meta 2 days
G’day and Happy New Year from Downunder! It’s benchen71, filling in for joon who is unable to blog Episode #865 of Matt Gaffney’s Weekly Crossword Contest. To finish off 2024, Matt has provided us with a week 5 puzzle entitled “Letter Openers”, with a meta hint what I hope you’d respond if I asked “Did you like this meta?”. So let’s see what we have here…
The grid took me a little over 7 minutes to complete. According to Matt’s leaderboard, e.a. had solved the meta by this point. Now if I can find the answer in less than 60 seconds, I might have a chance at beating JanglerNPL’s 2nd place 8 minutes… but no, I got nothing that quickly.
The secret to solving a meta is locating the signal in the noise. Sometimes the constructor provides a hint in the grid; but apparently not this time, so we only have the puzzle title “Letter Openers” to guide us. Sometimes the long entries are involved. Well, in this tidy 13×13 there are two 7-letter words and four 6-letter words:
- 15A {Unoriginal type} COPYCAT
- 33A {Depended (on)} HINGED
- 35A {Giving four stars to, say} RATING
- 54A {When to start driving} SIXTEEN
- 6D {Thin, as soup} WATERY
- 39D {Pac-Man quartet} GHOSTS
But nothing jumps out at me there. Given this is a week 5, the clues could well be the place to look for the signal. There is one extremely suspicious pair:
- 4A {Intimidate} COW
- 7A {Mammal with calves} WHALE
The entry for 4A very definitely answers the clue of 7A. But I can’t find any other pairs like it. “Letter Openers” could refer to those little knife-thingies used to slit open sealed envelopes, or to words that open letters, such as:
- 21A {Concerning} ASTO
It could refer to the initial letters of entries (or the clues), or perhaps the use of initials such as:
- 21A {Show with C. Jost and M. Ch} SNL
Or entries that start with a letter name:
- 24D {Much of a Risk board} ASIA (“Ay”) – but this could equally apply to 52D ACE
- 29D {Burden} ONUS (“Oh”) – but also 61A ODE
- 48D {Not even one} ZERO (“Zee”)
But none of these lead anywhere either. Ooh, what about that old standard “2-word clues that start with the same letter”:
- 10D {Cabin component} LOG
- 11D {Bard’s “before”} ERE
- 17A {Public persona} IMAGE
- 37A {Big bird} EMU
- 52D {Premier pitcher} ACE
- 56A {Ecuadoran eights} OCHOS
- 59A {Crusoe’s creator} DEFOE
Potentially promising, but… then what? So, at the end of day 1, I’m officially stuck: too much noise, no signal. Time to sleep on it and see what tomorrow brings…
… Good morning! Day 2 begins. Thought from the night: what if there is a hint in the grid after all: COPYCAT SIXTEEN = eight pairs of entries in which the second entry answers the clue of the first. Yes, I know I tried that path yesterday, but with this grid hint I’ll try a bit harder. I already have one… and then I find a second one!
- 7A WHALE {Mammal with calves} = 4A COW
- 30A YAM {Stir-fry ingredient, sometimes} = 51D POD
It’s a bit of stretch though. Oh, now here’s a thought: what about adding a “letter opener” to each? That still works with the first pair and makes the second pair much stronger, while at the same time incorporating the puzzle title nicely:
- 7A WHALE {Mammal with calves} = (C+COW) SEA COW
- 30A YAM {Stir-fry ingredient, sometimes} = (P+POD) PEA POD
And will you look at that – it’s the signal at last!
- 7A WHALE {Mammal with calves} = (C+COW) SEA COW
- 14A HUMOR {Feature of “Old School” or “Deadpool”} = (R+RATING) RRATING [This was the last one I found, and only after I had guessed the answer]
- 16D YOUNG {Big surname in Canadian music} = (B+BRR) BIEBER [This was the second last one I found, and only after I had guessed the answer, and only by scanning through https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Canadian_musicians looking for a surname starting with the sound of a letter name – I’m so glad it came up in the Bs!]
- 30A YAM {Stir-fry ingredient, sometimes} = (P+POD) PEA POD
- 46D EASE {Lessen by a certain amount} = (D+DUCT) DEDUCT
- 54A SIXTEEN {When to start driving} = (T+TIME) TEE TIME [although as an Aussie I initially had “TEA TIME” in my notes!]
… except there are only 6 of these pairs, so the hint that helped me to locate the signal in all the noise wasn’t a hint after all! Note that in each case the “letter opener” is also the first letter of the entry, which narrowed the hunt down considerably.
So the answer to the meta is WHY YES, which is definitely true. Good one, Matt! And thanks for another great year of meta puzzles.
P.S. Confession time. So I had found SEA COW and PEA POD, but I hadn’t yet realised the letter opener was also the first letter of the entry, and I was struggling with the enormity of putting any letter name in front of any grid entry to make an alternate answer to another clue (eg. 27A STONE {Tablet material} = (G+ODE) GEODE). So I sent an SOS to a friend who confirmed I was on the right track, but that there were only four more pairs to find. So this was not a solo solve, but I was happy to have stumbled across the path on my own.
I had M+PAULA = IMPALA for [Mammal with calves], which was the last one to fall for me. I apparently missed the fact that the letter you add to the beginning has to be the same as the first letter of that answer, which doesn’t quite work for IMPALA (and the pronunciation is just *slightly* off).
Another one I’d tried that almost worked was O+COPYCAT to make OKAPI, if you ignore the CAT. But an okapi is definitely not a cat, so that one definitely doesn’t work either.
Like Adam, I had many alternative answers that delayed my realization that the first letter of the answer had to repeat! A few categories:
Answers with a letter opener that’s not the first letter of the word and make an alternate answer to a clue:
F-ACE (“efface”) for 27D {Get rid of}
I-YAM (“iamb”) for 11D {Bard’s “before”} (I kind of loved this one)
Answers where you could add a letter at the beginning to create a new word that makes an alternate answer to a clue:
B-LOG for 36D {Post, frequently}
A-MASS for 22D {Get together}
A-TOM for 7D {Tiniest amount}
R-ODE for 33A {Depended (on)}
Answers with a letter opener that created a word or phrase that was not clued:
I-SOAR (“eyesore”)
U-RHOS (or Z-RHOS or R-RHOS) (“Euros,” “zeros,” “arose”)
X-ANTE (“ex ante”)
G-ODE, K-ODE (“geode,” “KO’d”)
Clues with alternate answers that start with a letter but aren’t in the grid:
7A {Mammal with calves}: Not just C-COW but L-EPHANT and G-RAFFE
51D {Workspace, for some}: Q-BICLE
52D {Premier pitcher}: U-ER
Anyway, I got there late last night, but I had lots of noise to sort through to find that signal!
oh wow, i went through very similar things finding most of these exact combos — i got the right answer eventually but i also didn’t catch that the first letter was supposed to repeat!
and Why Yes is Y+YES
Yeah, this answer gets an A+ on confirming its own correctness.
Oof – I don’t know how I didn’t notice that!
B+BRR and D+DUCT are a little odd as the only two entries that don’t use a separate word as the letter. And BRR is the only one that gets a spelling change. I would have paired BE BRAVE or B+BOLD with YOLO (Advice for the timid) and maybe R+READY with EXPECT. I know that’s two “to be” words and not as tight as the others, but still. That’s just me!
Amazing finale! Thanks for ’24, Matt! You great guest constructors also. Happy 2025!
I was disappointed that FINN didn’t fit in somehow.
Because the meta was Finn Hard.
;-))
Other crosswords to the rescue– I have never seen Deadpool mentioned in a crossword except to clue some version of RRATED, so this one clicked for me right away.