meta untimed
G’day from Downunder! Welcome to episode #852 of Matt Gaffney’s Weekly Crossword Contest, a week 4 puzzle called “What’s The Password!”, a puzzle by guest constructor Ben Chenoweth. This week’s instructions ask us for a six-letter word. At this point, I should probably mention that this is Ben Chenoweth himself, filling in for Matt who was supposed to be filling in for joon. So this won’t be the usual “what’s going on in this puzzle, let me try a few things, oh here’s the answer” write-up.
There’s the completed grid. There are some long entries:
- 18A. {Condition that occurs when one’s core body temperature drops below 35 degrees Celsius} HYPOTHERMIA.
- 28A. {Adam and Eve’s home before they were served an eviction notice} THEGARDENOFEDEN.
- 49A. {Events celebrated by Sting in song} SYNCHRONICITIES.
- 64A. {Fail to emulate the chorus of a Matthew Wilder hit from 1983} BREAKSTRIDE.
But let me tell you right up front: those are not meta-relevant. But, I hear you say, isn’t that one of the cardinal rules of meta crosswords, that the long entries have to be involved? Wrong! There are no cardinal rules of meta crosswords: anything goes. And this puzzle is about to break another cardinal rule of metas: that there should only be one meta mechanism. So ignore the long entries and focus on the title: “What’s The Password!” That exclamation mark is the key. In fact, allow me to peel back the curtain a little and reveal how the sausage gets made. When I first gave this puzzle to Matt, it’s title was “What’s The Password?” and the central entry was
- 41A. {Affirmative response to the question} YES.
I told Matt to make whatever editorial changes he deemed appropriate. And I’m extremely glad he did. Because apparently that exclamation mark was the “in” for several solvers, and this puzzle played plenty hard enough! So what does the exclamation mark mean? It means that WHAT is the password.
At this point, let me take another short tangent. I received a request for a nudge from a solver who will remain anonymous. I sent a couple of nudges back (using spoiler tags to hide the nudges) and went to sleep. The next morning I received the following reply:
“I haven’t looked at the hints yet, but it started to occur to me after I wrote that this might be a ‘Murder on the Orient Express’ type deal where I’m not trying to find the one correct mechanism, but look for all mechanisms that can be tied to the keyword WHAT.”
Exactly! Solvers had to find 6 different meta mechanisms involving WHAT. Here’s what I wanted you to find:
- 2D./14A. WHAT surrounds A.
- 16A. WHAT+C anagrams to WATCH.
- 39A. clue starts with a homophone of WHAT: {Watford’s river] COLNE.
- 42A. WHAT envelops E.
- 52A. W=23, H=8, A=1, and T=20 SUM to 52.
- 72A. Clue is an acronym of WHAT: {World Hockey Association team} SPURS.
The additional letters spell ACCESS, the answer to the #852 weekly contest.
This puzzle was inspired by a poem my father used to recite:
A ship sailed under Sydney Bridge,
What was the name of the captain?
I’ve told you once and I’ll tell you again:
What was the name of the captain?
While it was definitely a “week 4” meta, I truly hope you still enjoyed it. I look forward to hearing the final stats on this meta-rule-breaking meta, especially the number of solo solvers – if that was you, major congrats!
We can ask the constructor for nudges?!
I should probably say, “Not usually.” But this one was proving rather difficult, and since the request came from one of my regular MOAT solvers, I decided to damn the consequences and nudge. ;-)
Great Meta, Ben. I discovered the mechanisms for all but the first “A,” and figured what the answer must be. I knew I needed that “A” in grid order, and discovered that a well-known adapter and illustrator of Aesop fable children’s books is Bernadette WATTS. WATTS the password!
I heard from a number of sources that the WHAT diamond around the A was the hardest one to find.
Dagnabbit! I got the WHAT nudge in the title early on, but I thought it was just to draw attention to the SUM clue for a later step, despite seeing the other three WHATs in the grid and blowing them off.
What got me eventually was that there seemed to be superfluous prepositional phrases in each of the clues for the longer answers.. “below 35…” “before they…” “in song” and “from 1983.” So I thought it had to do something with the answer below 35 in the grid, the answer NOG (cuz that’s “in sONG” and the album Synchronicity is from 1983… those can’t be coincidences! I just struggled with the “before they…” part. But that was the rabbit hole I went down and stayed. For many hours.
Out of curiosity, were there intentional red herrings in the cluing?
Fun puzzle!
Oof, it’s so hard to predict (and attempt to remove) potential rabbit holes. When I was constructing this meta, I remember placing the meta components and then working on the fill. The long entries were just entries that I thought would be fun to clue. I certainly didn’t register that “Synchronicity” and “Break My Stride” came out in the same year!
I said this elsewhere, but in short: there was too much noise and too little signal to this meta for my tastes. The cluing for SUM and WATCH signaled things okay for me, but it might have worked better if the other methods were signaled in a similar fashion. The change in the title was useful to me as well, but hanging a whole meta on one word felt like a weak tie to me. Sorry.
I flagged the exclamation mark and SUM, and then found the digital root of all the 4-letter words in the grid. I was then convinced that anagrams (signaled by WATCH) of the words might match the corresponding clue number of the digital roots, yielding the answer, but nada. Would never have solved this without more signposting I think
I saw about half of the mechanisms, but didn’t catch on that they should all be used. I noticed that there were six 4-letter across entries and summed them according to 52A, which led me to PHIIKA. Then I started summing the other 4-letter entries (including WHAT from the title). Kudos to anyone who solved the whole meta.
I did exactly the same thing, except I stopped after doing the six 4-letter Across entries, figuring that was the answer.
Thanks, Ben! 170 correct entries this week, of which just 31 were solo solves. Toughie!
I really liked this one. Partly, it almost played into what happens a lot in metas when we start thinking we might have something, and then nothing emerges from it.
That happened here. Quickly saw the title was not a question and almost immediately, I saw WHAT’s sum is 52 (confirmed at 52-A)…but there’s nothing else. (I think BOOT and ERHU did also add to 52, though.)
Oh! The anagram clue for WATCH itself actually has an anagram of WHAT within it…but there’s nothing else. (Though WHEAT caught my eye – but still, just two entries for a 6-letter answer.)
Wait! The SPURS clue has the WHAT acronym…but there’s nothing else.
So, naturally, in almost every prior meta, the “But there’s nothing else!” would mean you need to find a different path. Here, the irony is that all those little blips actually themselves were *all* part of the path, and recognizing that was part of the “in.”
Non-solo for me for the first time in a long while (over a year!) because I asked someone, “Are all of these insights relevant?” and got a “Yes.” The operative letters of CSS pointed in the way of ACCESS, which was the strongest one of my three thoughts (SECRET and SECURE being the other two others). The other letters followed.
I think I heard at least three thoughts about the “A” up left; I figured it as the only intersection of entries formed using the letters WHAT!
Only the third meta since Matt started tracking solo solves at under 20% solo; his Three-on-Three Matchup and Costume Change (both fantastic) were the other two.
Expect a response puzzle sometime in the future, Ben, haha – and thanks for this conundrum!
Another solver found an initial A by looking at the letters of WHAT in the first row and finding there was a spare A.
Can’t wait for that response puzzle!
Unfortunately for my last weekend, the four long entries comprise 52 letters….
See my comment above which starts “Oof, it’s so hard to predict (and attempt to remove) potential rabbit holes.” Sorry for your lost weekend!
I did the same thing as David, knowing 52A seemed key and there were exactly 6 across answers of said 4-letter length. Also noted the title pointed to WHAT being the password, but I disagree it’s used as a password here. Also, if you’re not making the long answers themes, don’t make two that run the length of the puzzle. That’s unnecessarily misdirecting IMO, this mechanism was hard enough. That said, it’s really cool and your execution impressive. I hope to see more of your work in this venue.
“Who’s on First!” How did I miss that? I interpreted the SUM clue as directing me to four-letter entries, and I found exactly six that were initialisms (NCIS, ACLU, ACDC) or plurals of initialisms (ATMS, ABCS, LTDS). I summed the letters for those entries, getting 45, 37, 11, 53, 25, 55. Looking in those squares, I found RIANAC, an anagram of CRANIA, which I submitted. I knew it didn’t connect to the title at all, but I had nothing else.