XWord Muggles Forum

Well, I think I have it, it seems too good not to be true. I PMed one of the makers so I may know for sure soon. Fun puzzle that had me kind of flummoxed for a bit until I saw the rest of the path.

I’m pretty sure I have it, although the title is throwing me a little. Great construction!

LesY wrote: ↑Thu Jun 04, 2020 8:13 pm I’m pretty sure I have it, although the title is throwing me a little. Great construction!

I think my response is a (very minor) spoiler, so I'll hide it:

I bet your confusion has to do with the same joke that I said I missed, which is "Mr. E" = "mystery" :-) I thought for a while that the title hinted that the person's last name would begin with E (which it doesn't) (at least not the person I came up with!).

I found the grid challenging. After my first attempt, there were a lot of empty squares and I was pretty well stuck. Didn't want to google, so I set it aside for a couple days. It's amazing to me how often that helps, and it worked like a charm this time. Picked it up again today and actually got every square filled.

Once that was done, the meta mechanism quickly became clear. It's something I'm very bad at, but I did manage to recognize what was going on and then used computerized help for the final step.

Thanks Peter & Patrick!

Mr E- Meta Answer and Spoiler

Around 15 Muggles submitted the correct answer (LEONARDO DA VINCI), which is derived from anagramming the three long across entries. Yes, a simple mechanism today, but in 2006 metas were a rare, weird bird. (MGWCC #1 was in 2008).

Backstory: The Da Vinci Code movie was released on Friday May 19, 2006, and this puzzle was submitted to the NYT for a hopeful publication on Thursday May 18. There would be no title or meta question, so the 18D clue was "Clue for identifying mystery person found in 17-, 37- and 59-Across". I sent the idea and grid to Patrick, who handled most of the cluing (Friday-Saturday level). Unfortunately Will Shortz rejected and I think that was after we had to explain what was going on. We ultimately submitted as a bonus puzzle to old NYT forum.

I found this puzzle while covid-cleaning an old email account. The grid was pretty challenging for me as well!

I solved but forgot to figure out who to submit to. I enjoyed it! The only thing that gave me pause was having "Da Vinci" in the grid (as well as being the meta answer.) But I'm glad it was, because I'm not sure I would have figured it out otherwise!

More please!!

I had it as well, but didn't submit anything. medium-difficulty grid and fun meta construction. Thanks for doing this.

I also solved but didn't submit. Also I think perhaps "solved" is a bit generous - I realized the three long entries were anagrams of each other, so then I went over to https://anagram-solver.net/ and it did the rest. I did try to anagram it myself first - do you realize how many potential famous person names are in there?? Veronica, Ronald, Donald... I was lost.

FrankieHeck wrote: ↑Sun Jun 07, 2020 5:31 pm I solved but forgot to figure out who to submit to. I enjoyed it! The only thing that gave me pause was having "Da Vinci" in the grid (as well as being the meta answer.) But I'm glad it was, because I'm not sure I would have figured it out otherwise!

The inclusion of Da Vinci Code as an entry got me to see the letters DA VINCI in the long fill. Removing those letters let me see the rest of the letters anagrammed to LEONARDO

But the inclusion of Da Vinci in the grid made me think there was another step involved. As mentioned above, this was a rather early meta. Guess I was looking at this with modern eyes. Given the relative scarcity of Es in the grid, I went from LdV to La Gioconda (or) Mona Lisa as the answer. Submitted the solve logic to Pete Abide who politely explained that LdV was all that the puzzle was going for.