XWord Muggles Forum

Chris King just release the first puzzle of a four part meta suite:

https://chriswords.com/

The next three will be coming out, one per day, now through Sunday.

I haven't looked at it yet, just got the email.

Thanks for the link, Barbara! It's kind of refreshing to have an easier grid to fill. I'm not familiar with his stuff, and maybe I didn't read carefully, but do you know if there is supposed to be a meta answer for each one, like the MMMM, or just the one final three-word answer?

Anybody working on this one? I'm completely lost! Grids were fun though.

Laura M wrote: ↑Mon Dec 23, 2019 11:51 am Anybody working on this one? I'm completely lost! Grids were fun though.

I have the four grids on one sheet of paper with the titles (but didn't print the clues) so I can glance at it now and then. Unfortunately, I'm too busy the next couple of days to spend much time on them.

Laura M wrote: ↑Mon Dec 23, 2019 11:51 am Anybody working on this one? I'm completely lost! Grids were fun though.

I did the grids. One of the long ones has 2 asterisks. What’s up with that? I am clueless!

Yeah, I did the grids yesterday but found nothing about the meta. I noticed that there are puzzle titles ("Gridwork," "Across and Down," "Plane of Existence," and "Coordinated Effort"), and that the series title is "Origin Story," which is all suggestive, but I haven't seen how to use that info.

I think he might be telling us something with the titles.....

I'm sure that the asterisks mean something (PM me if you want to know my theory on that) but I don't think they relate to the actual meta mechanism. I agree with Hector that the puzzle titles (and the images for each installment on the website) seem to indicate something, but I can't get any farther than that.

(I'm sure it's irrelevant or I wouldn't point it out, but: Anybody else notice the town "Gaffney" at the top of the SC map on the #4 post? :-)

Laura M wrote: ↑Mon Dec 23, 2019 1:18 pm I'm sure that the asterisks mean something (PM me if you want to know my theory on that) but I don't think they relate to the actual meta mechanism. I agree with Hector that the puzzle titles (and the images for each installment on the website) seem to indicate something, but I can't get any farther than that.

(I'm sure it's irrelevant or I wouldn't point it out, but: Anybody else notice the town "Gaffney" at the top of the SC map on the #4 post?

Yeah, I especially made note of the images for each installment...

Also, the asterisks move back and forth from puzzle to puzzle from the right to the leftt of the clues.

Got it. Still don't understand one piece, but with the rest I was confident enough.

BarbaraK wrote: ↑Tue Dec 24, 2019 11:10 am Got it. Still don't understand one piece, but with the rest I was confident enough.

Thanks, glad to know it's possible!

Returning to these with fresh eyes, I now have a reasonably confident first step, apart from one piece, but so far no clue where to go with the results.

Chris, on the blog, encourages solving with others. If anyone cares to join forces, please shoot me a PM.

Hector wrote: ↑Sun Dec 29, 2019 3:46 pm Chris, on the blog, encourages solving with others. If anyone cares to join forces, please shoot me a PM.

Did you ever get any takers and/or finish this one? My son was just congratulating me on having all current metas done, and I remembered my little squares lying around somewhere...and then I saw they are due at midnight, and so I am going to have this niggling at me now...

A couple of takers, but no confident progress after the first step (which seems 100%). Sometimes you don't see any mechanism, but this time there seem to be too many possible mechanisms.

BarbaraK, care to share?

Hector wrote: ↑Wed Jan 01, 2020 10:57 am BarbaraK, care to share?

Oh, it is past the deadline, isn't it. Sure.

The position of the * tells you to work with the front or back word from each theme answer.
Each of those words can be preceded by two letters:
VW Golf
UN Resolution
PO Box
IV Drip
KY Jelly
HQ Trivia
GI Joe
MC Hammer
LA Kings
WD Forty & UB Forty (that's why this one had two *s)
PA System
OK Corral

Now put the four grids together in a big 26x26 square so you can use the initials as coordinates into the grid. Puzzle #3, with all the initials in the A-M range, goes into the top left corner. Puzzle #4, with the first initials N-Z and the second A-M goes top right, etc.

Finding the appropriate letters in each grid, in theme answer order gives you:

COG (from puzzle 3) ERGO (from puzzle 4)
ITO (from puzzle 2) SUM (from puzzle 1)

So the answer is COGITO ERGO SUM

(I'd never heard of UB Forty, but it obviously had to be an E there.)

WOW! Even after Hector gave me the first step, I came up with some different takes (PC system, HI Resolution, I forget what I had for Golf, and I stupidly went with SF for the Fortyniners though I see how that couldn't be right.) And I didn't think of putting the grids together like that. I was sort of picturing a 3D chess board, so I made a giant grid where each square of the 13x13 was made of four smaller squares, and I filled those all in...and found nothing.

Nice job, BarbaraK!!

Thanks, BarbaraK, and, yes, way to solve!!

I'd played with treating the letters as coordinates in individual puzzles, but assembling the four grids into a larger one never occurred to me. I had HD resolution, and I also thought the (**) meant use both words in "Forty Niners," so I had SF. Many rabbit holes looking for mechanisms for the individual grids...

Not sure how "Cogito ergo sum" constitutes a "Chris Words Origin Story," but this was a clever meta.