XWord Muggles Forum

" I probably tried every kind of variation except using the 2 letter outside the foods"

It took me a long time to consider the letters *outside* the foods but I had tried everything else so I tried it with zero faith. And... when it works it works, so I got it.

But in hindsight, it makes sense. A lot of sense. As the everything is about finding things inside other things, it makes sense that the letters should be the letters that *are* containing the nut.

Inca wrote: ↑Mon Jul 05, 2021 12:13 am Has the meta-spell finally really lost its power over this muggle? Well, I *was* curious to see what the end game would be, but although I knew for sure that the shelled insides were key and I was pretty sure that the numbers were positions in the final solution and I probably tried every kind of variation except using the 2 letter outside the foods, despite that I was fine with just letting it go at some point rather than let it drive me crazy. So you decide: has it lost its power over me or have I lost my power of it???

It was clear just what needed extracting
But my insight I fear was still lacking
Those five shells and one “P”
Kept bamboozling me
Till I found the right way to get cracking

I almost gave up as well after trying so many ways to extract a meaningful 10 letter meta from the five shelled foods obviously enclosed in the key answers. But I misled myself thinking the answer would contain some variation of crack rather than focusing on the shell connection. Returning to it tonight and thinking about 10 letter answers playing on shell I came up with the meta and had to work back to the mechanism involving the letters at either end of the foods. Glad I gave it one more crack rather than remaining shell shocked.

Initially I was focused on what was inside the shell "PLEASE FIND ENCLOSED"

yolk, meat, pearl - the nuts drove me nuts - was it NUT and SEED, or else? - just a rabbit hole.

quickly pivoted and saw the solution on Thursday night.

Kind of sad I didn't have a meta to work on over the holiday weekend. but yay because I solved it

Dang it! My meta slump continues. I found the foods, they anagrammed to Paleo, and Google tells me they are all part of the Paleo diet. I couldn't dig myself out of that rabbit hole.

escapeartist wrote: ↑Mon Jul 05, 2021 1:03 am Initially I was focused on what was inside the shell "PLEASE FIND ENCLOSED"

yolk, meat, pearl - the nuts drove me nuts - was it NUT and SEED, or else? - just a rabbit hole.

quickly pivoted and saw the solution on Thursday night.

Kind of sad I didn't have a meta to work on over the holiday weekend. but yay because I solved it

At some point, I thought that as well but I simply couldn't put anything inside the nut...or really even inside the lobster. So then I switched to foods that had those items enclosed: scotch egg, lobster roll (?), Almond Joy (as in the candy bar), pecan pie (now I was really stretching it)...and oysters, well no. And what was I going to do with that anyway? (Actually, I thought it would be a good idea to have those words (scotch, roll, joy) somewhere in the grid with an extra two letters "enclosed" so I could use the #s in the parenthesis.) But, I quickly ruled out those possibilities.)

This was a tricky one for a lot of people, most certainly me! I believe I tired every combination of letters, and KNEW that shell had to be in there. I was certain it would be "LOSE A SHELL" or "DROP A SHELL" or "SHUCK SHELL" but ALWAYS got gibberish. I mean I'd always get something that looked a little like SHELL in the front or at the end but never the word. I tried back solving and that did no good. Why did I never see the lead and terminal letters, well I was operating under a constraint of my own making. So many of the parenthetical numbers matched exactly with the word length IF you added SHELL. So 17A (8,3) EGGSHELL is made a viable place to select a letter because there are 8 letters, similarly PECANSHELL (10,6) and sort of 58A (2,9) OYSTERSHELL. So in my mind nothing else made sense. I did try using ALL the outside letters but without the enclosed food there were not enough.

Luckily someone was kind enough to point out the one place I had not dug with a nudge. Oh, and my sincerest apologies to at least one person who asked for a nudge and I did not see it until about 12:15 when my guests left. I had already gotten scolded for "playing' (Ha, playing indeed!) when we had guests (and she was right darn it) so I did not want to be sent to my room without hotdogs...

Oh, and more from my "cartoon" rabbit hole one evening on the web:

This one came very quickly to me because a fairly recent meta used the numbers in an identical way. If the highest number in parens is x, there are x numbers in parens and all numbers in parens are unique, then the numbers very likely indicate letter position in the solution.

31 Down wrote: ↑Mon Jul 05, 2021 2:00 am This one came very quickly to me because a fairly recent meta used the numbers in an identical way. If the highest number in parens is x, there are x numbers in parens and all numbers in parens are unique, then the numbers very likely indicate letter position in the solution.

Agreed; if there are repeated numbers, like (2,4) & (3,2), then we're in trouble. If we have each number exactly once with none missing, then it's clearly telling us the order of the letters in the answer.

My rabbit hole was that all five inner keywords could also pair with ROLL. EGG ROLL, LOBSTER ROLL, etc.

I got everything, understood the parens purpose, except I was stuck on the lower right hand answers HYPER and OER and was sure the letters would come from over the theme answers. Used a nudge to get the final click

I was lucky on this one...I saw the foods inside, and the first thing I did was to just write out the letters in 2 columns from the spots in the long answers named in parentheses. I got ESLLH TBOCE. My first reaction was "SHELL" anagrammed (which made me *headslap* on what the foods had in common) and knowing how a shell game works, figured an anagram was ok here. I then spent occasional time over 3 days trying to force GAMES out of the 2nd set of letters to no avail, and submitted the right answer at 10 pm last night after spending the holiday at my father-in-law's.

KayW wrote: ↑Mon Jul 05, 2021 12:00 am (Joe is taking a well-deserved weekend off and granted me special dispensation to post the midnight solution)

Hey! My hope is that everymuggle posts their answers, explanations, graphic reveals, and whatnot at midnight & beyond. I don't own the franchise!

Thank you, Kay, for filling in at the last minute!

DNF, for me, as 99 & 64/100s of my time & attention has been spent on my visit with my daughter. I offered a distracted 30 minutes filling in the grid soon after arrival, saw PALEO anagrammed at the beginning of the "enclosed" Paleo Diet conforming foodstuffs, and even had Margaret spend 30 minutes trying to solve (with pad & pencil) while I beamed with pride. We didn't solve & a couple of two-minute sessions since revisiting the meta didn't allow me to see past PALEO. Had I allowed myself to see that all foodstuffs had shells, I'm guessing (hoping?) it would have clicked.

Nice puzzle! Wish I gave it its due.

Congratulations to all beachcombers!

Bob cruise director wrote: ↑Sun Jul 04, 2021 9:08 pm Good evening muggles

As we close out this July 4th, we have 12 on the ship and 178 on the shore

The latest to join Isaac are
mitchel674
KFB
Patty

And the last tenders to shore brought
TheCatt
Cindy N
dpl11
Peter L
Geezer Weezer
horsesense
Flying_Burrito
Grover
PJM
flamingbear
Doug C
bradisbrad
copperriver
rosiegirl
Ben B and son

Have a happy and safe July 4th

And alas, here I tread water with pruned fingers. Maybe next week I will be able to swim straight and true. Make my epitaph, “So close yet so far.”:

EmilyW wrote: ↑Mon Jul 05, 2021 1:04 am Dang it! My meta slump continues. I found the foods, they anagrammed to Paleo, and Google tells me they are all part of the Paleo diet. I couldn't dig myself out of that rabbit hole.

Amen, sister!

After a few experiments, I decided the numbers were place holders - as has been noted, one through ten. But what about the letter-selection mechanism? I finally tried "immediately before and after" which yielded the meta. Only then (SHELL) did I understand the title of the puzzle - not Enclosed in the themers, but Enclosed by two letters representing a Shell.

Joe Ross wrote: ↑Mon Jul 05, 2021 8:31 am

KayW wrote: ↑Mon Jul 05, 2021 12:00 am (Joe is taking a well-deserved weekend off and granted me special dispensation to post the midnight solution)

Hey! My hope is that everymuggle posts their answers, explanations, graphic reveals, and whatnot at midnight & beyond. I don't own the franchise!

Thank you, Kay, for filling in at the last minute!

DNF, for me, as 99 & 64/100s of my time & attention has been spent on my visit with my daughter. I offered a distracted 30 minutes filling in the grid soon after arrival, saw PALEO anagrammed at the beginning of the "enclosed" Paleo Diet conforming foodstuffs, and even had Margaret spend 30 minutes trying to solve (with pad & pencil) while I beamed with pride. We didn't solve & a couple of two-minute sessions since revisiting the meta didn't allow me to see past PALEO. Had I allowed myself to see that all foodstuffs had shells, I'm guessing (hoping?) it would have clicked.

Nice puzzle! Wish I gave it its due.

Congratulations to all beachcombers!

Joe,

Sounds to me like you made the absolute best use of your time, lucky for me I never saw PALEO or for SURE I'd have chased it down like a caveman. Happy Fourth (and of course now the Fifth).

DNF for me too. Still on the boat. I found the hidden foods, but didn't get the number references after a couple of tries within each grid answer and the letters in boxes 1-10, to no avail. Didn't get paleo out of elapo,, the starts of the hidden words and didn't get the shell reference. And still don't get the numbers after reading the answer. What does the M in nutmeggeek have to do with the number 8? Oh, well, there's always another puzzle!

Part of the fun in winning a mug is that the following week your name and home town appear in print with the next contest. Well, wouldn’t you know it, this week’s puzzle (“Please Find Enclosed”) omitted my name and home town as the winner of the “Hotlinks” puzzle from last week.

Hopefully Mike can make amends. Maybe he’ll send two mugs! (Probably less costly to do that rather than make some sort of correction in print!)

Oh, darn! Somehow I missed the second "s." I am pretty sure that I submitted the singular SHELL GAME. I guess the tide pulled me back off the beach!

I found the foods and noticed they all had shells. Like others I focused on what is inside the foods: yolk, nut, meat but obviously that went nowhere. After I nudge I got shellgame and declared victory too soon. My nudgor in chief put the last S on, for savings.

This answer made me think of the Foreigner Song Head Games. Actually so does every meta.