P&A Issue 29 Log
And here's the other one...
9:12 am
Haven't got the best track record showing up on time for this lately. Too early in the morning.
9:12 am
Downloading now...
9:15 am
Sentence about arranging instruments stands out as important...
9:20 am
Starting with Urinetown now.
9:21 am
Flavor suggests something with Ps.
9:22 am
And I just got three As in a row in the grid. Something really weird must be going on...
9:31 am
Ah, it's reading down. I see AWARD at the end now.
9:32 am
Hm. Is there a theme to these questions? I'm not seeing it yet...
9:37 am
TEA CITY CAPTAIN MIZE(?) GRAPE GAME MAGAZINE AWARD
9:38 am
And I see (P)coe and (P)card...
9:45 am
I've checked every letter of MIZE; not sure where the error is.
9:45 am
Letters associated with wrong P choices are COI?ODES...
9:49 am
Hm. Gotta bail on this one for now.
9:49 am
Phantom of the Opera looks interesting...
10:06 am
Not sure what the lime group is, but I have only seven distinct names from the other clues, so this should be solveable without it.
10:08 am
BAN?AGES... probably BANDAGES.
10:10 am
Oh... probably meant to be COMMODES for Urinetown? Another 8-letter word that splits into 4-letter halves, and it's thematic.
10:11 am
That'd mean Ear is supposed to have an S (to make SIZE for PEEWEE) and Card should have an M
10:12 am
How to Succeed looks interesting...
10:14 am
HOME BASS?
10:17 am
No, I think I see... I chain them so that a word can go after the second half of one answer and before the first half of the other.
10:19 am
Oh, wait, no... SERGEANT SLAUGHTER and CAP GUN stack up nicely...
10:20 am
And I see FIDDLESTICKS and RATTLESNAKE and CLUB FOOT...
10:33 am
Is "circulating drill" a thing?
10:33 am
If so, I'm looking for a word that goes after DRILL and LAND but before CAP...
10:35 am
No, DESK, not DRILL.
10:39 am
Okay, OneLook tells me that DESK JOCKEY, LAWN JOCKEY, and JOCKEY CAP are all things. I've only heard of the first one, and then only vaguely.
10:40 am
Sweeney Todd? Sweeney Todd.
10:41 am
CUBA LIBRE = BLUE CRAB + I...
11:05 am
20 answers found by hand; switching to automation.
11:07 am
I see ...EVIL TRANSFORMER...
11:09 am
...CONDOR?
11:13 am
Buzzsaw and Laserbeak both turned into condors, according to Wikipedia.
11:16 am
Okay, message starts TOOL OR..., so it's Buzzsaw.
11:18 am
Going to keep going, just to satisfy my curiosity about the rest of the clues.
11:22 am
Aaand here's the part where I confess I mistook BASQUE for a city.
11:22 am
Anyway. Next one!
11:23 am
1776?
11:23 am
State abbreviation cryptogram?
11:25 am
Looks like it's only the first thirteen states, like the flavor says.
11:27 am
That's half an alphabet; maybe Delaware is A and N, Pennsylvania is B and O, etc.?
11:30 am
There's enough CTs (E and R) that that feels right.
11:31 am
Ha! I get it - the first one is E(NJ)OYABLE, where the NJ stays as it is.
11:44 am
First instinct is to index into the phrases using state order, but that fails. Probably going to assemble one last phrase encoded this same way.
11:53 am
CAPITOL HILL, looks like.
11:55 am
That was a really nice one!
11:55 am
Breaking for a few minutes.
12:02 pm
Back. Rent now.
12:03 pm
Top row of each pair is alphabetized; presumably sorting it sorts the other?
12:06 pm
First pair has KATE in one row and ALLIE in the other, with matching letters spelling FIND NOUN T...
12:16 pm
Nine letters long, both girl-like and boy-like, and the missing letters look like they're going to spell ANDROGYNE.
12:17 pm
All of the answers so far start with A, B, C, or D...
12:18 pm
(Going to finish off these pairs before moving on. Who are KIP and HENRY?)
12:21 pm
Glad I did - I want ANDROGYNY. The characteristic, not the person.
12:24 pm
Moving on to Once Upon a Mattress.
12:30 pm
This is an interesting one.
12:31 pm
Although DIPHTHERIA doesn't want to fit...
12:35 pm
Bottom is BEDCLOTHES. Another B...
12:37 pm
Going to go ahead and transcribe the rest of these word search rows and look at the meta for a bit.
12:41 pm
Heh, the playbill cover has RED HERRING backwards...
12:44 pm
It may be possible to sort these rows to make it so the answers can be found. I see some friendly positions for DESK JOCKEY and BUZZSAW...
12:46 pm
Maybe not. Not enough Ks within reach of the J.
12:48 pm
Need more answers.
12:49 pm
Putnam seems straightforward enough. Five-bit binary, find the misspellings.
1:00 pm
DEDICATE.
1:04 pm
Titanic?
1:48 pm
Jeez, this is tough.
1:50 pm
Well, path's finally pinned down, at least.
2:06 pm
Finally! Just need to add letters...
2:14 pm
Not getting a lot out of the squares where the Titanic hits ice.
2:15 pm
ZOE AS NEYTIRI...
2:15 pm
Is that AVATAR?
2:15 pm
Yep!
2:18 pm
Chess next.
2:54 pm
Spent a ridiculous amount of time stuck because I didn't read C close enough to see there were three clues...
3:23 pm
?? ?? SK ?? GA ND RO OK looks like it's going to be CASTLES to me...
3:31 pm
Finished. Lion King next.
3:53 pm
Almost certainly DJIBOUTI.
3:55 pm
HEL-lo... the word search rows start with different letters A-P.
3:59 pm
Oh no... I haven't been saving my answer grids.
4:00 pm
Well, there's a TRIANGLE in northern Africa, at least...
4:15 pm
Oh, duh! CLAIRE+ANNETTE. Spent the past ten minutes trying weird indexing methods.
4:21 pm
English Horn is pretty obvious. Can't believe I missed all of these...
4:22 pm
I was thinking, with sixteen puzzles, I'd be making a 4x4 grid with instrument types as columns and initials as rows...
4:22 pm
But I already have two C woodwinds. (Unless Foggy's messed up and classified the English horn as brass based on the name...) [Nope, I'm an idiot, as will be made clear later.]
4:30 pm
No luck finding anything word-search-style in Chess.
4:36 pm
No luck with Putnam...
4:42 pm
BASS FIDDLE in Succeed isn't really hidden, but it fits.
4:42 pm
(Noticed after the first two instruments that one letter lines up.)
4:49 pm
HARMONICA in Rent!
5:06 pm
Nothing so far in Mattress.
5:16 pm
Reconstructing the Titanic grid. Only a little less difficult the second time around...
5:38 pm
ZITHER in one column. Whew, done with that again.
5:39 pm
Sweeney Todd now...
5:51 pm
No luck yet there, either.
5:51 pm
That leaves Urinetown to check.
6:04 pm
Nope.
6:04 pm
Got to get ready to go shopping. This may or may not get done tonight.
7:54 pm
Back. Checking the errata now...
7:55 pm
Nothing major yet. Starting Wicked...
7:55 pm
Something metric going on, and some weirdness in the available letters...
7:56 pm
Oh! The columns aren't in order. Q-with-no-U tipped me off. The obscenely long word in the first row should have, too.
7:57 pm
Presumably top row is the metric prefix abbreviations, giving an order.
7:57 pm
I'm going to stab-in-the-dark guess this answer is CANDELA, based on the title and theme.
7:59 pm
Ooh, there's a column that reads "GAPHONE". May be connected to the instrument.
8:10 pm
Reading it as a unit rather than a prefix would give GRAMAPHONE, though that's not really an instrument.
8:15 pm
D'oh, judging from the bottom row I've sorted them backwards.
8:15 pm
Heck with it, I'll flip the image and deal with the backwards letters.
8:18 pm
Odd length pattern going on; nearly all X (two letter word) Y.
8:19 pm
Looks like it can be IN in every case. I'll try that.
8:25 pm
Q is for QUART, looks like. These are probably going to be measurement division problems, maybe all non-SI.
8:34 pm
D'oh. QUARTER, not QUART.
8:39 pm
I wonder how many non-puzzle people actually know or care about those biblical wine bottle sizes?
8:39 pm
Grid done.
8:39 pm
?L???MY off the top of my head. ALCHEMY?
8:40 pm
Looks like it. Those two wine bottles are the same size.
8:42 pm
Still missing the instrument, though...
8:45 pm
One column anagrams to ORGAN, but I need a seven-letter instrument.
8:46 pm
What happens if I sort the solved grid back into the original order? That order's not arbitrary.
8:47 pm
Rather than copy the whole thing out, I'll check the seven-letter slots first.
8:50 pm
Not looking promising. Going to do the whole thing.
8:59 pm
Gibberish. This is getting a bit frustrating.
9:11 pm
Got to step away from this for a while. Not able to focus.
10:00 pm
Back for a bit. Going to poke at Little Shop.
10:01 pm
Starting with GIZMODIC. Hooray, MST3K!
10:14 pm
Er, GIZMONIC. Oops.
10:16 pm
ZOMBIE KITTY across an unnumbered row, I think?
10:18 pm
ANNIE W... Stephen King baddies?
10:32 pm
Indexing gives me ??????ROPH?? - CATASTROPHES?
10:34 pm
No, the next one down is an I from It. CATASTROPHIC?
11:07 pm
I was not aware that Carrie was a musical. I have been educated tonight.
11:15 pm
Grid full, all stories ID'd, no instrument found yet.
11:18 pm
There it is! GLOCKENSPIEL.
11:19 pm
I am an idiot. BANDAGES does not start with C.
11:21 pm
Meta answer may end in -PHONICS?
11:23 pm
If I can find an eight-letter woodwind, fifth letter C, and then find it in Putnam, I'll feel pretty strong there.
11:27 pm
Maybe -PHONIES instead. Either HORNPIPE or RECORDER would work well...
11:29 pm
And sure enough, the correctly-spelled rightmost column's initials are HORNPIPE! Backsolving FTW.
11:31 pm
Long shot, but I'm gonna try to backsolve ALCHEMY's instrument as well.
11:33 pm
SACKBUT would work. A little obscure.
11:34 pm
And SERPENT. But likewise.
11:34 pm
Oh! A harmonica's brass? Didn't realize that.
11:36 pm
...No. No, it is not. The Wikipedia list of brass instruments is just a section of a list of all instruments, and I scrolled off the end of it.
11:39 pm
Okay, backsolving is really useful for instruments. MANDOLIN is reading backwards in the second row of answers for Urinetown.
11:54 pm
I kind of want it to be TRUMPET, but I don't see how to make it work.
11:56 pm
Diagonal SACKBUT in Wicked!
11:57 pm
C?OR??E??PHO?IES
12:01 am
CHORDLESS PHONIES would work well with all the cell phones in the intro...
12:01 am
DIDGERIDOO diagonally in MATTRESS!
12:03 am
Gotta be right. Submitting...
[Then the next day...]
2:44 pm
Picking up the rest now. (Found SAMISEN and FISCORN last night after I stopped logging; the former was made unfindable by an error in my notes, and the latter I'd just never heard of.)
2:45 pm
Spamalot!
2:58 pm
Judging by what I've got so far (maybe a third of the grid), there may be extra clues? Haven't actually encountered anything abnormal, but I'm running out of room in a few places, especially with FONZARELLI taking up most of row D.
3:00 pm
Instance of TETCBN: REINS as an answer, and "Reins in" as a clue elsewhere.
3:02 pm
This grid has both Lady Gaga and Katy Perry in it.
3:02 pm
But T. ___ probably isn't PAIN.
3:05 pm
Theory confirmed: "Second" is extraneous. Probably "Emergency room" too; are they all going to be abbreviated things, to spell out an answer?
3:06 pm
"Bishop". Looks like it.
3:09 pm
Theeere's XYLOPHONE!
3:17 pm
AMBUSHERS. Nobody expects them!
3:18 pm
Ought to put off the other two for a while.
[The rest was solved without logging; it's been long enough that I've forgotten how it went. I presume it was without incident.]
9:12 am
Haven't got the best track record showing up on time for this lately. Too early in the morning.
9:12 am
Downloading now...
9:15 am
Sentence about arranging instruments stands out as important...
9:20 am
Starting with Urinetown now.
9:21 am
Flavor suggests something with Ps.
9:22 am
And I just got three As in a row in the grid. Something really weird must be going on...
9:31 am
Ah, it's reading down. I see AWARD at the end now.
9:32 am
Hm. Is there a theme to these questions? I'm not seeing it yet...
9:37 am
TEA CITY CAPTAIN MIZE(?) GRAPE GAME MAGAZINE AWARD
9:38 am
And I see (P)coe and (P)card...
9:45 am
I've checked every letter of MIZE; not sure where the error is.
9:45 am
Letters associated with wrong P choices are COI?ODES...
9:49 am
Hm. Gotta bail on this one for now.
9:49 am
Phantom of the Opera looks interesting...
10:06 am
Not sure what the lime group is, but I have only seven distinct names from the other clues, so this should be solveable without it.
10:08 am
BAN?AGES... probably BANDAGES.
10:10 am
Oh... probably meant to be COMMODES for Urinetown? Another 8-letter word that splits into 4-letter halves, and it's thematic.
10:11 am
That'd mean Ear is supposed to have an S (to make SIZE for PEEWEE) and Card should have an M
10:12 am
How to Succeed looks interesting...
10:14 am
HOME BASS?
10:17 am
No, I think I see... I chain them so that a word can go after the second half of one answer and before the first half of the other.
10:19 am
Oh, wait, no... SERGEANT SLAUGHTER and CAP GUN stack up nicely...
10:20 am
And I see FIDDLESTICKS and RATTLESNAKE and CLUB FOOT...
10:33 am
Is "circulating drill" a thing?
10:33 am
If so, I'm looking for a word that goes after DRILL and LAND but before CAP...
10:35 am
No, DESK, not DRILL.
10:39 am
Okay, OneLook tells me that DESK JOCKEY, LAWN JOCKEY, and JOCKEY CAP are all things. I've only heard of the first one, and then only vaguely.
10:40 am
Sweeney Todd? Sweeney Todd.
10:41 am
CUBA LIBRE = BLUE CRAB + I...
11:05 am
20 answers found by hand; switching to automation.
11:07 am
I see ...EVIL TRANSFORMER...
11:09 am
...CONDOR?
11:13 am
Buzzsaw and Laserbeak both turned into condors, according to Wikipedia.
11:16 am
Okay, message starts TOOL OR..., so it's Buzzsaw.
11:18 am
Going to keep going, just to satisfy my curiosity about the rest of the clues.
11:22 am
Aaand here's the part where I confess I mistook BASQUE for a city.
11:22 am
Anyway. Next one!
11:23 am
1776?
11:23 am
State abbreviation cryptogram?
11:25 am
Looks like it's only the first thirteen states, like the flavor says.
11:27 am
That's half an alphabet; maybe Delaware is A and N, Pennsylvania is B and O, etc.?
11:30 am
There's enough CTs (E and R) that that feels right.
11:31 am
Ha! I get it - the first one is E(NJ)OYABLE, where the NJ stays as it is.
11:44 am
First instinct is to index into the phrases using state order, but that fails. Probably going to assemble one last phrase encoded this same way.
11:53 am
CAPITOL HILL, looks like.
11:55 am
That was a really nice one!
11:55 am
Breaking for a few minutes.
12:02 pm
Back. Rent now.
12:03 pm
Top row of each pair is alphabetized; presumably sorting it sorts the other?
12:06 pm
First pair has KATE in one row and ALLIE in the other, with matching letters spelling FIND NOUN T...
12:16 pm
Nine letters long, both girl-like and boy-like, and the missing letters look like they're going to spell ANDROGYNE.
12:17 pm
All of the answers so far start with A, B, C, or D...
12:18 pm
(Going to finish off these pairs before moving on. Who are KIP and HENRY?)
12:21 pm
Glad I did - I want ANDROGYNY. The characteristic, not the person.
12:24 pm
Moving on to Once Upon a Mattress.
12:30 pm
This is an interesting one.
12:31 pm
Although DIPHTHERIA doesn't want to fit...
12:35 pm
Bottom is BEDCLOTHES. Another B...
12:37 pm
Going to go ahead and transcribe the rest of these word search rows and look at the meta for a bit.
12:41 pm
Heh, the playbill cover has RED HERRING backwards...
12:44 pm
It may be possible to sort these rows to make it so the answers can be found. I see some friendly positions for DESK JOCKEY and BUZZSAW...
12:46 pm
Maybe not. Not enough Ks within reach of the J.
12:48 pm
Need more answers.
12:49 pm
Putnam seems straightforward enough. Five-bit binary, find the misspellings.
1:00 pm
DEDICATE.
1:04 pm
Titanic?
1:48 pm
Jeez, this is tough.
1:50 pm
Well, path's finally pinned down, at least.
2:06 pm
Finally! Just need to add letters...
2:14 pm
Not getting a lot out of the squares where the Titanic hits ice.
2:15 pm
ZOE AS NEYTIRI...
2:15 pm
Is that AVATAR?
2:15 pm
Yep!
2:18 pm
Chess next.
2:54 pm
Spent a ridiculous amount of time stuck because I didn't read C close enough to see there were three clues...
3:23 pm
?? ?? SK ?? GA ND RO OK looks like it's going to be CASTLES to me...
3:31 pm
Finished. Lion King next.
3:53 pm
Almost certainly DJIBOUTI.
3:55 pm
HEL-lo... the word search rows start with different letters A-P.
3:59 pm
Oh no... I haven't been saving my answer grids.
4:00 pm
Well, there's a TRIANGLE in northern Africa, at least...
4:15 pm
Oh, duh! CLAIRE+ANNETTE. Spent the past ten minutes trying weird indexing methods.
4:21 pm
English Horn is pretty obvious. Can't believe I missed all of these...
4:22 pm
I was thinking, with sixteen puzzles, I'd be making a 4x4 grid with instrument types as columns and initials as rows...
4:22 pm
But I already have two C woodwinds. (Unless Foggy's messed up and classified the English horn as brass based on the name...) [Nope, I'm an idiot, as will be made clear later.]
4:30 pm
No luck finding anything word-search-style in Chess.
4:36 pm
No luck with Putnam...
4:42 pm
BASS FIDDLE in Succeed isn't really hidden, but it fits.
4:42 pm
(Noticed after the first two instruments that one letter lines up.)
4:49 pm
HARMONICA in Rent!
5:06 pm
Nothing so far in Mattress.
5:16 pm
Reconstructing the Titanic grid. Only a little less difficult the second time around...
5:38 pm
ZITHER in one column. Whew, done with that again.
5:39 pm
Sweeney Todd now...
5:51 pm
No luck yet there, either.
5:51 pm
That leaves Urinetown to check.
6:04 pm
Nope.
6:04 pm
Got to get ready to go shopping. This may or may not get done tonight.
7:54 pm
Back. Checking the errata now...
7:55 pm
Nothing major yet. Starting Wicked...
7:55 pm
Something metric going on, and some weirdness in the available letters...
7:56 pm
Oh! The columns aren't in order. Q-with-no-U tipped me off. The obscenely long word in the first row should have, too.
7:57 pm
Presumably top row is the metric prefix abbreviations, giving an order.
7:57 pm
I'm going to stab-in-the-dark guess this answer is CANDELA, based on the title and theme.
7:59 pm
Ooh, there's a column that reads "GAPHONE". May be connected to the instrument.
8:10 pm
Reading it as a unit rather than a prefix would give GRAMAPHONE, though that's not really an instrument.
8:15 pm
D'oh, judging from the bottom row I've sorted them backwards.
8:15 pm
Heck with it, I'll flip the image and deal with the backwards letters.
8:18 pm
Odd length pattern going on; nearly all X (two letter word) Y.
8:19 pm
Looks like it can be IN in every case. I'll try that.
8:25 pm
Q is for QUART, looks like. These are probably going to be measurement division problems, maybe all non-SI.
8:34 pm
D'oh. QUARTER, not QUART.
8:39 pm
I wonder how many non-puzzle people actually know or care about those biblical wine bottle sizes?
8:39 pm
Grid done.
8:39 pm
?L???MY off the top of my head. ALCHEMY?
8:40 pm
Looks like it. Those two wine bottles are the same size.
8:42 pm
Still missing the instrument, though...
8:45 pm
One column anagrams to ORGAN, but I need a seven-letter instrument.
8:46 pm
What happens if I sort the solved grid back into the original order? That order's not arbitrary.
8:47 pm
Rather than copy the whole thing out, I'll check the seven-letter slots first.
8:50 pm
Not looking promising. Going to do the whole thing.
8:59 pm
Gibberish. This is getting a bit frustrating.
9:11 pm
Got to step away from this for a while. Not able to focus.
10:00 pm
Back for a bit. Going to poke at Little Shop.
10:01 pm
Starting with GIZMODIC. Hooray, MST3K!
10:14 pm
Er, GIZMONIC. Oops.
10:16 pm
ZOMBIE KITTY across an unnumbered row, I think?
10:18 pm
ANNIE W... Stephen King baddies?
10:32 pm
Indexing gives me ??????ROPH?? - CATASTROPHES?
10:34 pm
No, the next one down is an I from It. CATASTROPHIC?
11:07 pm
I was not aware that Carrie was a musical. I have been educated tonight.
11:15 pm
Grid full, all stories ID'd, no instrument found yet.
11:18 pm
There it is! GLOCKENSPIEL.
11:19 pm
I am an idiot. BANDAGES does not start with C.
11:21 pm
Meta answer may end in -PHONICS?
11:23 pm
If I can find an eight-letter woodwind, fifth letter C, and then find it in Putnam, I'll feel pretty strong there.
11:27 pm
Maybe -PHONIES instead. Either HORNPIPE or RECORDER would work well...
11:29 pm
And sure enough, the correctly-spelled rightmost column's initials are HORNPIPE! Backsolving FTW.
11:31 pm
Long shot, but I'm gonna try to backsolve ALCHEMY's instrument as well.
11:33 pm
SACKBUT would work. A little obscure.
11:34 pm
And SERPENT. But likewise.
11:34 pm
Oh! A harmonica's brass? Didn't realize that.
11:36 pm
...No. No, it is not. The Wikipedia list of brass instruments is just a section of a list of all instruments, and I scrolled off the end of it.
11:39 pm
Okay, backsolving is really useful for instruments. MANDOLIN is reading backwards in the second row of answers for Urinetown.
11:54 pm
I kind of want it to be TRUMPET, but I don't see how to make it work.
11:56 pm
Diagonal SACKBUT in Wicked!
11:57 pm
C?OR??E??PHO?IES
12:01 am
CHORDLESS PHONIES would work well with all the cell phones in the intro...
12:01 am
DIDGERIDOO diagonally in MATTRESS!
12:03 am
Gotta be right. Submitting...
[Then the next day...]
2:44 pm
Picking up the rest now. (Found SAMISEN and FISCORN last night after I stopped logging; the former was made unfindable by an error in my notes, and the latter I'd just never heard of.)
2:45 pm
Spamalot!
2:58 pm
Judging by what I've got so far (maybe a third of the grid), there may be extra clues? Haven't actually encountered anything abnormal, but I'm running out of room in a few places, especially with FONZARELLI taking up most of row D.
3:00 pm
Instance of TETCBN: REINS as an answer, and "Reins in" as a clue elsewhere.
3:02 pm
This grid has both Lady Gaga and Katy Perry in it.
3:02 pm
But T. ___ probably isn't PAIN.
3:05 pm
Theory confirmed: "Second" is extraneous. Probably "Emergency room" too; are they all going to be abbreviated things, to spell out an answer?
3:06 pm
"Bishop". Looks like it.
3:09 pm
Theeere's XYLOPHONE!
3:17 pm
AMBUSHERS. Nobody expects them!
3:18 pm
Ought to put off the other two for a while.
[The rest was solved without logging; it's been long enough that I've forgotten how it went. I presume it was without incident.]