XWord Muggles Forum

Commodore wrote: ↑Mon Nov 02, 2020 8:14 am Holy Allen Ginsberg, I looked many times at Listen, Tan, Tots, Ape, Bridge. But, slap to head, never connected to the other puzzle answers. Don't know if I would have connected Ape to Lummox.

I feel like if you had got the Listen and Tots you could have guessed the rest. Thats basically what I did. I saw BRIDGET crossing with GHOST and remembered SPAN from earlier fill. Then looked at GLISTEN and HEAR was very close to where I was work the grid so when I got HEAR I felt pretty confident in the method so I looked at TOOTS and WEEONES so with and H*W*S - I figured it was HOWLS and LUMMOX was the only thing that worked with APE.

DanA wrote: ↑Mon Nov 02, 2020 9:02 am My rat-hole that kept me distracted for a while was noticing that 48D CAPER could be made into CASPER (the friendly GHOST) by adding S and it crossed 57A. So I started looking for other famous ghosts or transparent things that could be spelled by adding 1 letter and were crossing the long answers. Didn’t find much and eventually gave up on that strategy.

Yes I also got caught up in the Casper Caper - spent a lot of time looking for INK or BLINK, TOPPE, MUIR, etc.

Finally needed a nudge to remind me that you can see right through a ghost so it was like they were not there...DUH!

(G)LISTEN and HEAR and TO(O)TS and WEE ONES were weird enough that I knew I was following the right bunny. Otherwise I'm not sure I would have made the AP(S)E/LUMMOX, BRIDGE(T)/SPAN or T(H)AN/OCHER connections. Of course, most meta puzzles have a lot of weird words to draw you into the wrong hole.

Feel my pain. The very first thing I wrote down on my solving sheet was "listen tan tots ape bridge". And I, too, like many others above, never made a connection from there. Spent lots of time looking for letter patterns, sound patterns, anagram patterns, random patterns (as good a choice as any of my others). My solving percent is rapidly diminishing. "But I am learning" -- maybe.

TPS wrote: ↑Mon Nov 02, 2020 10:12 am

Commodore wrote: ↑Mon Nov 02, 2020 8:14 am Holy Allen Ginsberg, I looked many times at Listen, Tan, Tots, Ape, Bridge. But, slap to head, never connected to the other puzzle answers. Don't know if I would have connected Ape to Lummox.

I feel like if you had got the Listen and Tots you could have guessed the rest. Thats basically what I did. I saw BRIDGET crossing with GHOST and remembered SPAN from earlier fill. Then looked at GLISTEN and HEAR was very close to where I was work the grid so when I got HEAR I felt pretty confident in the method so I looked at TOOTS and WEEONES so with and H*W*S - I figured it was HOWLS and LUMMOX was the only thing that worked with APE.

Probably so. Likely, I am still shaken and brain-addled by the frightening Post #1 in this thread.

My personal rabbit hole (anyone else?): I noticed that all of the words in the title are homophones for another word. “Eye sea rite threw ewe.” There are a number of homophone words in the grid (tope, peer, arcs, fore, tail, etc.). Which lead — exactly nowhere. Thank goodness I focused on GHOST letters and found the true path.

Ugh! I saw hear and (g)listen but didn’t catch on to the next steps.

I looked at GHOST in the center and saw it crossed with TOOTS. My first thought was - If you can't see a ghost, can you hear his toots, 'cause that's something you might hear on Halloween!

I also noticed that aside from the missing "H", the remainder of the letters for hALLOWEEN were all over the place in the top right quarter of the grid.

Starting at Row 14 Column 15 and going northwest, there's the title: I See (c) right through you (u).
As close as I got.
Big dry spell.

Oddly, I came very close to getting the answer by an alternate mechanism.

I saw the "H" in GHOST was silent ("see through") and decided it needed to move elsewhere. I also noticed OWOW (19A), which I sounded out as OWLS. Had I simply added the H to OWLS, I would have stumbled onto the correct answer.

But alas, I decided to go with the sound of owls, which would be HOOTS by substituting the first T in the crossing word TOOT (37A) with an H and then pluralizing. Oh well.

As far as figuring out a more plausible met mechanism, I just didn't pay enough attention to the other crossing words, since there was no other evident location to work with.

I wonder if the OWOW was intended as a subtle hint; it was such a strange grid entry.

When I posted that I was on shore, I saw 60% of the meta answer, a huge OWL, in Bob cruise director's avatar. I decided to keep quiet, because "Hey Bob, your avatar might be a partial spoiler" would have been a partial spoiler.

C=64 wrote: ↑Mon Nov 02, 2020 8:54 pm When I posted that I was on shore, I saw 60% of the meta answer, a huge OWL, in Bob cruise director's avatar. I decided to keep quiet, because "Hey Bob, your avatar might be a partial spoiler" would have been a partial spoiler.

I put the owl up before I started the contest. I selected it because it was Halloween.

Fun puzzle - solved it super fast and got the meta right on the website. Normally need to print it out and scribble on it and try out different approaches. Got an email from WSJ today - I won the mug! Chosen at random from over 1,200 correct entries.

Just goes to show that anyone can win, so keeping entering, shipmates.

So how many of the rabbit holes we encounter are plants by the author and how many are just coincidental? Obviously many of us looked at the letters surrounding any letter "u" in the puzzle, as well as possibly any "i" or "c" all thanks to the puzzle title. Of course OWOW and Caper (Casper??) had it's fans and in the lower left corner I saw DRUID, although that could pretty easily be discarded. Then there's BOTTLE, which can be seen through. Shoot, there's even SCREAM if one takes the sc in arcs, the re in moores and the am in alms - all loosely connected. This isn't an exhaustive list, but it is a fair number of rabbit holes and typical of every one of these puzzles. Coincidences or plants?

Grover wrote: ↑Mon Nov 02, 2020 9:57 pm Coincidences or plants?

I think that in any random crossword an infinite number of solutions can be discovered if one is determined enough.

This was me last week without discovering the solution:

Omnibus wrote: ↑Mon Nov 02, 2020 9:31 pm Fun puzzle - solved it super fast and got the meta right on the website. Normally need to print it out and scribble on it and try out different approaches. Got an email from WSJ today - I won the mug! Chosen at random from over 1,200 correct entries.

Just goes to show that anyone can win, so keeping entering, shipmates.

Congratulations!! We will all expect to see you with it in pictures! I guess you'll be mugging for the camera?

Bob cruise director wrote: ↑Mon Nov 02, 2020 9:09 pm

C=64 wrote: ↑Mon Nov 02, 2020 8:54 pm When I posted that I was on shore, I saw 60% of the meta answer, a huge OWL, in Bob cruise director's avatar. I decided to keep quiet, because "Hey Bob, your avatar might be a partial spoiler" would have been a partial spoiler.

I put the owl up before I started the contest. I selected it because it was Halloween.

I believe that is HOWLOWEEN. I was going to bring my owl Trick or Treating but he was barred....that's OK he didn't give a hoot.

Sorry, you've got to know by now that I am going to do these things.

DrTom wrote: ↑Tue Nov 03, 2020 2:18 am I believe that is HOWLOWEEN. I was going to bring my owl Trick or Treating but he was barred....that's OK he didn't give a hoot.

My owl was a hoot. These made her screech.

Omnibus wrote: ↑Mon Nov 02, 2020 9:31 pm Fun puzzle - solved it super fast and got the meta right on the website. Normally need to print it out and scribble on it and try out different approaches. Got an email from WSJ today - I won the mug! Chosen at random from over 1,200 correct entries.

Just goes to show that anyone can win, so keeping entering, shipmates.

Awesome and huge congratulations! Isn't it a thrill! What a HOWL!!!!

...and OWOW was a grid entry in one of the recent daily puzzles. Thought it odd, then and surprised to see it so soon again. Even then, I did not solve this one