Indie 500 Tournament Meta Suite

[BrianMac]

The Indie 500 is a crossword tournament in Washington, D.C, held every summer featuring some of the top names in crosswords. I have never attended, but I have heard universally positive things about the tournament, so if you’re in the D.C. area on June 1, you should try to attend (but register quick because spots are filling up).

I just noticed that this year they are offering a “Meta Suite,” described on their website as follows:

"Where on the Globe Is Carla Sacramento?": An interconnected set of five meta puzzles plus a final meta-meta puzzle, available by donation. These puzzles share the travel theme of the 2019 tournament, but are otherwise unrelated to the tournament puzzles.

You can purchase the suite for a discretionary donation here: https://www.theindie500.com/registration

You can also register for the tournament at this link and purchase past puzzles (no metas that I see). I just signed up for the Meta Suite, and I immediately received and email saying the puzzles will be ready and arrive by email in the next few weeks. On Twitter, they said it will be released May 6.

[BarbaraK]

I've been checking their site to see when the meta suite is available. Thought, when I saw this topic, that it was out. I've done the last couple years (two, I think) and will definitely want this year too.

[LesY]

I'd love to go one year - it's only 2 hours away. This year it coincides with my first cousin's wedding, so I signed up for the At Home Division and the Meta Suite. Can't wait!

[Cindy]

I bought the meta suite. Looking forward to it.

[BrianMac]

Check your inboxes! I received the meta suite early this morning.

[Hector]

Thanks for the heads-up, Brian. I just did the meta suite over an extended lunch break. Fun! Highly recommended. Difficulty-wise and meta-strategy-wise, these are very representative of the range of metas we're used to.

[BarbaraK]

Thanks for the heads-up, Brian. I just did the meta suite over an extended lunch break. Fun! Highly recommended. Difficulty-wise and meta-strategy-wise, these are very representative of the range of metas we're used to.

You did all of them in one day! Wow! I have to ration myself to one per day. Okay, maybe sometimes two I'm planning to wait until after MMMM to look at the Indie 500.

[LesY]

Nice work, Hector! I did the first three this evening (after swearing to myself I’d only do one). And am on the trail
of the fourth. Fun suite!

Thanks to Barbara for the reminder about MMMM tomorrow. Somehow that one always sneaks up on me (in a good way!).

[Al Sisti]

Finished the Suite... Outstanding job of construction. I still think it's gotta be easier to solve these than to create them. So elegant.

[LesY]

I solved them all - but needed one small nudge on the 5-pointer. I had the right mechanism but was blind to one little piece....and the directions suggested something that I don't think was entirely accurate....don't know when we can discuss without spoilers but I wanted that one (Purloined Letters) to be set up slightly differently.

Can't imagine all the work that went into constructing and am super-appreciative of the good folks at Indie 500. The surprise at the end was fun, too!

[LesY]

I'm game. Thanks Brian! I think it's ok since the package gives both hints and the actual answers. And there isn't a prize or even any way to register that you solved correctly or with help.

So here goes......for Purloined Letters I thought the E would be missing twice, which is right, except so was the entire related word. I probably should have jumped to the answer once I saw what was going on, and it rolled through my brain once or twice. But my mind was stuck on needing to add E to the front of a 3-letter word in the grid, which would have been very much like the original mechanism. Imagine my brain freeze when I came across...CHU.

Long-time WSJ solvers will appreciate how I wish it had been set up --- I think it would have been outstanding poetic justice for that entry to have been clued "Famous person/comedian Margaret." With the E added to the grid answer to produce the meta answer.

Clearly I thought long and hard about that one! Nailed the rest.

[LesY]

And I just realized you’re stuck on that one, Brian. If you don’t want to use rot13 to translate the hints they provided here’s a nudge:

- You’ve probably figured out the first step. Find the 4 missing letters in the middle of each “wraparound” answer. E.g., CHING(U)ARD.

- Then take each of those 4 letters and start looking for how 3 of them are used in the grid.

Respond back if you need/want more.

[BrianMac]

Thanks, Les. I just now finished, or should I say threw in the towel, so I have not visited this thread until now.

On puzzle 4, I did get the words going around the bend and the missing letters (though I wondered about POW[D]ER). I couldn't see where to go from there and would not have looked to the NATO alphabet in 1,000 years. Did anything in the instructions prompt that? I thought maybe D was the "letter missing twice" and that the word was POW[D]ERE[D] something.

I don't think I would have gotten there on 5 either, but I enjoyed the grid and meta a lot. I pulled my hair out trying to find a 6-letter college In Philadelphia (basically Drexel and Temple). It wouldn't have occurred to me to pick one that's not in the grid and apply the conceit to that to get another town. The towns correspond to colleges in the grid. TEMPE should not be in the grid because there is nothing in the grid corresponding to ARIZONA STATE!

So I probably broke their servers trying over and over again to submit PITTSBURGH because PIT in the grid fits the pattern of the other colleges.

[LesY]

Ah the NATO alphabet..thanks Brian. I didn’t make that connection until you mentioned it. I guess that means E really was missing twice - one from boomerang and again as the letter “echo.” I’d have to go back and parse the dossier, but to your question I don’t think anything pointed that way except we did know “letters” were missing. Maybe we were supposed to flash on NATO alphabet by recognition? Have to say Uniform is about the least likely NATO letter to pop out, at least for me.

Sorry puzzle 5 threw you. I sat there looking at Temple/Drexel on my worksheet for about 10 minutes until it hit me. It felt right so I didn’t think through whether it was all logically consistent.

Did you do the last “bonus” puzzle after submitting all 5 answers together? Enjoyed that one.

[BarbaraK]

All done now!

The one that gave me the most fits was actually the easy one - #3 Making Contact in Greece. Golden and Greek mythology just had to be Jason and the Golden Fleece. Tried those plus argo, argonaut, argonauts, and when nothing worked, assumed I must have misspelled something and tried again.

So in #2 Deus ex Machina, that ridiculous number 821491096894172 never meant anything?! When it didn't turn out to be useful in that puzzle (despite having the same number of digits as rows in the grid) I expected it to somehow come back into play for the final.

#4 The Purloined Letters was a gimme for me since I know the NATO alphabet well. Thought it was clever though how they used them with other meanings.

#5 Dropping Out would have been really impressive if they'd made the symmetric word, where TEMPE would have gone, so that you could have actually subbed it in there and still had legit crossing words.

[LesY]

Results for the Solve at Home Division are out. I finished smack dab in the middle - literally! 37 of 73

How did others do?

[Leslie]

Results for the Solve at Home Division are out. I finished smack dab in the middle - literally! 37 of 73

How did others do?

I tried it for the first time this year. I was a bit slow but I'm number 49. I would love to go to a crossword tournament sometime, but I don't live anywhere near any of them.

[LesY]

Results for the Solve at Home Division are out. I finished smack dab in the middle - literally! 37 of 73

How did others do?

I tried it for the first time this year. I was a bit slow but I'm number 49. I would love to go to a crossword tournament sometime, but I don't live anywhere near any of them.

I think your finish is really good! It felt like I was flying when I did those puzzles - only one of them really slowed me down much, but it looks like even when I thought I was flying there were others going way faster! Next level stuff, and a bit sobering/humbling!

I live in Virginia and could make it to this one if the calendar allows - but like you I don't really live near the others.

[Leslie]

I think your finish is really good! It felt like I was flying when I did those puzzles - only one of them really slowed me down much, but it looks like even when I thought I was flying there were others going way faster! Next level stuff, and a bit sobering/humbling!

If you compare the home scores with the results from the actual tournament, it looks like you would have finished 78th, just a couple of places behind Matt Gaffney!

I would have been within the top half, which at least reassures me that I wouldn't feel completely out of place if I ever manage to go to one of these.