#30 - "Show Me a Sign"

[BrianMac]

The answer to the metapuzzle is a four letter word.

Good luck!

[TMart]

Got it! A welcome relief to start the new week.

[pgw]

Oops - the clue for 31-down either got cut off or was never finished. I'm not in a position to fix it right now but it should read "... useful in crosswords" or some similar copout. Neither the cluing error nor its fix affect the meta.

[damefox]

If this meta is showing any sign of being solvable, I'm not seeing it. But I will persist!

[Laura M]

So, is TMart the only one who's gotten this, or is everybody else just being quiet? This one is completely eluding me.

[Beth Tyrpin]

I am definitely struggling to solve this one.

[FrankieHeck]

Whole lot of nothing here.

[Hector]

I have something like a first step or first piece, but zero clue how to use it or to extend it. Might be a DNF.

Plus now I have in my search-bar history the, as it turns out, rather racy phrase consisting of the rhyming parts of the first two across entries.

[LesY]

Same as Hector (the first paragraph ).

What I’m seeing/thinking would be pretty diabolical, but even if I’m on the right track I don’t know where to go with it.

Happy to try to group solve. This one doesn’t count for anything publicly (or privately, other than pride).

[damefox]

Yeah this is another one I'm okay "cheating" on. Would love to hear what thoughts others have had. I can't make heads or tails of it.

[FrankieHeck]

There's a technique that I desperately want to work, but after much penicil work, I'm pretty much convinced this wasn't the right strategy. I did learn something, though, that will almost certainly never come in handy.

[Cindy]

Solved.

[damefox]

Solved.

How?? A nudge in the right direction would be much appreciated.

[FrankieHeck]

I finally got it. Or finally realized that I had already gotten it, or something. Puzzle-free weekend can begin!

[ChrisKochmanski]

Got it. I think. It works, sorta. It doesn't feel as elegant as other recent PGWCCs. So maybe I'm wrong. We'll see.

[TMart]

Sometimes you just see it.....

[FrankieHeck]

I think my problem with this one was that as soon as I saw the title and the started clue, I thought "stop," but then tried to figure out how that would lead me to the answer. I spent way too long trying to figure out on graph paper how to make a perfect octagon on the puzzle, finally got the one with all the right letters, but then couldn't figure out what the answer should be. The leftover letters on the straight sides (m, h, e, y) didn't spell anything. Finally I realized he must just really want STOP. So I stopped.

[Hector]

I figured the answer was probably STOP, given RED and Sign, saw the four non-diagonal entries with letters from STOP, but never saw that the diagonals also were that way. I had looked for an octagon, but only for one that spelled something out. The GREAT and SPOT up near RED was, well, a big red herring that absorbed most of my time. Congrats to the solvers!

[Beth Tyrpin]

I never saw it. I noticed the strings of letters. I noticed the letters close to STOP in mottos, hotpot, spotty and oppose. I thought the grid looked like Jupiter’s spot so I looked for counterclockwise words swirling around. Found stop in spotty and yield in needily. Thought orange might tie to traffic cone in 68A clue. Simple stumper.

[LesY]

Well I way overthought that one! I'm sure it's different for everyone but visual puzzles are sometimes in my "blind spot." ha ha