20. Let's Get Meta!

[MikeyG]

Aaaaand I edited the wrong post. (Sounds about right.)

[MikeyG]

Note the altered PDF and PUZ, with circles around certain entries. Since the meta is illustrative, I feel the hint is justified.

[Meg]

OK, I got the second one. Moving along…….

[boharr]

Answer submitted.
EDIT: Confirmed. Onward.

[KayW]

Submitted. Nice one!

[ChrisKochmanski]

I believe I have it. Though I needed a nudge. Awaiting confirmation.

Good one!

Thanks, Mikey!

[DrTom]

I might have it, waiting for confirmation from Mikey. If so I still have one, and from what I assume a 4th that ties them together. I know Josh has been wanting to do this for a while and it appears he got two partners in crime to help!!

[woozy]

I think I got it.... On to Ben's and Josh's.

[whimsy]

Last piece of the pie!

[markhr]

Confirmed. Two down, one MEOW to go.

[jhseeman]

Well apparently I have two more puzzles to go.... I really need to pay closer attention.

[Laura M]

Finally got this one (after one misstep)! And now I have everything. Really fun meta superset, thanks!

[DrTom]

OK, I guess I should read the leaderboard. Got Mikey's and Ben's and the combo but still struggling on Josh's. Now I have WSJ and MG to contend with as well. A human works from suns to sun but a puzzler's work is never done, they read the clues and solve the grid then wonder where the meta is hid.

[Bird Lives]

I liked this one. If I'd thought about MikeyG's previous puzzles, I wouldn't have needed a nudge, but I didn't and I did.

[MikeyG]

I liked this one. If I'd thought about MikeyG's previous puzzles, I wouldn't have needed a nudge, but I didn't and I did.

You have to get in my head (aaahhhhhh, too many cats and calculus problems).

[Joe Ross]

I liked this one. If I'd thought about MikeyG's previous puzzles, I wouldn't have needed a nudge, but I didn't and I did.

You have to get in my head (aaahhhhhh, too many cats and calculus problems).

[edestlin]

So I've gotten BenChen71's and I've filled out the grids for MikeyG and MEOW but haven't quite cracked the mechanisms for those two (I'd say I feel like I'm close but still missing). As much as I keep telling myself I've given up I keep coming back to them. Would anyone be willing to offer a nudge? Happy to PM where I am and see if I'm on the right track.

EDIT: Got it, all set. Thanks for the nudges and encouragement.

[MarkWoychick]

Thanks for the puzzle! I am now 3/3 on the meta puzzle trifecta

[MikeyG]

Looks like we might level out at 20 - let's see if there's one or two more out there who can crack it! If not, score! (GET IT?????)

[MikeyG]

First to arrive, last to leave - but don't want to outstay my welcome, so let's wrap this one up!

April "Mini"-Meta:

Answer: CROSSWORD (PUZZLE)
Solvers: 20



As I've alluded to before, though do not want to solely rely on, sometimes I like my "visual" metas, which illustrate something in the grid as opposed to explicitly spelling it out. They are more tenuous, however, in terms of their exact answer - but I think this one, especially with the circles, does carry it on home.

Pretty simple: ten words are WORD words because those words can be followed by "WORD" (word!). They are highlighted in yellow in the above grid; I admit that some are not as common as the others, such as LOAN, WEASEL (though I love Wikipedia's article on this here), and MICROSOFT (well...for the Mac users, hahaha). Since those words are literally crossing in the grid, per 5-A, the answer to the meta is that this is a CROSSWORD (or perhaps, as at least one person noted, a CROSS-WORD crossword!).

My misspellings, along with my partners in cruciverbalism, give the following triple meta message:

THE ANSWER TO THE / META META META IS / A CHEESY RHYME.

The intended answer to this was FETA, but I think @Beth Tyrpin takes the cake with BRIEZY, which was absolutely genius.

Cheesy Leaderboard (The Gouda Place)

boharr
ChrisKochmanski
Laura M
Darth
Mark Woychick
DrTom
lbray53
Bird Lives
KayW
Beth Tyrpin
BarbaraK

---

As for how this came about, I'm not sure, haha. I was watching the Super Bowl, which shows you where my mind was, and I was fiddling around with meta ideas and was thinking it'd be cool to reach out to other community meta extraordinaires (with clever acronyms to boot!) to create some wild theme idea like this. Originally, I floated having the puzzles connect to each other, but then someone (you guys can take credit, I can't recall) thought about having the puzzles be self-contained and then the META META META be separate and carry throughout.

Someone else also thought it'd be fun if the meta puzzles themselves involved the nature of meta-ness - meta indeed! I thought of CROSSWORD PUZZLE before for a meta idea (a great 15-themer also!), and I love crosswords, so there you go. I also love baseball and GINGER CAT, so I'll have to make a cat-themed meta down the line (you've been warned).

@benchen71 and @madhatter5 might have other insights also on the over 100-message e-mail thread that carried us through a couple of weeks, haha. It was a blast working with them, and I hope you enjoyed our creation!

My end-of-month meta coming this Saturday! Keep puzzling until then!

Mikey G