MGWCC crossword 2:42
meta DNF 
[4.70 avg; 5 ratings] rate it
hello, and welcome to episode #943 of matt gaffney’s weekly crossword contest, a week 4 guest puzzle from Mike Graczyk called “Opening Kickoff”. this week’s puzzle challenges us to find a 4-letter word. okay. what are the theme answers? let’s assume they’re the four longest acrosses, which are each 10 letters:
- {She once portrayed Maid Marian} UMA THURMAN. i had totally forgotten about this role. this was in the british robin hood from 1991, the same year as kevin costner’s robin hood: prince of thieves, which grossed $390 million. i don’t think the british one had a cinematic release in the US. anyway, all this is likely irrelevant to the meta.
- {Like my home office, often} DISORDERLY.
- {Play bills?} STAGE MONEY.
- {Generous} ALTRUISTIC.
okay, so… what now? the instructions don’t help at all yet; chances are we’re going to somehow end up with one letter per theme answer, but the first step could still be anything. my first thought was hiddens, because UMA THURMAN is hiding MATH. STAGE MONEY has OMEGA in reverse, which caught me by surprise, but that doesn’t appear to be going anywhere either with the other themers. so all we have is the title. what could it mean?
i’ve been watching an absurd number of world cup games every day, so my first thought was something world cup-related, but i don’t see how that would apply. kicks could be shoes, and UMA is PUMA minus its opening P. that looks kind of fun, but i don’t see anything like it applying to the others.
the themers are split between one-word and two-word entries, so we can’t just take the first words of each. they are all 10 letters, so i guess we could split them into 5-letter halves. oh, right, i totally forgot, we are in fact supposed to do that! there is an explicit meta hint in the clue for HALF: {First ___ (what to kick off to help solve the meta)}. (i note also that “half” appears in the very first clue, {Half a molecule, maybe} ATOM, but i don’t really think this is meta-related.)
hmm. does “kick off the first half” mean we need to look at the second half? URMAN, DERLY, MONEY, and ISTIC. or maybe we need to use the first half (UMATH, DISOR, STAGE, ALTRU), and “kick off” means we need to start it somehow. but i’m not seeing what to do with either half, honestly.
hmm, what about CAF in the grid? it’s clued as {School lunchroom, informally}… but HALF-CAF is a thing, and perhaps the “first” HALF has been kicked off. i don’t mind that as a mechanism, although i haven’t figured out yet how it relates to the themers. the bigger problem is i don’t see anything else in the fill that looks like HALF could go in front of it to make a real thing.
well, i think i’m out of ideas on this one, and so far nothing i’ve tried has led to a significant click. let me know what i missed.
Ugh, didn’t get it but reading the review and the comment on ATOM it’s clear now! Remove the letters in the first half of the alphabet… I should start working with other people!
Puzzle: MGWCC; Rating: 5 stars
The key to solving this one was not getting bogged down in the literal interpretation of 74A. Sure, the clue and answer pair instructed solvers to take “half”, but half of what? No, not the first five or second five letters in the 4 ten word themer candidates. Further direction was available in 1A, where the clue/answer informed us to take “ATOM”, or more accurately, “A to M”, better known as half the alphabet.
Ignoring all letters between A and M left only UTURN from Umathurman, SORRY from Disorderly, STONY from StageMoney, and TRUST from Altruistic.
Time for the now-standard alt answers: UTURN fit the clue for 5A, providing the alternate answer FLIP, SORRY is another board game, like 18A’s CLUE, STONY fits 58A’s clue for BLANK, and TRUST goes with FAITH at 70A.
Now, as Steely Dan told us, let’s “Do It Again”, as in reapply the A to M rule.
The only A to M letter in FLIP is P, CLUE provides a U, BLANK gives the second half of the alphabet letter N, and FAITH offers a T.
There’s your solution, in grid order; PUNT
That should say “non-A to M” letter.
Argh, mad at myself. I did consider removing first half letters at some point (without realizing ATOM could be parsed as A TO M), but was tired and must’ve screwed up. I think I had UTRN and was like, that’s nothing, and didn’t continue along that line. Wasn’t there a recent meta (WSJ?) that did something similar?
Went down a long rabbit hole of all the entries that could be made from a pair of elemental symbols.
Clever mechanism, but I hate that the answer is just the first four-letter word you associate with “Opening Kickoff” (even though the opening kickoff is not a punt).
Should have known there would be a PUN in there.
I also tried everything I could think of doing with the 1st and 2nd halves of theme answers, before it dawned on me to try alphabet halves. I loved the final step where each mapped entry had only one second-half letter to spell the answer. So elegant.