crossword 2:47
meta 0:10
meta 0:10
hello, and welcome to episode #853 of matt gaffney’s weekly crossword contest, a week 1 puzzle called “Drinking Game”. what are the theme answers?
- {The other way around} VICE VERSA.
- {Star of 2005’s “Dodgeball: A True Underdog Story”} VINCE VAUGHN.
- {TikTok successes} VIRAL VIDEOS.
- {When some say “nay!”} VOICE VOTE.
as you can see, these are all two-word phrases with initials VV. there are no other V’s in the grid, so we have 8 V’s in total. the title suggests a drink, which is therefore V8, supposedly named after the eight vegetable used in it. definitely a week 1 meta. the instructions, which i have just looked at, ask for a non-alcoholic drink brand. yep, that checks.
this meta tickled my spidey-sense that perhaps V8 has been the answer to a previous meta, but i have done some searching and all i can find is mgwcc #542, which was also beverage-related, in which V8 was a step along the way, but not itself the answer to the meta. perhaps that is the one that i was hazily remembering.
that’s all i’ve got this week. how’d you all find this one?
I could’ve had a Gaffney meta!
By complete coincidence, V8 was the answer to a summer meta of mine (only Vs were 8 Vs in squares 8 through 78, along with the 8 vegetables scattered near the V-related clues).
Either way, I love metas from my head tomatoes!
This took me way too long to figure out. I googled drink brands that started with V, lists of drink brands, etc, and I couldn’t find anything. I thought at first it’d be a two-word VV brand. Finally saw V8 on a list, but it was many websites before that popped up. Odd, you’d think V8 would be right at the top of these lists.
Could be this one (AV8)? Had the vibes https://xwordcontest.com/2018/02/mgwcc-507-share-the-love-puzzle-3-friday-february-16th-2018-look-at-that-line.html
amazing—i don’t think i was thinking of that puzzle, but i had totally forgotten about it despite my “featured artist” credit on the byline (which i had totally forgotten and was a little worried when i saw the blog subhead WHAT DID JOON DO?). it does ring a bell now that i am reading about it again.
Thanks, joon — just 483 right answers this week, so a missable Week 1. Tester thought “vanilla vodka” was too close of a thing for comfort so we made the prompt exclude that.
And as I mentioned in my comment to Matt, I happened upon “Virgin Vodka,” which is made by the Virgin company but is, in fact, alcoholic!
i’m glad the non-alcoholic thing was there because Vinho Verde would have worked real well as an answer for me
I screwed up and made this way too difficult for week one. I typically print out the puz file and jot down the instructions in the margin. When I picked it up during the weekend to do the puzzle I saw that I had written “Alcoholic Drink Brand” as the instructions. I finished the puzzle and spent a fair amount of time googling VV alcoholic drinks. When I googled to see if V8 made an alchopop drink it finally occurred to me that I may have made a transcription error…yep I did.
I spent a little time on this. A ‘non-alcoholic drink’ usually implies a drink that is normally associated with beer or cocktails but lacks the booze. And the themes seemed to point, to me, to you’re looking for the V/V pairs seen in the meta themes, not needing to add them all together. In retrospect i see how the prompt required that wording.