MGWCC #824 — “It Takes One”

[ZooAnimalsOnWheels]

I only started on this one yesterday, but didn't get the answer. I was totally lost and decided to start reading the column on Diary of a Crossword Fiend because the posters tend to lay out their process without an immediate reveal. I garnered enough that I felt I had an 'in', and didn't even realize until later that Joon hadn't solved it himself.

With that nudge forward I started looking for 'ear', 'arm', 'eye', 'hand', and 'leg' in the puzzle. And I found three of them in the clues: 'ear' in 62D EARRING TYPE, 'eye' in 2D EYE PART, and 'leg' in 56D "THE LEGENDARY ____ DEAD" (MANGA SERIES). One is happenstance, two may be a coincidence, but if you find three out of five implied body parts in the puzzle, that must be the way forward, right? Nope! I assumed I was blind and kept searching for 'hand' and 'arm' hidden in the clues, even split between words.

Then I tried working backwards. I had S_U_H from the answers to those three clues in order of the themers. AHA, so we have SHUSH! And you use one finger to shush someone! No problem, now I just have to find two more grid answers starting with H and S and work backwards, even if I had the wrong body parts before, right? Wrong!

I finally peeked at the rest of the Crossword Fiend column and realized I should have looked in the grid. Oh, well. I was timed out anyway by the time I got going on this.

[BrennerTJ]

Got no sharp elbows despite totally forgetting what day of the week it is, again...

[oggy]

This alt answer isn't as elegant, but thought it was funny:

Code: Select all

L[EAVESDROP]PINGS -> N[EAR]
DEA[THROW]RECORDS -> UNH[ARM]ED
HOSTESST[WINK]IES -> DR[EYE]R
WILL[SHAKE]SPEARE -> E[LEG]Y
THESCOTTISHO[PEN] -> G[HAND]I

NUDEG -> anagram -> NUDGE
                      |
                      v
BOWEL <- anagram <- ELBOW

(No, I didn't try submitting it. )