XWord Muggles Forum

rjy wrote: ↑Wed Oct 13, 2021 4:49 pm Solved... clever meta!

BTW (sorry, new here) what do folks mean by "submitted"?

For confirmation that we have found the right answer, we send a PM to the puzzle creator, and then eagerly await confirmation!

Sometimes, the puzzle is also posted on Crosshare, in which case you can submit your meta answer there and get instant confirmation. See, for example, this week's MOAT: viewtopic.php?f=49&t=1237

Solved. If at first you don’t succeed………

Solved though not yet submitted. Lots of clever stuff going on here. This must have been a challenge to put together. Thanks, Josh!

Very clever and fun!

Cat out of the bag! Fun one

Great construction MadCatter!

I liked this one alot. Bravo !!

Fun puzzle and, relatively easy as advertised....however I know there is a doozy coming!

Anyway, not confirmed but no doubt in my mind. Kitty has scampered.

This turned out to be a fun and easy solve once I stopped chasing rabbits! Good one, Josh!

I had forgotten about this yesterday. I guess that two cats in one week didn’t compute. Also, I had a birthday party for my one year old granddaughter so I was preoccupied. Anyway, the cat is out of the bag—great job by Josh again.

Solved and submitted.

Clever!

Nudge Saturday!

38A is key to the mechanism

38A has nothing to do with chemistry

In addition to its elemental meaning, "periodic" can also just mean "Every so often"

Finally made it, kicking and screaming all the way. Or was that the cat?

OK, for some reason I required all of the nudges even though they didn't tell me anything I didn't already know. :/

hoover wrote: ↑Sun Oct 17, 2021 11:44 pm OK, for some reason I required all of the nudges even though they didn't tell me anything I didn't already know. :/

Same here. Clever puzzle!

I hope at this late date it's not revealing too much to say: What I liked about this puzzle is you really had to drop the rabbit:

"It's not what you think". Okay, I get that applying it there won't work but if I apply it ... there? "No, really. It's not what you think at all". So I don't apply in that way, so I must apply it in someway I haven't considered. "No. It is not what you think. Don't apply it anywhere. That isn't it." Okay, so it's not what I think ... but then how do I apply it to the puzzle if this isn't it?

Solution


The key clue was 38A. What it meant was that you needed to "periodically" take every third letter from the theme entries. If you do so you will end up with THE ELEMENT OF SURPRISE, which is the answer.

Josh's puzzle was fun because it was a genius stroke of misdirection. He used "periodic" and "element" to lull us all into a scientific state of mind, then pulled the Mendeleevian carpet from under us! Clever lad...the one thing with MEOW puzzle that you can always count on is that there is nothing you can always count on.

It was brilliant misdirection because there is so much potential! There are phrases that can be spelled out with atomic symbols. You can look up the letters in squares numbered with atomic numbers of elements. The wacky themes answer are weird enough ("PEPPERONI CASTLE??") That it may have symbols ("pepperoNI ends with nickel which is element #28 and square 28 is: S!") and other weird coincidences ("women's names? N(t)ICHOL? [which sounds like NICKEL???] (v)ERONICA?")

But it's not unfair misdirection. PERIODIC has a much more common meaning then the table of elements. And 38A specifies that "THREE" is an periodically important number, which, sure, we can make clues just for the purposes of the puzzle, but we can't have the clues be lies. And THREE is not important number periodically. So we should at least *try* every third letter....

I really liked this puzzle.