MGWCC #782 — “Hear, Here!”

[lbray53]

Solved, submitted and beamed with a great assist. I need to start looking at my own notes. It was all right there in front of me.

[Joe Ross]

Transported in by others at #138.

[ZooAnimalsOnWheels]

I have been beamed aboard. I needed some assurances in the Sunday Last Call to get there, but I got there.

[benchen71]

With nudges I have submitted an answer, so I am awaiting the beam...

... Finally an update! And I'm aboard.

[Joe]

I've been informed that my big, shiny, impossible to ignore discovery is... nothing. Intentional red herring or mere coincidence.

I hereby submit my resignation. I am never doing another meta again for the rest of my life.

Until Thursday.

[boharr]

Beamed. The late drop allowed me to solve after returning from my daughter's graduation.

[MikeyG]

I've been informed that my big, shiny, impossible to ignore discovery is... nothing. Intentional red herring or mere coincidence.

I hereby submit my resignation. I am never doing another meta again for the rest of my life.

Until Thursday.

That's like me with the Cubs sometimes.

"Ugh, I can't STAND this team! I'll see you tomorrow!"

[BarbaraK]

I was nudged into the transporter beam. Turned out that something I’d noticed but almost didn’t mention since it seemed so unlikely to be relevant was in fact a good place to start.

[rjy]

Tough one - wow! - but beamed thanks to some friendly rabbit hole confirmation/pruning. It's gonna take a while for my brain to untwist itself - but I'll be back for more!

[minimuggle]

Finally got it with a lot of helpful nudges. Really a fun one. At least I think I got it.

[Laura M]

I don't believe I finally got this (beam-up pending)! I stared at it so long without seeing anything.

Edit: #194, I'll take it!

[Laura M]

I've been informed that my big, shiny, impossible to ignore discovery is... nothing. Intentional red herring or mere coincidence.

I hereby submit my resignation. I am never doing another meta again for the rest of my life.

Until Thursday.

I said I didn't see anything, but in fact I did spend a lot of time in a very compelling rabbit hole. I wonder if it was the same one...

[BarbaraK]

One of the things that I try when I’m desperate, even though it never actually works, this time yielded an amazingly tantalizing result - that went nowhere and had no connection to the actual metanism.

[sharkicicles]

I've been informed that my big, shiny, impossible to ignore discovery is... nothing. Intentional red herring or mere coincidence.

I hereby submit my resignation. I am never doing another meta again for the rest of my life.

Until Thursday.

That's like me with the Cubs sometimes.

"Ugh, I can't STAND this team! I'll see you tomorrow!"

And the Sox...

[Laura M]

Apparently a lot of people found rabbit holes/red herrings with this one. Here's mine: There were 4 clues with exclamation points (like the title), and each of those clued a 3-letter word (MMM, EAT, TOV, and AHA, although not in that order). I didn't think that META was the answer since the hear/here in the title didn't figure into it at all, but I took it as a sign that I was on the right track, because this couldn't possibly all be a coincidence! Right??

[Joe Ross]

NETWORK PROTOCOLS -- “You can’t have your cake and EAT it, too"

WHEN WE WERE YOUNG -- Fruit of yew -- CONE

BOARD OF REALTORS -- Transport, as ore -- HAUL

RUSSO JAPANESE WAR -- Wild things to sow -- OATS

ECHO

[ZooAnimalsOnWheels]

This was complicated by all the other homonyms that were about. I started by circling all the ones in the clues: flower, stake, planes, weigh, etc. which made it easy to miss the ones we actually needed (although YEW always stood out). And then some of the themers had their own homonyms that stood out more: PANE, REAL, and even EWER/WE/ERE. I kind of knew that the themers running 16 letters meant that JAPANESE or REALTOR weren't the only important parts, but it really took me focusing on NETWORK PROTOCOLS, which only additionally had ROT/WROUGHT and seemed too messy, to see what we were supposed to see.

[sharkicicles]

I got this one right away but didn’t notice that there were actually 2 hints in each long answer…

[BarbaraK]

With a puzzle with 4 obvious theme entries and a 4 letter answer, one thing I try when I’m getting nowhere is to look for a 4 letter word with one letter from each theme entry and then try to backsolve it. This never actually works. If the mechanism is that basic, I’ll probably see it before I get that desperate. But hope springs eternal.

So this week I had nothing and decided to try it. With such long theme entries, I knew there would be a ton of possibilities, but maybe something would jump out. I used qat to find possibilities and started scanning list and was surprised and encouraged to see some words that were familiar from the grid! Aha! I went through the grid and found exactly four entries that can come from taking one letter from each theme entry in order: ROSE LOAN TESS ONES. Which led exactly nowhere, but what an amazing coincidence.

[BrennerTJ]

Having no schedule is the best thing since sliced bread - though it leads to not remembering what day it is on most days.