#621 - "Run the Numbers"

[Bird Lives]

My last rabbit hole was converting the letters to their numerical order in the alphabet ( T=20, Y=25, and so on) and then finding the letters in the numbered squares in the grid. Seemed like a good idea at the time. I still haven't looked at the answer, so I don't know how far off that was.

[boharr]

I'm amazed anyone got this. Impressive.

[MajordomoTom]

Got it with two minutes to spare, after a last-minute nudge.

Oddly enough, I had considered this answer yesterday, but was unsatisfied with it without a confirming mechanism.

I wonder if I'll show up as the last correct entry!

It was sure a toughie.

I see what you did there.

[Jeremy Smith]

Got it with two minutes to spare, after a last-minute nudge.

Oddly enough, I had considered this answer yesterday, but was unsatisfied with it without a confirming mechanism.

I wonder if I'll show up as the last correct entry!

It was sure a toughie.

I see what you did there.

You got a shout-out in the NYT crossword today.

[camandsampowercouple]

did anyone else try to plot the points on the grid to find useful letters?

[Hector]

did anyone else try to plot the points on the grid to find useful letters?

There are so many things that the numbers could have indicated numerically, which made for an excellent distraction from the actual, non-numerical mechanism.

[Meg]

did anyone else try to plot the points on the grid to find useful letters?

You know, I’ve done that before and I have a feeling that Matt used that mechanism once.

[camandsampowercouple]

I was CONVINCED that "Run the Numbers" was telling me to "Do the Math". I was adding the numbers, finding the difference, multiplying, plotting...

[TMart]

I noticed the asterisk discrepancy right away, but didn't know what to do with it.

I tried to "run" the numbers, taking (6,10) to mean 6-7-8-9-10, etc. and see if those letters spelled anything...nope.

Then I tried all kinds of indexing, adding, subtracting, etc. and got nothing.

I finally stumbled onto the anagrams, and ended up with 14 letters that didn't spell anything, but had them listed in a column in their respective pairs, and noticed that some of them spelled "tough", which would make sense as part of an answer. And then I remembered the asterisk problem, so I went back and did exactly what joon mentioned on Crossword Fiend - systematically crossed off the anagrammed letters from left to right, and used the asterisks as a first-last indicator and got TOUGHIE.

I did have a little consternation about the leftover letters, but it was so clean up to that point that I decided to go for it. Sometimes the hardest part of solving metas is knowing when to stop!

Great puzzle!

[Bird Lives]

did anyone else try to plot the points on the grid to find useful letters?

There are so many things that the numbers could have indicated numerically, which made for an excellent distraction from the actual, non-numerical mechanism.

I highlighted the 14 letters. Four of the formed a square that could have been an O, and others might have been stretched to a C. But I figured that was wrong because in some cases there was more than one letter in the long entry, e.g., three O's in GROW OUT OF.

[Big Mac]

Somehow saw the anagrams right away and completely missed the * positions. Multiple of the same "extra" letters definitely threw me off on how to organize the mechanism.

[camandsampowercouple]

Yeah the Os in GROW OUT OF were beating my butt all weekend. which one do i leave to examine the grid with???

[Laura M]

Whoa, I didn't see the TOUGHIE/EIGHT connection at all!

I was surprised that many found this meta easier than the previous week's. In my (somewhat limited) experience, the numbers in parentheses have never been used that way, and it really required some out-of-the box thinking (both to construct and to solve!). I'm pretty sure that the only reason I got this one is Brian Mac's metapuzzle "Downtimes," which I ultimately didn't solve but which already had me thinking about numbers spelled out. Thanks, Brian!

[camandsampowercouple]

How do you know if you won the weekly prize? Does he publish it?

[BarbaraK]

How do you know if you won the weekly prize? Does he publish it?

He’s no longer awarding weekly or monthly random prizes. (They’re against the rules of the new platform.)

He’ll be announcing new rules about annual prizes real soon now.

[MajordomoTom]

then he needs to update his main contest page, you know, the one where you submit the answers?