MEOW #104 Top Down Shout Out

[benchen71]

And reveal will be posted Tuesday, just in time to clear the deck for the next MEOW on, uh.... Wednesday!

... except there won't be a MEOW next week as a result of Thanksgiving.
There will be a MOAT, though, since we Aussies don't celebrate that particular holiday!

[whimsy]

We have solvers!

[whimsy]

And reveal will be posted Tuesday, just in time to clear the deck for the next MEOW on, uh.... Wednesday!

... except there won't be a MEOW next week as a result of Thanksgiving.
There will be a MOAT, though, since we Aussies don't celebrate that particular holiday!

Duh!
Right you are, Ben!
Thanks!

(But in general, that's the modus operandi.)

[whimsy]

Servings of nudges --

The title, combined with the picture, is somewhat deviously misdirecting.

Although the first half of the title is a hint to the mechanism --

-- and the second half is a meta answer suggestion/confirmation.

There are not precisely any theme entries the way we usually think of them.

(Or maybe you could think of them as about 65 theme entries.)

There's just one step to finding the meta -- noticing something about the grid. There are no other steps involving any sort of number/letter code.

On second thought, maybe the picture is a hint -- if you want to think of those cats as "Thelma" and "Louise" on their way to a fun evening at a church hall.

[benchen71]

Cat's out, thanks to that last nudge!

[Darth]

Cat is free and in its happy place!

[whimsy]

And Kewpie dolls for a few more --

benchen71
Darth
sharkicicles

[MikeyG]

Wish me luck getting that cat out of the bag after work tonight! I think she's running low on crunchies!

[MikeyG]

Cat is out of the bag! I noticed something, and I think I get the metanism, but I will now go and see the nudges. What I saw was too glaring to be coincidental.

@whimsy, your grids always make me smile, and that's much needed in this day and age. Thank you!!

[whimsy]

Gutman
Tom Wilson
MikeyG (aka Man of the Hour)

are all Winners!

[Dave C]

The cat is finally out after being nudged...

[whimsy]

And

Dave C

Has joined the ranks of those shouting out "_______!"

(Reveal a bit later this afternoon...)

[whimsy]

Many thanks go out to @KayW for providing the great grid for the reveal --
And it's good to see that (at least one of) our convertible cats made it to the bingo hall.

This may not have been to some folks' tastes since the answer was somewhat "squishy" rather than precisely derived from themer letters.
(And probably not a great week for me to have offered a "squishy" puzzle. )

The multitude of the B's in the top three rows followed by the same for the other 4 letters pointed toward a word read from the Top Down that you might Shout Out.

At first I asked myself what would be a good amount of "key" letters to put in the puzzle. What would be too many, making it too obvious; and what would be not enough to recognize the pattern? It turned out not to really matter since I felt lucky in the end just to get enough in the grid! (And some of those were of course the usual "inventive" entries, I'll be the first to admit!) For those who like numbers, the key letters on average comprised a bit over 25% of the total number of letters in the grid.

When I first had the thought about the puzzle I was thinking -- "Oh, this'll be easy." Ha!
I had too, the thought of using some sort of number/letter code (and I think some solvers may have been looking for another step in the mechanism involving that) but it doesn't really lend itself to that. I know the basics of the game but I found out more precisely that:

The columns are labeled "B" (numbers 1–15), "I" (numbers 16–30), "N" (numbers 31–45), "G" (numbers 46–60), and "O" (numbers 61–75).

I did try to stick to having the B's, I's etc. stay within their range but there are several "outliers" since I decided the "chunk" look of the three rows would be a better visual hint toward the answer.

I think too that this is a type of puzzle that can be easier or harder to see depending on how a brain might be wired to see patterns.

Kay had an interesting line in the note that she sent when sharing the grid --
I mean, it was impossible for me to ignore that swarm of B's as I started the grid. I immediately sensed something there, and then... they all disappeared.
I think that may have been just what I was trying to achieve as I constructed the puzzle.

Thank you all for playing Bingo!

REMINDER: No MEOW tomorrow but please check back next week!

[Dplass]

Pshaw, it was EASY for me to "ignore that swarm of B's" -- some things I just cannot see....

[woozy]

I saw the swarm of Bs but none of the others.

[BarbaraK]

I saw the Bs and was getting ready to ask for a nudge and explain that that’s all I’d noticed when I decided I should pull up https://boisvert42.github.io/mechapuzzle/ and check for any other clusters first.

[Dplass]

I saw the Bs and was getting ready to ask for a nudge and explain that that’s all I’d noticed when I decided I should pull up https://boisvert42.github.io/mechapuzzle/ and check for any other clusters first.

Wow, I may have to use that! Thanks!

[HeadinHome]

I was fixated on the vowels…

[dsbened]

TY, (David ?) Dplass
I'm new to MEOW, so I'm still figuring things out.

[dsbened]

When is the solution and the meta going to be posted?

Usually Tuesday ish

TY, Dplass, I'm new here so I'm still trying to figure things out.