MGWCC crossword 6:07
meta DNF 
[3.33 avg; 9 ratings] rate it
hello, and welcome to episode #928 of matt gaffney’s weekly crossword contest, a week 2 puzzle called “Downright Simple”. this week’s puzzle instructions tell us that This puzzle’s contest answer, which is five letters long, is what you’ll need to make to solve this meta. okay. what are the theme answers? i’m not 100% sure, but let’s assume they’re the five long proper names in the acrosses:
- {Oprah made him famous} PHIL MCGRAW, better known as dr. phil.
- {“Whose Line Is It Anyway?” star} WAYNE BRADY.
- {St. Paul’s Cathedral designer} CHRISTOPHER WREN.
- {U.S. senator from 1962 to 2009} TED KENNEDY.
- {Mathematician who specialized in GPS technology} GLADYS WEST. my first time learning about this mathematician, who seems pretty cool.
okay, so now what? i suspect we’re supposed to do something with “downright” in the title. my first thought was to look at the northwest-to-southeast diagonal, since that’s “down + right”. but i didn’t see anything intelligible on that diagonal (or other diagonals in that orientation).
what else? the fact that WEST is there at the bottom and KENNEDY nearby made me think of florida, which is the “downright” state on the US mainland; key WEST is at the bottom of florida and the KENNEDY space center is … well, it’s in florida also (central-ish, on the atlantic coast). but the other themers weren’t helping much with this idea. i did notice that the instructions don’t say the answer is a five-letter word, just that it’s five letters, opening up the possibility of something like US MAP or even FL MAP.
what else is there to try? i feel like i have to mention at this point that i think the grid is a hot mess, because maybe the meta is really constraining it. i mean, look at YAGHI sitting on top of AAAAA in the northwest corner (with AAA elsewhere, to boot!). it took me ages to piece together GLADYS of GLADYS WEST, with very unhelpful clues for LLC and AS A and the new-to-me abbrev YOY (“year on year”, i guess). other unfamiliar entries to me included GAIL O’HARA, SYMON, RAIN A, NACH, and ELROD; plurals i didn’t think much of included LISAS, WCS, RVS, RCAS, KALES, and both ETAS and IOTAS. so that’s all rather unfortunate.
tangential to all of this: there are a lot of W’s and Y’s in the grid. and, i guess, A’s—although A’s are normally very common anyway, there are more A’s than usual, highlighted by still-insane-to-me AAAAA and AAA. sometimes with a grid like this, we’re supposed to highlight all the instances of a certain letter and it makes a picture, but i doubt that’s what’s happening here, given the five people’s names in the obvious theme spots.
okay, i’m throwing in the towel. i just don’t have anything, and even in a week 2, i’m not feeling much motivation to get to the finish line—i soured on the puzzle long before i was done filling in the grid, and nothing that’s happened since has won me back over.
My hunch was that there are very famous three-letter named people that share a last name with these (Tim, Tom, Bob, JFK, Mae), and then TIN could be TIM etc. However that led to nowhere quite fast lol (JFK doesn’t even work)
I also tried to parse the title as “down write”, make a compass kinda thing work, look at down entries for an irregularity to no avail.
All the themed individuals can also end with KNIGHT. Make a knight move from the first letter down and to the right in the themed answers and you get LEAPS.
The five long answers all have first names where there is a famous person with last name “Knight”.
You then move like a knight in chess, down 1 and 2 to the right from the start of each of the 5 and get LEAPS.
Ooof, I thought of Gladys Knight but had no idea about other Knights so didn’t even bother to explore that aspect. And even if I did, not sure if I could figure out the correct Knight path. Good meta, but definitely not Week 2 (which is a long-observed tradition for MGWCC lol)
Same!
Gladys was definitely a good way in as there just aren’t many famous people with that name. I was waylaid by the presence of BRADY in the grid (Christopher) and “Nike” in the clues (Phil) but gave up after a bit looking for Newman, Seinfeld, Jurassic Park, Baxter, MTM, Pips, Midnight Trains, etc.
But yes, definitely agreed that a chess or knight signifier would have made this much more of a week 2.
Puzzle: MGWCC; Rating: 3 stars
I did manage to get this in the final 15 minutes. Despite it being Matt, I would have appreciated a slight chess nudge somewhere beyond surnames—did I miss one? Gladys Knight was the only Knight I had properly heard of.
At least I’m impressed at the 6 9-letter downs, despite entries like AAAAA (a mood after all the sleep I lost) and TAPAT. My backup guess was going to be GUESS.
I was sure Downright Simple was pointing me to SYMON in the bottom right, Simple Simon met a pieman, things are simple as pie, it was Pi Day… never left the “it’s related to pie” mindset so I submitted crust. You have to make a crust if you’re going to have pie! I figured I’d work out how the long answers related later haha. The actual meta was good of course but I question its week two-ness.
Agree on all counts! Thought of Simple Simon (met a pie man).
Oh well …
Puzzle: MGWCC; Rating: 3.5 stars
Ditto on the simple, SYMON, pieman, Pi Day path to nowhere.
SAME! I got to LEAPS, but Simply Symon seemed an ideal place to start from Downright Simple.
I did notice that all the themers could be Knights ( having to look up a couple) but did not make the “leap” from there. I also decided that there were probably lots of other last names that you could swap out that also led to famous people (although I did not actually try to find one), so this seemed like an unlikely mechanism.
The surname Knight was pretty obvious to me, but after this? I tried at least a dozen possible next moves, but never came close. I noticed that the title implies the answer would be found down and to the right, but chess moves never occurred to me. I’m not a chess player myself. I do know how, but soccer and table tennis are much more my thing. I’d say it’s a week 2 if you’re into chess, and a Week 4 if you’re not.
Briefly thought about Gladys Knight, but couldn’t see how that connected to the title or anything else, as I’ve never heard of Phil, Wayne, Christopher, or Ted Knight.
Same here – nowhere near
Hate to ask this, because you’re such a familiar, resolute and passionate voice for metas, and particularly MGWCCs, but…
Joon: Are you sure that you’re not burnt out on these, and doing them more out of resigned obligation, rather than enjoyment? In an entirely unscientific sense, it seems like you’re struggling to maintain a whole lot of interest in solving.
I hope not, because there’s a whole bunch of loyal readers, who look forward to your recap!
i think this is a fair question, but i hope the answer is no, i’m not burned out. i just really (really really) didn’t care for this one. it started with the fill being very unpleasant (as dan noted also) and then i got absolutely nowhere on the meta. i also had jury duty on tuesday so i had to blog the puzzle monday night instead of being able to take another look tuesday morning with fresh eyes. but that is very much a one-time thing—the commonwealth has assured me i won’t be called for jury duty again until after week 1000.
that said, i enjoyed week 1 a lot, and i liked the february week 4 puzzle even though i didn’t get the last step. i think i’ve still got plenty in the tank.
Argh! You mentioned the words “Jury Duty”. I’m triggered, and I will be for the rest of the day.
Two years ago, I was selected for a jury; a four day civil trial, where property owners were suing a builder for damages related to botched renovations.
The entire process was exasperating, and there are lots of stories I could tell, but here’s the pinnacle:
After hours of delusional deliberations, I desperately proposed a plaintiff award I hoped we could all agree upon. As heads nodded around the table, I grabbed the judgment form, wrote in the dollar figure, signed the form, and leapt up to ring the bell, signifying that we had reached our decision. Had I not, we would probably still be there.
As we waited for the bailiff to come in and collect us, the juror at the far end of the table asked:
“What about the other three people?”
I’m exhausted, I’m frustrated, I look at this person slack jawed. I have, literally, no idea what they’re asking.
“What three other people?”, I asked, cautiously.
“Didn’t the judge say we needed a four person?”
This is not an apocryphal story.
Puzzle: MGWCC; Rating: 2 stars
Is there a reason the fill was so unpleasant? Please tell me there’s another constraint somewhere. I spotted the KNIGHTs, and with the title figured it would be a “knight’s tour” situation, but at only five letters there’s no excuse for the rest of that grid. At least take the time to notice and clue the extremely famous RAINA, who should be all over crosswords by now (and yes is a high-school friend).
I mean, there are 5 long themers plus 5 letters all fixed. Those 5 extra letters may not seem like much, but any extra fixed letters very quickly make filling the grid tougher.
I imagine the fill could have been improved in places by sacrificing a few of the nine-letter down slots… a black square covering the T in CLOT and/or one covering the J in JARGON would still leave a valid grid. Even if you added both of those it’s still only 78 words, unless I miscounted.
Puzzle: MGWCC; Rating: 4 stars
I saw the five Knights and really wanted it to be Freddy Fazbear
I went to ELROD Hendricks Baseball Camp as a kid; he was a pretty popular former Oriole. I was/am not particularly athletic; he nicknamed me “Heels” after the way I fielded and threw the ball.
Didn’t help me with the meta though.
Puzzle: MGWCC; Rating: 4 stars
I think the constructors have a harder time with “suspicious” fill. It was a little wonky but that’s not unusual in metas due to constraints. Agree this, as titled and hinted, is a week 4. Unfortunately, even though I know all these Knights, they aren’t in the old memory bank anymore to the point I was going to suss this mechanism without more of a hint. I think the title Downright Moving may have helped. It was a brilliant idea and, imo, well executed. Just not a week 2.
Week four called – they want their puzzle back.