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!