Title: “Keep It Simple”
Prompt: This week’s contest answer, which is 21 letters long, is what you might take to solve this meta.
Answer: PATH OF LEAST RESISTANCE, found by 199 solvers, of which 92 were solo solves
Tough Week 4 last week, and not everyone found the path to be as clearly-defined as it should be in a meta. The core idea was: could a constructor, through grid design and clues that were all either very easy or very tough, guide a solver on a specific path through a crossword grid? I did my best through many iterations, but many still found the intended route a bit hazy, so I think the answer to that question is a resounding “sort of.” But now we know!
Most of us begin a crossword at 1-Across, so the path began there with [Fuzzy black-and-white animal, sometimes mistakenly called a “bear,” that’s native to China] = PANDA. Shot myself in the foot right off the bat here since it turns out that science has determined that pandas are in fact bears, and not raccoons as I learned as a kid. When you learn something early there’s a tendency to place it in the “definitely true” category of your brain, even if it turns out to be wrong.
Anyway, moving along: that was PANDA, and then 1-4 Down were all missably tough: PITA was [Stuffed item], ACES was [Deposers of kings and queens], NINA was [Secret name of fame], and DEN was [Sanctum sanctorum, often]. All missable, but 5-D was not: [U.S. state whose cities include Phoenix, Tucson, and Flagstaff]. That’s ARIZONA, of course, so our imaginary ideal solver would begin this puzzle with PANDA and ARIZONA.
Using the same method, our solver would then find TENNIS BALL the most obvious crossing answer to ARIZONA, clued as [Round piece of sports equipment hit by Serena Williams and Novak Djokovic]. And so on from there, the full intended solving chain being:
PANDA-ARIZONA-TENNISBALL-HELSINKI-OINKS-FINISHLINE-LITE-EVERT-ALBERT-SLEIGHT-TEXTS-RENT-ENDANGERED-SCORSESE-IOWA-SHOWS-TEARS-ARGENTINES-NON-CAN’T-EASE.
It was pretty easy to light the golden path when answers were generally heading southeasterly, but we needed guidelines from there. To phrase my guiding light here differently: I wanted to predict the path taken by a solver who *only* got the 21 answers to the super-easy clues. So that meant that a couple of sub-guidelines were: when choosing which clue to solve next, choose the one where you already have at least one letter; if you have two entries where you already have a letter but in one of them you have the *first* letter, then choose that one. So for instance: once you got SLEIGHT, you would prioritize trying 63-A over 55-A since you already have T???? there as opposed to just ?????G????.
Another similar guideline was to prioritize entries where you already had two letters instead of just one. And yes, things got a little more ambiguous in the bottom left for the last few entries, but I figured once solvers had PATHOFLEASTRE???????? I could lean on the backsolve a little, though I don’t believe I straight-up broke any of the solving guidelines I’d imagined down there, either. But I didn’t have to solve it, so Your Mileage May have Varied.
SQUEEZY:
The ever-inventive Jeff Chen has a new word game out called Squeezy which you can check out here. I played it yesterday and it’s quite fun!
MINI CONTEST: who can make the shortest reasonable pangram using “Jeff Chen” and “Squeezy”? You’ve already got QZJ taken care of…send answers to me at crosswordcontest@gmail.com by Tuesday at noon. Winner gets a MGWCC pen, pencil and notepad set (and maybe something from Jeff, too — I’m doing this contest without asking him first!).
THIS WEEK’S INSTRUCTIONS:
No instructions here since there are no-instructions solving options available today.
Solve well, and be not led astray by words intended to deceive.