"Please Sir, I Want Some More"

A weekly meta crossword created by members of the forum. Difficulty levels will vary. Hints are usually available starting Wednesday, and solutions are posted on Sunday.
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Al Sisti
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#41

Post by Al Sisti »

DrTom wrote: Thu Aug 05, 2021 11:07 am Could NOT resist this cartoon given the reference in the puzzle and the obvious relevance to METAs in general (particularly with our group)

...and to that, I'd like to add a painting by my good friend, Stephen Fletcher, who recently entered it (and won) Utica's sidewalk art festival. He's calling it "The Impractical Pursuit of Idealistic Goals (Self Portrait)."
179652534_4619853914716175_4739677903080845312_n.jpg
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KayW
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#42

Post by KayW »

hoover wrote: Wed Aug 04, 2021 4:20 pm
Hmph. The nudges didn't do anything but confirm what I already suspected.
My sentiments exactly. I see the same thing I saw from the beginning and nothing more. I'm sure it's a KAS4 and a fantastic meta to boot, but at this point I'll just wait for the reveal.
Contest Crosswords Combating Cancer (CCCC) is a bundle of 16 metapuzzles created to help raise money for cancer-related charities. It is available at CrosswordsForCancer.com.
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DrTom
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#43

Post by DrTom »

Al Sisti wrote: Thu Aug 05, 2021 12:08 pm
DrTom wrote: Thu Aug 05, 2021 11:07 am Could NOT resist this cartoon given the reference in the puzzle and the obvious relevance to METAs in general (particularly with our group)

...and to that, I'd like to add a painting by my good friend, Stephen Fletcher, who recently entered it (and won) Utica's sidewalk art festival. He's calling it "The Impractical Pursuit of Idealistic Goals (Self Portrait)."

179652534_4619853914716175_4739677903080845312_n.jpg
OMG, what a fantastic painting. It is a META in its own right! Please pass on my praise to your friend.
NUDGES!I am always willing to give nudges where needed; metas should be about fun, not frustration. Send me what you have done so far because often you are closer than you think!
Schmeel
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#44

Post by Schmeel »

I got to the puzzle late this week, work got in the way...
I think I am now off the couch, pending confirmation.
Fun puzzle!
Dplass
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#45

Post by Dplass »

Al Sisti wrote: Thu Aug 05, 2021 10:33 am Thursday morning leaderboard update:

11 Small Wave Dave
12 auee89
13 SewYoung
14 Hector
15 whimsy
16 Darth
17 BarbaraK
18 MamaE
19 michaelm
20 Dplass

Pretty low solve count for an MMM. More often than not, that's a reflection on the constructor, not the solver.
Full disclosure: I got an additional nudge from a friendly Muggle. Sorry I forgot to mention to you Al.

Thanks for the meta!
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Al Sisti
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#46

Post by Al Sisti »

DrTom wrote: Thu Aug 05, 2021 12:50 pm
Al Sisti wrote: Thu Aug 05, 2021 12:08 pm
DrTom wrote: Thu Aug 05, 2021 11:07 am Could NOT resist this cartoon given the reference in the puzzle and the obvious relevance to METAs in general (particularly with our group)

...and to that, I'd like to add a painting by my good friend, Stephen Fletcher, who recently entered it (and won) Utica's sidewalk art festival. He's calling it "The Impractical Pursuit of Idealistic Goals (Self Portrait)."

179652534_4619853914716175_4739677903080845312_n.jpg
OMG, what a fantastic painting. It is a META in its own right! Please pass on my praise to your friend.
I definitely will. He'll be very pleased to hear it; he is as humble as he is talented. And is he talented!!
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KayW
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#47

Post by KayW »

A wise and compassionate muggle (but then, aren't you all?) took pity on my obtusity and helped drag me back into this meta and then off the couch. Thanks for a great meta, Al! Loved 49A. My new patron saint.
Contest Crosswords Combating Cancer (CCCC) is a bundle of 16 metapuzzles created to help raise money for cancer-related charities. It is available at CrosswordsForCancer.com.
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Al Sisti
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#48

Post by Al Sisti »

Friday morning update:

21 DrTom
22 Bob cruise director
23 Schmeel
24 Anita
25 markhr 
26 LesY
27 KayW 

I do want everyone to solve it, so feel free to PM me if you need another nudge.
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RPardoe
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#49

Post by RPardoe »

Al Sisti wrote: Fri Aug 06, 2021 8:55 am I do want everyone to solve it, so feel free to PM me if you need another nudge.
Do you need to ask for another nudge in the form of the title:

Please Sir, I Want Some More
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MikeyG
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#50

Post by MikeyG »

BarbaraK wrote: Wed Aug 04, 2021 9:53 pm
Anita wrote: Wed Aug 04, 2021 9:14 pm Have tried several times to email Al with my answer, but the emails are sitting in the Outbox. Hopefully they will go out eventually...
Private messages on this board stay in your outbox until the recipient reads them. They're not like regular emails that only sit in your outbox if they can't be sent.
I just learned this recently, and it allayed so much of my confusion, haha.
Less cross words, more crosswords.

Solve my latest "Pun of a Kind" Meta!: 89. That's Not Right!
madhatter5
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#51

Post by madhatter5 »

Cool puzzle!
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otc.png
https://pandorasblocks.org/crosswords-for-cancer
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cbarbee002
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#52

Post by cbarbee002 »

Pretty sure I'm OTC with an answer many probably guessed at the outset, but made it waaaayyyy to hard to get to.
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Al Sisti
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#53

Post by Al Sisti »

The final leaderboard:

1 Abide (TS)
2 Old Judge (TS)
3 BirdLives (TS)
4 Cindy
5 Meg
6 FrankieHeck
7 Wendy Walker
8 boharr
9 RPardoe
10 ChrisKochmanski
11 Small Wave Dave
12 auee89
13 SewYoung
14 Hector
15 whimsy
16 Darth
17 BarbaraK
18 MamaE
19 michaelm
20 Dplass
21 DrTom
22 Bob cruise director
23 Schmeel
24 Anita
25 markhr 
26 LesY
27 KayW 
28 madhatter5
29 snood
30 cbarbee002
31 Cindy N

Reveal coming in a minute...
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Al Sisti
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#54

Post by Al Sisti »

What an odd meta that was… a title that (too?) strongly suggests a foothold and four obvious theme entries (long acrosses) with no obvious connection. Where to start? Maybe the prompt will help. But no… the ambiguous prompt asks for two acceptable answers and a super-answer. Well thanks for that help, Al.

So, yeah, let’s go back to the title. Either you knew, or dropped the whole title in a search bar and saw the returns, that I was referring to Oliver Twist… the first concrete step towards solving. He was asking for more food, but my hope was that the solver would take that to mean that he was asking for “…some[thing] more to make a food item.”

And, applying that mechanism to the four themers, solvers noticed that:

L + IMEIGHTEEN gives LIME
CONTRAVIOL + I gives RAVIOLI
V + EALSBRIDGE gives VEAL and
HOLLEREDAT + E gives DATE…

… therefore, adding “Something more” to the (alternating) beginning and end, we get LIVE. Yay! Solved it! But no, LIVE doesn’t make sense as an answer. However, adding “something more” to LIVE, we can create another food item: O + LIVE = OLIVE. Oh wait, and (since I alternated between adding at the start and end of each themer), we can also see that LIVE + R gives yet another food item, LIVER. And if that wasn’t enough, doing both, we can get our super-answer, OLIVER, who – in a seredipitous “twist” – is the speaker of the title quote.

So okay, I know it was odd – having the “super-answer” also be the obvious foothold from the title… but I thought the idea was worth pursuing, although I did shelve it in frustration several times over the months, weighing some great suggestions from Abide and BirdLives. Turns out there aren’t a whole lot of foods that start with V or end in I. And BirdLives suggested an alternate title, “Starters and Afters,” which is Brit-speak for “appetizers and desserts”… and maybe that would have helped boost the number of solvers.

We did end up with 31 solvers who gave me one or two of the acceptable answers, and/or the super-answer, although most submitted all three. Our random winner this week was Abide, who will receive his choice of a) a Blarney Rebel Band CD, b) a Utica Club keepsake or c) a $15 donation I will make to a charity of his choice (Peter, PM me with your address so I can get it to you).

Anyway, thanks for solving, and I hope to be back on a Monday in the not-too-distant future!
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Wendy Walker
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#55

Post by Wendy Walker »

I enjoyed this one, Al; thanks! And congrats to our friend Abide!
Good luck, fellow Muggles!
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Cindy
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#56

Post by Cindy »

Al Sisti wrote: Sat Aug 07, 2021 10:18 pm What an odd meta that was… a title that (too?) strongly suggests a foothold and four obvious theme entries (long acrosses) with no obvious connection. Where to start? Maybe the prompt will help. But no… the ambiguous prompt asks for two acceptable answers and a super-answer. Well thanks for that help, Al.

So, yeah, let’s go back to the title. Either you knew, or dropped the whole title in a search bar and saw the returns, that I was referring to Oliver Twist… the first concrete step towards solving. He was asking for more food, but my hope was that the solver would take that to mean that he was asking for “…some[thing] more to make a food item.”

And, applying that mechanism to the four themers, solvers noticed that:

L + IMEIGHTEEN gives LIME
CONTRAVIOL + I gives RAVIOLI
V + EALSBRIDGE gives VEAL and
HOLLEREDAT + E gives DATE…

… therefore, adding “Something more” to the (alternating) beginning and end, we get LIVE. Yay! Solved it! But no, LIVE doesn’t make sense as an answer. However, adding “something more” to LIVE, we can create another food item: O + LIVE = OLIVE. Oh wait, and (since I alternated between adding at the start and end of each themer), we can also see that LIVE + R gives yet another food item, LIVER. And if that wasn’t enough, doing both, we can get our super-answer, OLIVER, who – in a seredipitous “twist” – is the speaker of the title quote.

So okay, I know it was odd – having the “super-answer” also be the obvious foothold from the title… but I thought the idea was worth pursuing, although I did shelve it in frustration several times over the months, weighing some great suggestions from Abide and BirdLives. Turns out there aren’t a whole lot of foods that start with V or end in I. And BirdLives suggested an alternate title, “Starters and Afters,” which is Brit-speak for “appetizers and desserts”… and maybe that would have helped boost the number of solvers.

We did end up with 31 solvers who gave me one or two of the acceptable answers, and/or the super-answer, although most submitted all three. Our random winner this week was Abide, who will receive his choice of a) a Blarney Rebel Band CD, b) a Utica Club keepsake or c) a $15 donation I will make to a charity of his choice (Peter, PM me with your address so I can get it to you).

Anyway, thanks for solving, and I hope to be back on a Monday in the not-too-distant future!
But Al….O AT in the upper left and GA R in the bottom right are both edible. Was that not intentional?
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Al Sisti
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#57

Post by Al Sisti »

Cindy wrote: Sun Aug 08, 2021 8:54 am
Al Sisti wrote: Sat Aug 07, 2021 10:18 pm What an odd meta that was… a title that (too?) strongly suggests a foothold and four obvious theme entries (long acrosses) with no obvious connection. Where to start? Maybe the prompt will help. But no… the ambiguous prompt asks for two acceptable answers and a super-answer. Well thanks for that help, Al.

So, yeah, let’s go back to the title. Either you knew, or dropped the whole title in a search bar and saw the returns, that I was referring to Oliver Twist… the first concrete step towards solving. He was asking for more food, but my hope was that the solver would take that to mean that he was asking for “…some[thing] more to make a food item.”

And, applying that mechanism to the four themers, solvers noticed that:

L + IMEIGHTEEN gives LIME
CONTRAVIOL + I gives RAVIOLI
V + EALSBRIDGE gives VEAL and
HOLLEREDAT + E gives DATE…

… therefore, adding “Something more” to the (alternating) beginning and end, we get LIVE. Yay! Solved it! But no, LIVE doesn’t make sense as an answer. However, adding “something more” to LIVE, we can create another food item: O + LIVE = OLIVE. Oh wait, and (since I alternated between adding at the start and end of each themer), we can also see that LIVE + R gives yet another food item, LIVER. And if that wasn’t enough, doing both, we can get our super-answer, OLIVER, who – in a seredipitous “twist” – is the speaker of the title quote.

So okay, I know it was odd – having the “super-answer” also be the obvious foothold from the title… but I thought the idea was worth pursuing, although I did shelve it in frustration several times over the months, weighing some great suggestions from Abide and BirdLives. Turns out there aren’t a whole lot of foods that start with V or end in I. And BirdLives suggested an alternate title, “Starters and Afters,” which is Brit-speak for “appetizers and desserts”… and maybe that would have helped boost the number of solvers.

We did end up with 31 solvers who gave me one or two of the acceptable answers, and/or the super-answer, although most submitted all three. Our random winner this week was Abide, who will receive his choice of a) a Blarney Rebel Band CD, b) a Utica Club keepsake or c) a $15 donation I will make to a charity of his choice (Peter, PM me with your address so I can get it to you).

Anyway, thanks for solving, and I hope to be back on a Monday in the not-too-distant future!
But Al….O AT in the upper left and GA R in the bottom right are both edible. Was that not intentional?
Completely unintentional! You had to pull the "more" letters out of thin air, as you did to get L-I-V-E. But how weird was that? And nearly symmetrical in the NW and SE corners!
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Cindy
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#58

Post by Cindy »

Al Sisti wrote: Sun Aug 08, 2021 8:58 am
Cindy wrote: Sun Aug 08, 2021 8:54 am
Al Sisti wrote: Sat Aug 07, 2021 10:18 pm What an odd meta that was… a title that (too?) strongly suggests a foothold and four obvious theme entries (long acrosses) with no obvious connection. Where to start? Maybe the prompt will help. But no… the ambiguous prompt asks for two acceptable answers and a super-answer. Well thanks for that help, Al.

So, yeah, let’s go back to the title. Either you knew, or dropped the whole title in a search bar and saw the returns, that I was referring to Oliver Twist… the first concrete step towards solving. He was asking for more food, but my hope was that the solver would take that to mean that he was asking for “…some[thing] more to make a food item.”

And, applying that mechanism to the four themers, solvers noticed that:

L + IMEIGHTEEN gives LIME
CONTRAVIOL + I gives RAVIOLI
V + EALSBRIDGE gives VEAL and
HOLLEREDAT + E gives DATE…

… therefore, adding “Something more” to the (alternating) beginning and end, we get LIVE. Yay! Solved it! But no, LIVE doesn’t make sense as an answer. However, adding “something more” to LIVE, we can create another food item: O + LIVE = OLIVE. Oh wait, and (since I alternated between adding at the start and end of each themer), we can also see that LIVE + R gives yet another food item, LIVER. And if that wasn’t enough, doing both, we can get our super-answer, OLIVER, who – in a seredipitous “twist” – is the speaker of the title quote.

So okay, I know it was odd – having the “super-answer” also be the obvious foothold from the title… but I thought the idea was worth pursuing, although I did shelve it in frustration several times over the months, weighing some great suggestions from Abide and BirdLives. Turns out there aren’t a whole lot of foods that start with V or end in I. And BirdLives suggested an alternate title, “Starters and Afters,” which is Brit-speak for “appetizers and desserts”… and maybe that would have helped boost the number of solvers.

We did end up with 31 solvers who gave me one or two of the acceptable answers, and/or the super-answer, although most submitted all three. Our random winner this week was Abide, who will receive his choice of a) a Blarney Rebel Band CD, b) a Utica Club keepsake or c) a $15 donation I will make to a charity of his choice (Peter, PM me with your address so I can get it to you).

Anyway, thanks for solving, and I hope to be back on a Monday in the not-too-distant future!
But Al….O AT in the upper left and GA R in the bottom right are both edible. Was that not intentional?
Completely unintentional! You had to pull the "more" letters out of thin air, as you did to get L-I-V-E. But how weird was that? And nearly symmetrical in the NW and SE corners!
The air here was thick with OAT and GAR. I even googled to make sure gar was edible.
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Al Sisti
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Location: Whitesboro NY

#59

Post by Al Sisti »

Cindy wrote: Sun Aug 08, 2021 9:02 am
Al Sisti wrote: Sun Aug 08, 2021 8:58 am
Cindy wrote: Sun Aug 08, 2021 8:54 am

But Al….O AT in the upper left and GA R in the bottom right are both edible. Was that not intentional?
Completely unintentional! You had to pull the "more" letters out of thin air, as you did to get L-I-V-E. But how weird was that? And nearly symmetrical in the NW and SE corners!
The air here was thick with OAT and GAR. I even googled to make sure gar was edible.
A lot of things are edible... but not all of them should be ed. I mean et. Eaten.
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Joe Ross
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#60

Post by Joe Ross »

Al Sisti wrote: Sun Aug 08, 2021 9:06 am A lot of things are edible... but not all of them should be ed. I mean et. Eaten.
You're looking for "Done et." Done heared in real life, so it cain't be wrong, neither.
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