Grid: 20 minutes; meta: 15 extra
Mike Shenk’s Wall Avenue Journal contest crossword, “Showtime” — Conrad’s writeup.
This week we’re searching for a film time period. I favored Eric H’s remark final week: …the Fiend reviewer’s clarification of how they solved the meta all the time is sensible, however I typically don’t how they made some essential willpower of what to have a look at to unravel the meta.
I try to write down concisely and clearly once I describe a meta, however understand that I could also be too concise at occasions. So I assumed I’d stretch out a bit this week and describe my thought course of as I solved this one. This meta adopted a basic sample typically utilized by Mike. The first step: discover the theme entries. Mike made it straightforward this week: the 5 lengthy throughout entries have been all films:
- [1988 horror film with a homicidal doll]: CHILDSPLAY
- [1981 comedy film directed by John Waters]: POLYESTER
- [1984 mockumentary film about a heavy metal band]: THISISSPINALTAP
- [1983 erotic horror film about vampire lovers]: THEHUNGER
- [1961 drama film in which Fast Eddie Felson beats Minnesota Fats]: THEHUSTLER
Step two: discover one thing to attach the themers. I didn’t see something within the entries themselves. I seemed for substrings (like YES in POLYESTER and PIN in THISISSPINALTAP), and that went nowhere.
Step three: when the entries yield no sign: examine the clues. That is the place I felt I had discovered the path: each clue began with a yr. You could possibly clue these 5 films plenty of methods, however beginning every clue with a yr was in all probability not a coincidence.
Step 4: apply the years. Yuri Gagarin (talked about within the clue for CCCP) was the primary individual to journey to outer house in 1961 (similar yr as THEHUSTLER), however that rabbit gap died rapidly. Then I noticed 13d (YEAR, clued as “4-digit quantity, often”). Mike typically hides a further trace within the last horizontal entry; he used 13d this time however made it clear that it was thematic. There are plenty of methods to explain a yr and mentioning “digits” stood out. This was Mike’s means of claiming that YEAR was the fitting rabbit gap and likewise: deal with the years as 4 digits. For instance: THISISSPINALTAP was 1,9,8,4.
Step 5: apply 1,9,8,4 to THISISSPINALTAP. The first letter was “T”, the ninth was “I”, the eighth was “P”, and the 4th was “S”, spelling TIPS. The clue for 71a (ONES) was “Ideas in a tip jar, typically”.
The remainder of the theme entries adopted the identical sample:
- CHILDSPLAY (1,9,8,8): CALL -> Name for assist: SOS
- POLYESTER (1,9,8,1): PREP -> Prep cook dinner’s boss: CHEF
- THISISSPINALTAP (1,9,8,4): TIPS -> Ideas in a tip jar, typically: ONES
- THEHUNGER (1,9,8,3): TREE -> Tree anchor: ROOT
- THEHUSTLER (1,9,6,1): TEST -> Take a look at by a neurologist, for brief: EEG
The mapped clues spell SCORE, our contest answer. Readers: let me understand how you made out, and please let me know if this fashion of writeup was useful for a few of you. I’m glad to dive deeper once in a while (time prepared).