"Wait, that's MY name - you already have another one!" - June 20, 2021

Available by emailing a request to PandorasBlocksWMC[at]gmail[dot]com, these meta puzzles are distributed by email every Sunday. Pandora's Blocks crosswords are intended to spread the popularity of meta crosswords, however, they are not just for beginners and run the gamut it terms of difficulty.
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Al Sisti
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Joined: Thu Apr 11, 2019 1:28 pm
Location: Whitesboro NY

#21

Post by Al Sisti »

Bird Lives wrote: Wed Jun 23, 2021 12:18 pm When I was in grade school, they still taught penmanship. It was my worst subject. The teacher would come to my desk, place her hand on top of mine, and move my hand so that the pen made the correct letter shapes, more or less. The help I received from a kindly muggle in order to finally get the answer to this one was very much like Mrs. McBride steering me through cursive. So I cannot declare myself levitated from the davenport.

If I have a wheelhouse, this is certainly not it. By my calculation, the solution required knowing twelve characters. I was familiar with only three.
My mother had a different experience in school. When she would write left handed, the nuns would crack her on the hand until she wrote right handed. Oh, and my mother was Patty Ann McBride.
Dplass
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Joined: Sat Dec 28, 2019 10:09 am

#22

Post by Dplass »

Will there be an official solution posted?
Dplass
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Joined: Sat Dec 28, 2019 10:09 am

#23

Post by Dplass »

Dplass wrote: Sun Jun 27, 2021 1:22 pm Will there be an official solution posted?
Email/solution posted. Thanks Will!
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HeadinHome
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#24

Post by HeadinHome »

Bird Lives wrote: Wed Jun 23, 2021 12:18 pm
If I have a wheelhouse, this is certainly not it. By my calculation, the solution required knowing twelve characters. I was familiar with only three.
By my calculation you would need to be familiar with EIGHT characters, right? (The 4 Pac-Man ones which each have an aka name shared with another toon character) .. at any rate, if you didn’t know the pac man ones, it was a non-starter. I did vaguely recall blinky being a character on a game my kids played (is this Nintendo? Sega?) but definitely didn’t recognize the others as characters in that game. Even if I had, I doubt I would have thought of checking to see if they had “real,” aka names. BUT, if I had, then YES I would have thought about Pokey, Speedy, and Bashful being toon names (again, not Shadow, as I’ve never been a gamer — I’m just about 5 years too old I think).

STILL, as I look at the mechanism I think it’s brilliant and would have been really enjoyable for someone familiar enough with the Pac-Man and Sonic characters!

Thanks, Will, for the fun, and we look forward to the next batch!
The other Wendy. :roll:
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Bird Lives
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#25

Post by Bird Lives »

HeadinHome wrote: Sat Jul 03, 2021 9:19 am
Bird Lives wrote: Wed Jun 23, 2021 12:18 pm
If I have a wheelhouse, this is certainly not it. By my calculation, the solution required knowing twelve characters. I was familiar with only three.
By my calculation you would need to be familiar with EIGHT characters, right?
Yes, you're right. It required knowing the names of the eight characters and then knowing what they are -- four additional pieces of knowledge I did not have. You're also right that it was a brilliant puzzle. In fact, it's given me the idea for a meta, maybe based on sports figures, which would send a lot of solvers to Google, of jazz musicians (the empty wheelhouse).
Jay
Laura M
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Joined: Thu Apr 11, 2019 11:49 am

#26

Post by Laura M »

Very clever! I found the alternate names of the ghosts, spent a bunch of time trying to change/add/subtract a letter from grid entries to form synonyms (BASHFUL/THY) and finally gave up. I'd never heard of Shadow as an animated character, and was only marginally familiar with Pokey and Speedy Gonzalez, so that line of thinking never occurred to me. Although I really should have realized something was up with the "Dwarf star" clue...

Enjoy your hiatus, Will! Looking forward to the next season!
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MikeM000
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Location: Metro Detroit

#27

Post by MikeM000 »

I did some of the Pandora puzzles I missed during a slow work day yesterday...I solved the "Hit and Sunk" one pretty well but this one baffled me and I looked at the answer email.... the problem for me is that when I worked through the grid I got Blinky and Pinky and immediately knew the others would be Inky and Clyde (although I would have loved some Sue action as well). Since I knew they were all Pac Man ghosts and didn't remember/realize/have any reason to think they had alternate names, I just hit the dead end with no other prompts, whereas those of you who didn't know what it meant would find the key piece of info when you googled.

Since someone asked, one of the emails from Will I read while doing this says September 5 for the first new puzzle of the next season, which will run for 15 weeks and end in December.
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