XWord Muggles Forum

Having spent my free time since Friday working on a neat puzzle about socks over at fivethirtyeight.com, I returned to this one this morning, and got on in. Nice meta! A distraction or two in the grid, whether intentional or not I don't know.

Edit: (BTW, I've nudged CrossedPurposes, tonyrobots, and damefox)

Hi all, I'm new here and hoping to keep my little 2 puzzle streak going! Could I possibly get a nudge as well? Just hoping to get a foothold. Appreciate it! Very excited to be a part of the community here.

Hector wrote: ↑Sun Dec 22, 2019 1:15 pm Having spent my free time since Friday working on a neat puzzle about socks over at fivethirtyeight.com, I returned to this one this morning, and got on in. Nice meta! A distraction or two in the grid, whether intentional or not I don't know.

Edit: (BTW, I've nudged CrossedPurposes and tonyrobots)

Would you mind assisting me as well?

For some reason this took me about five or ten minutes to get. Odd for a Week 3 (especially for me).

Got it! Thanks for the little nudge, Hector. Very satisfying, even with a hint. I think I'm hooked

Got it (also with a little help). Oddly what would've been my hail mary guess ended up being correct, which to me makes this a little unsatisfying. I seem to be in the minority though.

Whew! Got it, but I needed a nudge -- more like a couple -- from another solver. Fun, even though I needed the help. Interesting too that it would have been possible for me to work backwards to the solution, if I had followed an inkling I had early on.

I’ve put this puzzle down and picked it up a few times with no success. If nudges are available I guess I could use one too. Thank you!

Thanks for the nudge, Hector. I'm in the same boat as damefox - would have been my hail Mary as well. Still fun to puzzle out. I've nudged oldjudge.

Well well well. Beam me up!

tonyrobots wrote: ↑Sun Dec 22, 2019 1:55 pm Hi all, I'm new here and hoping to keep my little 2 puzzle streak going! Could I possibly get a nudge as well? Just hoping to get a foothold. Appreciate it! Very excited to be a part of the community here.

G-Force! Welcome to the forums. Love your avatar. I suspect you had no trouble with the WSJ puzzle two weeks ago, whose answer was WONDER TWINS.

I’ll take a nudge if anyone is offering. It has beaten me so far.

Streroto wrote: ↑Mon Dec 23, 2019 12:41 pm I’ll take a nudge if anyone is offering. It has beaten me so far.

Likewise. Thanks.

Finally got around to looking at this and, wow, I’m not even sure what the theme of the puzzle is yet, much less what to change.

Happy holidays to everyone!

Got it, looking it over a second time on a different day seems to do the trick on harder ones.

Solution is up on Crossword Fiend. I do like the idea of this puzzle, but I had a couple quibbles with it. 1) Clearly having pairs of clues with the same pair of numbers was just intended to be confusing, except that by an annoying coincidence the one without a pair is that one that you needed to make a new word for, which suggests that the other pairs are related even though they're not. Since Matt has said in the past he doesn't usually put intentional red herrings in his puzzles, this feels out of character and not a week 3 move. Maybe more appropriate for a week 4 or 5. 2) As I said above, my hail mary guess turned out to be correct. I landed on ROCH -> RICH for the sole reason that ROCH is a very weird word to have in a puzzle when RICH would work. If you're going to make a puzzle where the meta involves changing one letter, the puzzle needs to be equally clean before and after the change. Having an obviously obscure word means that backsolving is too easy. But that said, the idea is clever, and it's cute that O -> I is also the change from ON -> IN, so it works with the theme in multiple ways.

I too got it right without any clue as to how to get there. My nudge did not get me anywhere, alas! Looking at the solution I would never have figured it out even if I had months or years to do so. Week 3?? Yikes. Hopefully Matt declares this a week 4 and goes easy on us Friday. Happy holidays all!!

damefox wrote: ↑Tue Dec 24, 2019 12:47 pm [...]
If you're going to make a puzzle where the meta involves changing one letter, the puzzle needs to be equally clean before and after the change. Having an obviously obscure word means that backsolving is too easy. But that said, the idea is clever, and it's cute that O -> I is also the change from ON -> IN, so it works with the theme in multiple ways.

I didn't realize the O->I thing until some time after I submitted; I was already impressed with this one but that added an extra level of elegance in my opinion! I agree that ROCH is clunky but I still probably wouldn't have guessed the change without figuring the rest of it out, I'm too used to seeing weird/unfamiliar words in crosswords :-)

Right, if it was pgw, I'd think quite possibly he was trying to educate, but it did seem unusual for Matt. Also (on the) LOOSE and (on the) HEAD seemed distracting.

Never got to finish this due to holiday festivities, but saw ROCH/STROKE to RICH/STRIKE early on as the only possible letter switch that made sense both across and down, with no idea as to the method of getting there. Never sent it - oh well.