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LAST WEEK’S RESULTS:
Title: “Directors Meeting”
Instructions: This week’s contest answer is a well-known movie of the 1990s.
Answer: MILLER’S CROSSING
In case you couldn’t tell from the writeup, I was annoyed when MGWCC #593 received a handful of 1-star reviews from solvers. I didn’t think the griping was justified there at all.
MGWCC #599 also received a number of 1-star reviews at Fiend, but after reading solver comments I agree that some solvers had a legit 1-star experience. Let’s look at what happened (long story short: a series of slight misjudgments on my part that, in toto, made the puzzle “was never gonna get this” for some solvers, which is not good).
SM (slight misjudgment) #1: The title could’ve been more of a nudge.
My hope was that “Meeting” in the title would suggest looking for noteworthy crossings in the grid, which also made sense considering that there were no long entries to serve as obvious theme. Consigliere and I discussed titles with both “Intersection” and “Meeting” in them and ultimately I went with the more subtle one, which may have been a mistake.
SM #1b: I also thought that after “Meeting” suggested crossings, that looking for crossing first names, of which there were a number in the grid, would also be a logical next step, but that may have been too subtle to be useful information.
SM #2: The eight MILLERs used were not, as a group, famous enough to stand out for some solvers.
None of these MILLERs is A+ level famous; for such a common last name, I was surprised how few really famous-famous MILLERs there are. Brother-and-sister basketball stars CHERYL and REGGIE, for example, are very well-known within basketball, but if you don’t follow they game neither might ring a bell out of context. BODE Miller is probably the most famous male American skier of all time, but again, if you’re not into sports then it might not ring a bell. SIENNA, DENNIS, GLENN, ROGER, and NICOLE are/were all definitely celebrities, but it’s certainly possible that a solver might’ve only really heard of three or four of these eight, which might not have been strong enough to make a connection on a page with no other big hints.
SM #2b: I was swayed by how generationally diverse this group was: you only needed to see a few Millers to be able to Google the rest, I figured, so Millennials might break through on SIENNA and REGGIE, Boomers on GLENN and ROGER, and my fellow Xers on DENNIS and BODE. I’m sure this helped a bit, but again, it also probably hurt, since it may have left many solvers with only 2 or 3 Millers to work with, which wasn’t quite enough in many cases.
SM #2c: The crossings spell COEN, but only if you go clockwise. If you go in the Z-shape that was intuitive to many solvers, it spells CONE, which doesn’t help. Maybe I’ll use the Z-shape next time I’m in this situation.
SM #3: “Miller’s Crossing” isn’t as “well-known” as I would’ve liked.
True, it’s a widely-acclaimed Coen Brothers movie so technically I can claim that it’s “well-known,” but it’s not “Fargo” or “The Big Lebowski”-level famous. It bombed at the box office, and ultimately, if a significant number of solvers haven’t heard of it, it’s not “well-known” enough to use as a meta answer without expecting significant pushback, which is what happened.
SM#3b: I’m a big fan of this movie, and I liked the meta idea, so I really wanted to use it. Thus I convinced myself that all these problems were not dealbreakers — which, in isolation, each might not have been, but the cumulative effect was more serious, and left too many solvers with that “I’d never have gotten this” feeling of frustration, maybe even betrayal, after having invested hours in it.
Of all the comments I got, this is the one that will haunt me years hence. From Pomona47 at Crossword Fiend:
I broke a 3 year streak on this meta, but after seeing the write-up it was a lost cause for me from the start. BODE and GLENN are the only Millers with whom I’m familiar, and even if I had spotted them among the other rabbit holes, I likely would have dismissed them for 1) not crossing each other and 2) not being related to directors or movies. That’s my failing in knowledge and not a failure of the meta itself. Now I’ll have to watch Miller’s Crossing.
Oh, well. A new streak starts next week!
Brutal, especially the cheerful tone. You all put a lot into these as I do, so this is the last thing I want to see.
Points taken, meant sincerely. We move on to #600. 400 left! Let’s do it.
This week’s winner, whose name was chosen at random from the 185 correct entries received, is S.B. In addition to a MGWCC pen, pencil, and notepad set, S.B. will also receive a signed copy of my book Mental Floss Crunchy Crosswords.
THIS WEEK’S INSTRUCTIONS:
This week’s contest answer is what happened (precisely) on the eighth pitch.
Solve well, and be not led astray by words intended to deceive.