#70 - "Reduction Potential"

Creative and challenging meta crosswords (currently on hiatus) from: www.pgwcc.net
Laura M
Posts: 1384
Joined: Thu Apr 11, 2019 11:49 am

#21

Post by Laura M »

Pretty sure I'm on the right track now, but still can't see the finish line...
User avatar
boharr
Moderator
Posts: 3182
Joined: Fri Sep 06, 2019 8:57 am
Location: Westchester, NY

#22

Post by boharr »

Got it, with the help of some major shoves.
Laura M
Posts: 1384
Joined: Thu Apr 11, 2019 11:49 am

#23

Post by Laura M »

Oh man I had it this morning but I didn't see why! This is fantastic.
User avatar
Hector
Posts: 1297
Joined: Thu Apr 11, 2019 8:15 pm
Location: San Francisco
Contact:

#24

Post by Hector »

Big plus-sized nothing so far. I'd had a good few weeks & was due for a comeuppance. :)
Tina
Posts: 391
Joined: Tue Apr 09, 2019 5:56 pm

#25

Post by Tina »

I got nothing. Science is not my strong point.
User avatar
Cindy N
Posts: 984
Joined: Mon Oct 21, 2019 12:55 pm
Location: Wisconsin

#26

Post by Cindy N »

I've got something. First step led to second. Can't cross the finish line.
User avatar
joequavis
Posts: 500
Joined: Fri Apr 12, 2019 12:29 pm
Location: Windsor, Colorado

#27

Post by joequavis »

Just saw Peter's write-up. I was off on a pretty good, but sort of related tangent. I found words which were possibly loosely hinted at by the theme entries, and those words contained a subset of the letters in its respective theme entry: NON-RECURRENT --> UNE; CAPITALISTIC --> SCRIP; INCONSISTENCIES --> NONSENSE; NON-PERTINENT --> INAPT; ANTI-AIRCRAFT --> CAR.

Many of these actually crossed the theme entry I paired them with. I was certain I was on the right path, but of course could not come up with anything. I wish I could have gotten off this path and noticed the intended path. Would have been enjoyable to solve, even if I wasn't an engineer! Cool puzzle!
Laura M
Posts: 1384
Joined: Thu Apr 11, 2019 11:49 am

#28

Post by Laura M »

Part of the reason this one took me so long was that I was totally 100% positive that if PGW put both (NONRE)CURRENT and AMP in the grid, it must be significant!
User avatar
C=64
Posts: 684
Joined: Mon Jun 08, 2020 8:29 pm
Location: PDX

#29

Post by C=64 »

KAS 5 -- I gave it a decent attempt but I'm glad I gave up when I did. I saw ION in a few places and thought we might be dealing with electrical charges, but that (obviously) was a terminal path that didn't lead anywhere.
User avatar
Hector
Posts: 1297
Joined: Thu Apr 11, 2019 8:15 pm
Location: San Francisco
Contact:

#30

Post by Hector »

Speaking of terminals, the NW and NE corners had AN and CAT, kinda joined by CURRENT. And . . . dozens of other wrong approaches. I don't super like the title, but it's a great meta, as I've come to accept after digesting my sour grapes. :)
Laura M
Posts: 1384
Joined: Thu Apr 11, 2019 11:49 am

#31

Post by Laura M »

joequavis wrote: Tue Jul 28, 2020 2:14 pm Just saw Peter's write-up. I was off on a pretty good, but sort of related tangent. I found words which were possibly loosely hinted at by the theme entries, and those words contained a subset of the letters in its respective theme entry: NON-RECURRENT --> UNE; CAPITALISTIC --> SCRIP; INCONSISTENCIES --> NONSENSE; NON-PERTINENT --> INAPT; ANTI-AIRCRAFT --> CAR.

Many of these actually crossed the theme entry I paired them with. I was certain I was on the right path, but of course could not come up with anything. I wish I could have gotten off this path and noticed the intended path. Would have been enjoyable to solve, even if I wasn't an engineer! Cool puzzle!
I had those too! (Except UNE, that's a good one.) The crossing NON-PERTINENT/INAPT in particular seemed like it had to mean something! Lots of rabbit holes. What finally broke it for me was thinking that you could get a lot of anagrams out of the long words, and because I'm terrible at those I plugged NONRECURRENT into a Scrabble word generator and remembered "counter" from one of the clues. Not sure if this was intentional, but it helped that for all of the relevant clue words, I'd had to work a little to make the connection to the answer so they ended up sticking in my head for later.

It feels random that I managed to solve this one, I could have very easily missed it. Some days you get the meta, some days the meta gets you :-)
User avatar
Cindy N
Posts: 984
Joined: Mon Oct 21, 2019 12:55 pm
Location: Wisconsin

#32

Post by Cindy N »

With a nudge, I did get this one. Not my cup of tea.
Locked