Reading “A variant of the Hales–Jewett theorem” on its anniversary

In a recent paper “A variant of the Hales–Jewett theorem”, M. Beiglböck provides a version of the classic coloring result in which an instance of the variable in a word giving rise to a monochromatic combinatorial line can be moved around in a finite structure of specified type (for example, an arithmetic progression). We give an elementary proof and infinitary extensions.