XWord Muggles Forum

Back on shore after being lost at sea for quite a few weeks.

Onshore and have been in that place on occasion.

gr8puzzler wrote: ↑Sun Jun 28, 2020 2:48 pm Onshore and have been in that place on occasion.

WELCOME - you are out 700th muggle

Hope that brings you good luck in winning the mug

Totally LAS on this one. Keeping company with my very favorite barkeep. Good luck all.

Very late start after a weekend of boating, fishing, and golfing. And of course, even without Isaac on our 25-footer, all these things involve a drink or two. Found my way to shore quickly nonetheless.

Better late than never, and after some goose chases (geese chase? geese chased? geese chaste?), I am on shore and fairly confident. Nice puzzle.

If someone can give me a nudge I’ll take it. Would be great to know if any of the paths I’m on are valid.

Me too please!

Wow. I think I got my second landing.

On shore! A fun one.

Week 5 of ?? that I'll be propping up the bar on the ship. Got a bad case of solver's block. Fingers crossed that some post enlightenment will happen, but I'm feeling doubtful.

Send more Patrick Berry.

I finally bypassed a couple of dead ends to find the path to the answer. Tough (for me) but fun. Ashore.

Our final count is 9 on the ship and 164 on the shore

And we have three more new muggles: gr8puzzler, erosecomm and moe gobba. That brings our happy clan to 702

Emerging into the ship's bar since lunch are;
ALS
Cynthia J
Dennis
Frenchy
Deb
and Bradisbrad

Making their way to the shore are:
Janet P
zacmoretz
Doug M
gr8puzzler
Commodore
Scott M
eagle1279
erosecomm
ccmac
phofer
and moe gobba

Good luck to all winning the mug
And stay safe

Once again making shore after our tour guide makes his final headcount. And I'm actually confidently ashore this time

I’m on A shore. I’ve tried several ways to solve this meta, and I love Patrick Berry puzzles, but sometimes I find it difficult getting onto the same wavelength as he. I’ve come up with four letters of what I believe to be the answer, but the part I don’t have can only make the solution one thing. I’ll think a bit more about this, and submit my Hail Mary right before the deadline.

Edit: And whaddaya know—I got it!

With Florida shut down again I ended up giving this one a shot. Grid was one of the toughest ones I can remember from WSJ. Got onshore with a nudge but it was def a KAS 5 for me.

Wicked quick and LUCKY path to total consciousness (which is nice):

The puzzle drops. I create and post the blank for PAST WSJCC Solutions and an Excel puzzle blank form.

In the very few minutes it takes to do this, I am looking at the layout of the puzzle, particularly for THEME ANSWERS, which figure heavily in a majority of meta puzzles. Creating the Excel form requires me to highlight all of the black spaces. This showed that there were 6, possibly 7, Theme Answers and where they were before thinking of reading the first clue.

Next, I save and open my own copy of the Excel form and get to work.

Which answers to solve first? ONLY the Theme Answers, if possible.

I get ART CRITIC, immediately, and my mind goes to the overly-lampooned stereotype of the elderly, androgynous, silver-haired Manhattanite, with super-large black-framed glasses, a puntable yappy dog in the crook of the elbow, wheezing over the artist's inferred state of mind as he or she created this latest indecipherable "masterpiece" of clown vomit... and ARTHRITIC? You BET! I am on the scent and KNOW the mechanism.

Interwebbed the Newman film (if it ain't COOL HAND LUKE, I don't know it nor care), get the next two Theme Answers, have to solve 2 or 3 Down answers to get and verify IM BUSHED, then interwebbed BROM BONES (which almost made me wish I had started from the end, despite getting ARTHRITIC, toot suite).

That gave HOT EAT, establishing that EAT IN was the necessary and 7th Theme Answer and completing the meta. Add in emailing the answer and I was able to post "Ashore & submitted".

It took very much longer to finish the grid and highlight the Theme Answers and the elegant Down answers affected by the letter changes.

[Edit1- Syntax, grammar, some highlighting]