quickly saw that the same word added to the components of ‘farm tool’ could yield 2 other common things, ‘farm hand’ and ‘hand tool’.
And, it occurs to me that ‘Think Different’ could easily be used as the title of almost EVERY meta. It wasn’t particularly helpful to solving.
Agree. Every two words are different. But only some are antonyms or opposites of another word. One of those rare times where the puzzle’s title isn’t much help to solve the meta.
Hahaha you’re so right that “Think Different” could be the title to almost every meta in existence. Hilarious observation.
This.
“Think Different” gave me no help.
FARM TOOL could also be RAKE
RIGHT WAY could be ROTE (kinda)
BALL SPORT could also be GAME (kinda)
DUCK DOWN could be HIDE – or, if I “thought different” another way – EIDER. (I was convinced EIDER was the ‘in’ for a while)
SAIL PAST could be ROUT
Oh, well. There’s always next week to not win a mug!
Alternate title which would have made it less impossible:
OPPOSITES ATTRACT
Considered that but I thought it gave the game away right off the bat. With “opposites” in the title the theme pairs fall right away.
Without “opposites” they didn’t fall at all (although obviously some people saw them). I don’t think “change a letter in each word to make two words that are opposites” is nearly as obvious a leap as it was intended to be, especially since it’s not the first letter in each word.
It was in the first two (farm tool = warm cool and right way = night day) which was meant to be helpful. Doesn’t seem to have worked as well as intended, though.
Idea: Test out your puzzle on a small group before rolling it out for the masses. (And know your primary objective: Solvable by x% of the people within how much time?)
How can you, as the creator, assess the puzzle when you are so intimately involved in it?
“I’m surprised this one played so tough” and “Doesn’t seem to have worked” are avoidable comments.
This puzzle is arguably close to a meta masterpiece, except for the title. What a shame to spoil the canvas with a final brushstroke. You have a talent. Using a test group might help you reach perfection.
To be fair, as an occasional meta constructor myself, I would say “I’m surprised this one played so tough” and “Doesn’t seem to have worked” are not always avoidable comments. Even with test solvers helping out, sometimes things just play harder than you think. Gauging puzzle difficulty is very, very tricky, especially for puzzles like this that feel like they should play in the medium-difficult range. Sometimes they end up playing super easy, sometimes they’re next to impossible, and sometimes different test solvers have contradictory feedback about how easy or hard they’ll play.
This would have been a prime candidate for an optional hint. I can see Matt’s point, though, he did not anticipate that it would play nearly as hard as it did. Here’s a thought: offer an optional hit on ALL constructions. If any are easy enough to solve without one, the hint could be ‘you really don’t need one’, which is still significant help. The hint could also be an alternate title, which Matt did consider for this one.
I don’t think it would have given it away at all. If that’d been the title, I would have first tried opposites of the theme words (like, FARM becomes CITY, RIGHT becomes LEFT, LAST becomes FIRST, WELL becomes RARE). Changing a letter in each word to create opposites would not at all have been obvious to me.
I know the comments are piling on right now, so I’ll just say that even though I wish the title had been more help, I think the meta’s great! And I love your puzzles, and even when I don’t get them, I’m still impressed and interested to read the solution. A hat tip and bow as always.
WEL, I’m glad I wasn’t the only one who didn’t get it. The clue for WELL BUT made me think perhaps we had to find “counterpoints” to the theme words, ROUND vs SQUARE, DOWN vs UP etc and looked for antonyms in the grid. No luck. Out of desperation I attempted to think of the solution and then backtrack. I tried UP A TREE, in A CORNER and even in A PICKLE but none of them helped me. SAD MOOD does not convey at all how I felt not solving it.
I submitted as a Hail Mary A PICKLE even though I couldn’t figure out the backsolve. It seemed to be a typically “Matt” whimsical solution.
I was camping Friday and Saturday, so I started this one late Thursday. Noticed that every asterisked clue was a two-word fill. Not completely unusual, but with seven answers I thought that there should have been at least one single-word answer. That made me slow down and slowly say each pair. Doing that I noticed the similarity of RIGHT/WAY to NIGHT/DAY. Aha! Change the first letters! Of course that fell apart with LAST/ROUND, as the closest I could manage was FAST/BOUND, which was more of synonyms than antonyms.
Once I figured out it didn’t have to be the first letters of each word, I got my 14 new words, but couldn’t do anything with them. I chased some rabbits-SHORT is in the clue for 68D, but no other examples occured. FOIL, a one-letter change from FAIL was in the clue to 5D, but again no other examples. 1A- ACQUIRE–kind of a clue for BUY? 46A-SHOT FROM A STICK, OFTEN–kind of a clue for PASS (in hockey)? Nope, couldn't complete the set. Time to put it away and hope for inspiration Sunday night.
Sunday after returning home I took another look at this. Eventually I noticed that I had "FS" written to the right of row 13 (for FAIL/PASS), and the ugly FSD was right there at the left edge of row 14. That broke my sad mood and cheered me up as everything fell.
I didn't notice the SAD/MOOD turning into BAD/GOOD until reading the comments here, but I like that.
I'm learning to concentrate more on the "What's odd about this puzzle? What's here that probably wouldn't be in a MTuWTh puzzle?" aspect, and that is helping me get better at these metapuzzles.
A tough, but ultimately fair meta.
Looking for oddities is a good tactic, but what was odd about this puzzle were the answers like OF D and FSD. It seems unlikely that anyone would have worked backwards from those weird answers to switch letters on the starred theme answers (which are the obvious place to start).
Noticed WARM/COOL with an hour to spare. Could this be a coincidence? No. Quickly spotted NIGHT/DAY and knew I had the mechanism. I remembered the “WCS” grid answer, and quickly crossed the rest of the pairs to their corresponding grid answers, and solved the meta. Mug or no mug, I was in a Happy Mood! Thanks for a fun and challenging puzzle.
Excellent puzzle Matt! Not only did I not solve, I never even found an interesting rabbit to chase. No hare-raising tale from me on this one.
In hindsight, my biggest mistake was being torn between whether the significance of “different” meant synonyms of one (or both) of the two word answers or antonyms? And do words in other clues become part of the pairing? For example, for right way, road is a synonym for way and is found in the 24A clue. Similarly, for but there is however, found in 16A and for round ring 53A, each of these examples being 2 word clues. I never recovered.
But “different” means different not similar. Lesson learned and journaled. Thanks for that Matt!
You could have titled it “Think Differently About Two Letters in Each of the Starred Clue Answers” and I still wouldn’t have gotten it.
Looks like about 3 of 20 meta enthusiasts commenting here claim to have solved this one.
More agree that it was clever. But the most intricate puzzle in the world might not be enjoyable, except to marvel over the solution. I gave a good rating here for the cleverness.
Personally, I like a puzzle that is less difficult than one with a 15% success rate. My objective is to overcome a challenge, not to be stumped. Life already has enough unsolvable problems without voluntarily adding one more.
Yeah, as someone else has already pointed out, continuing the critical commentary is just piling on, at this point.
Bottom line, this puzzle played much harder than Matt intended or anticipated; I doubt there’s a single person here that would dare suggest that Matt takes any secret, malicious joy out of making solvers’ lives miserable.
As the comment has also been made, there is no surefire way to pre-gauge the difficulty of any particular puzzle. Fairly, in his mind, he believed this was a typical challenge, and it didn’t turn out that way. Matt gets it – it played hard, but there’s no “lesson” to be learned here – gauging these puzzles is a guessing game, one that he guesses correctly, far more often than he guesses wrong. Having seen the comments, he might have done something differently, but he obviously didn’t foresee the experience that many of the solvers experienced.
It’s time to cut Matt some slack for unintentionally misjudging the difficulty level of this puzzle, and move on to the next. By now, we all know, that save for some incredible savants, we’re not going to solve every puzzle, anyway, and that modest knowledge of our own talents is what makes the effort on each challenge, and the solution, fun.
Moving on to the next…
One way a puzzle creator can relieve himself from having to try to gauge the difficulty (or in this case, the overwhelming impossible to solve) level for a puzzle is to quit trying to come up with a brand new and untested mechanism or pathway every week. Have 5, 10, or even 50 different ways that a meta can be solved and then create a puzzle that can be solved with one of these ways – which will be a mechanism with a difficulty level that’s already been established. But if a puzzle creator wants to unveil a puzzle that must be solved through yet another never or rarely used mechanism he should expect people to pile on the criticisms. Most of us take on the meta challenge because we think we understand the parameters of the activity and thereby have a fighting chance to succeed. Spending a weekend trying to guess what new parameters the creator has come up with isn’t fun and is a waste of time.
I couldn’t disagree more.
You don’t have to solve metas. There are countless other forms of entertainment out there.
Agreed, Conrad. Did you consider Sam Cooke’s song, Sad Mood, for your weekly anthem?
I spent most of Sunday traveling, mostly due to the ever-expanding flight delays. I didn’t have a lot of time for my writeup, so I DMed my friend Gridmaster J for a lifeline, and wrote it up. I didn’t have much time to pick a song.
Boygenius has been playing on a loop in my mind for a while now (because they’re amazing), so I immediately thought of Cool About It when I saw the new entry for 18a.
1. This mechanism isn’t new at all.
2. There will be “new” mechanisms, and after a few repetitions they’ll get old. That’s how this thing evolves.
3. “Most of us take on the meta challenge because we think we understand the parameters of the activity and thereby have a fighting chance to succeed.”
I don’t know who these “most of us” are, but count me out. If I wanted to do something repetitive I would do sudoku puzzles every week instead. It’s very formulaic, I recommend it.
***
That aside, I’ve noticed that the “very easy” metas that would pop up once in a while have become basically extinct. With all the collaborative solving happening on Zoom and Discord and all that -which I’m not a fan of as I believe metas should be solved solo or as a small group tops, not by hundreds of people at the same time, but I guess I’m a middle-aged man yelling at clouds-, I feel like the constructors’ benchmark for difficulty has gotten misadjusted lately either consciously or subconsciously. I might be wrong, it’s just a theory.
Based on the comments here, this particular mechanism and use of a misleading title seemed to be new to most of us. Maybe we’re not as seasoned as you and didn’t recognize this old mechanism. But I agree with J Humphrey. I prefer to get engaged in an activity in which the rules, restrictions, and objectives are bounded. Not an activity where the sponsor can change the rules and parameters midstream to make the activity even more difficult or impossible. Or maybe that’s the primary objective of a meta puzzle maker – to create a challenge that nobody can solve and then read all of the negative comments.
To be fair, there IS a lesson to be learned here.
Matt puts in the time to generate these metas. Rather than take a chance on how well they will play with the public, why not try them out with family and friends (or some crossword fiend volunteers) before hand? That small step could really help Matt judge the difficulty level. If this week’s meta was pre-tested, I suspect that Matt would have changed the title of the released meta to make it more solvable.
In short: “Don’t guess. Test.”
Oh, and those suggesting that he offer hints “every week”, are forgetting that this was a WSJ challenge, not one of his members only puzzles.
You’re right, I forgot about that…
Spend the weekend visiting in-laws and got everyone involved in the search for the elusive meta. We were all majorly stumped, but we enjoyed the camaraderie of our mutual frustration. Already looking forward to starting a new meta solution streak on Friday.
Thanks for the fun time, Matt!
DUCKDOWN sent me down a rabbit hole from which I couldn’t escape. It seemed obvious to “think different” about that answer. But it went nowhere and I don’t think I would have seen the opposite pairs without more of a hint.
In the near future, the WSJ will use Artificial Intelligence to create the meta puzzles. And we can use AI to solve them.
PS: We can also use AI to post comments here!
Here’s a tip for those individuals that like to “win” every challenge they face: The world of meta puzzling is not it. There are no guarantees that any one person will solve any one puzzle. That is not the way the game is designed to be played.
I appreciate that there are those who don’t “have time to waste” on a problem that proves insolvable, and certainly a meta puzzle “problem” is hardly analogous to a real life challenge that might haunt a determined problem solver for years (finding a cure for cancer, finding a market for a product, winning the love of the object of your affection). But, like those sorts of problems, meta puzzles do not “reward everyone who takes up the challenge.” They are intentionally designed to be an exercise in mental gymnastics, logic, reasoning, imagination, cognitive fluidity..and for those claiming that “nobody likes that”, that’s exactly what attracts many of us to the art.
If you’re not a person who can accept”failure”, regardless of effort, these puzzles are just not for you, and there is absolutely nothing wrong with that. It’s the hunt that makes these fun, not the smug satisfaction of always getting the answer.
I don’t expect to win every game of Monopoly, I don’t expect to enjoy every movie, I don’t expect every meal I make to be the best thing I have ever eaten, and I sure as hell don’t expect to solve every one of Matt Gaffney’s challenging metas.
If you find that effort that does not lead to gratification is no fun, try another form that guarantees success.
I agree 100%
I’ve been holding off on weighing in on the sour grapes crowd in my write ups, but this meta has convinced me to weigh in.
It’s worth reminding everyone that I failed to solve this one. It’s an amazing meta: a large percentage of the grid serves the meta. Very impressive construction. You could quibble about the title, etc., but that seems to be born out of a completely misguided sense that everyone would be able to solve every meta. Which is patently absurd.
Expect a lot more of my thoughts Sunday night.
I’m not following your comment above of “It’s worth reminding everyone that I failed to solve this one”. Being new to this forum, my apologies if I’m not familiar with either you or your meta-solving reputation. Are you this site’s guru who generally solves these metas every week, and feels a need to remind us that (even) you got stumped? No apology necessary; we’re all the same.
> Are you this site’s guru who generally solves these metas every week, and feels a need to remind us that (even) you got stumped?
You are completely missing my point. So let me spell it out for you.
I think Matt’s construction was amazing this week.
See? You can fail to solve a meta and still admire it. Or you can whine and vent your spleen. And complain. A lot.
If you truly want puzzles that ” have rules, restrictions, and objectives are bounded,” then I have advice that you will certainly continue to refuse to take: stop solving metas.
Nobody who loves metas wants that. In fact, that’s precisely the opposite of what we want.
I don’t want puzzles “in which rules, restrictions, and objectives are bounded.”
I have decided to stop solving metas because my level of frustration at not solving one mounts throughout the weekend and then Monday comes around and I slap my forehead for not seeing the answer. To me, they are just not fun anymore. I don’t expect them all to be solvable in 10 minutes or so, but I also don’t want to agonize over one for hours. I can admire their incredible construction (looking at you, 1000 Island Dressing puzzle), I just won’t try to solve them. I’ll stick with crosswords, cryptics, variety puzzles, etc. (BTW, I find sudoku incredibly boring and formulaic, as mentioned above.)
Just wondering if you are a member of (or even visitor to) the XWord Muggles Forum
https://xword-muggles.com/
The forum is a gathering spot for quite a large number of meta puzzle fans, of all levels of ability. Many of the regular members love to encourage, and collaborate with other puzzlers; often willingly providing what the community calls “nudges” to help others who are struggling to solve. There are even regularly scheduled group chats, where visitors can actively participate, or even just listen in, to the various methods that experienced puzzlers use to solve the metas.
It’s a highly recommended resource; especially for those who are still learning the ropes. It’s a friendly bunch, so if you’re not familiar with all the resources offered (including a collection of how-to-solve tips), you should definitely check it out.
Like any other skill, meta solving improves with experience. I have a few hundred solves under my belt, but I still regularly collaborate with a couple of talented friends that I have met through the site.
Metas are definitely not to everyone’s taste, but if you would like to improve your skills; there are solvers out there that are happy to encourage you.
Either way – good luck!
I’m familiar with XWord Muggles and I’ve been doing metas, both MMMM and WSJ, for a while. I would prefer to solve on my own, though I have asked for nudges in the past. I’ve just decided that they’re more hassle than they are worth at this point.
The regularity of the couplets was important. 1-2, 1-2, two short words stuck together. “Different” immediately seems reasonable as a hint that these words may be made different to each other. However I at first looked at the clues and then anagrams within the grid for WINE or other word to be different than BEER as well as several other possibilities of words that could be antonyms (SIPS/CHUGS), but was unsuccessful and there is very little in the way of possibilities. When i decided that the two words could be investigated as possible antonyms, that part fell very quickly, helped by the fact the easiest pair is at the top of the puzzle. Matt has done the opposite to make later puzzles harder, IMO. The second part was almost as difficult for me, but i was intrepid because i knew this was the right path.
Making the leap from Different to antonyms was a bit lucky i guess, because there are many solvers here who were stumped that solve metas i do not. Don’t get too discouraged. Serendipity will prevail at times and getting the answer is always worth the try.