MGWCC #784 — “They Turn Into Superheroes”

[Katiedid]

Thanks to a tiny nudge yesterday, I woke up at 2:30am and solved it! Beam me up.

[TMart]

I had the answer all weekend but couldn’t quite pull the mechanism together until today. Beamed up.

[DCBilly]

I don't know whether the nudge I got would be considered gentle or strong, but it allowed me to see the solution immediately and just as immediately feel dim-witted for not having seen it myself. As for the grid. . . .
.

Venn.jpg

This awesome Venn diagram inspires me to re=air David Alfred Bywaters' most recent puzzle commentary, where he aspires to rescue modern puzzledom from "a dreary echo chamber of self-congratulatory hipster citatation, tribal signaling, and celebrity fandom." Funny but ouch, too true in some subscriptions....

[Dannyvee]

Resisted getting a nudge and glad I did— finally hit me after much staring. And got my badge!

[flamingbear]

I can't wait to find out what I missed. I was laser focused on step one and getting nowhere. Came back, looked around at the grid and the clues again and took a correct guess, but it was 90% guess. I guess it counts.

[MountainManZach]

I know it’s late but I’d love a nudge! I see the first thing I’m supposed to see but not what to do with it.

[BrennerTJ]

[Trish]

Well, our first answer that we submitted was wrong. It was A-team….long story but we had those letters left which we unscrambled for what we thought was a perfectly logical answer. So seeing that was wrong, we went back and scoured some more to see if we could find something else. We then saw x-men in the answer “ex machina”. So googled a list of those characters. We matched 7 across answers with x-men characters as follows:
Freezetag-Iceman
Eclipsing-Sunfire
Appsych-Professor X
Sigmargabriel-Archangel
Moonman-Polaris
Audiotape-Magneto
Exmachina-Hope

All X-men right!!!? Of course we could not submit it but we got there a totally different way! We did not see the Greek letters at all! Harrumph!

[Joe Ross]

Well, our first answer that we submitted was wrong. It was A-team….long story but we had those letters left which we unscrambled for what we thought was a perfectly logical answer. So seeing that was wrong, we went back and scoured some more to see if we could find something else. We then saw x-men in the answer “ex machina”. So googled a list of those characters. We matched 7 across answers with x-men characters as follows:
Freezetag-Iceman
Eclipsing-Sunfire
Appsych-Professor X
Sigmargabriel-Archangel
Moonman-Polaris
Audiotape-Magneto
Exmachina-Hope

All X-men right!!!? Of course we could not submit it but we got there a totally different way! We did not see the Greek letters at all! Harrumph!

WOW! Brava!

[Conrad]

Did anyone else get stuck in the Alt-J rabbit hole? That's how you type the Greek letter Delta: ∆

I'm sure it was unintentional, but that was nasty. Thankfully, I gave up on it (after consulting lots of keyboard shortcuts to produce the theme letters).

[ZooAnimalsOnWheels]

It took me a day before I even saw the Greek letters in the themers, because I immediately got hung up on EGOS. Who turns into a superhero? Their alter-ego. And we have three 'egos' in the grid: EGOS, EGOT, and PREGO, as well as 'alt' in ALTJ. We also have four answers that have 'ego' changed by one letter, or an altered 'ego': rEPO, taEBO, rEGAn, and dEPOt. That kept me spinning my wheels for a while.

Other superhero distractors for me included STRETCH and DASH, which could have indicated The Incredibles, and SIGMAGABRIEL ends with Brie L(arson), who played Captain Marvel, and as mentioned 'X-man' in EXMACHINA. We also have MOONMAN, where many superhero names end with 'man', so I tried to combo things with that.

When I finally got the Greek letters written out, it helped that there was a New York Times crossword recently that used rotated letters (though Roman and not Greek) to make new words. Otherwise this might have taken me quite a while.

As far as the grid, Quiara Vasquez and I seem to have good overlap. I was able to fill ADULTSWIM, ASTERIX, MOONMAN, TSA (from 'Get Out'), and ALTJ (I have one of their obsolescent music purchases on my shelf) without crossings, but AVOCADOS, JUNOT, and KCI were all new to me. I'm not big on the odd clueing language, though, mostly because in a meta puzzle I'm always wondering if it's part of the meta or just trying to be different.

[BarbaraK]

Did anyone else get stuck in the Alt-J rabbit hole? That's how you type the Greek letter Delta: ∆

I'm sure it was unintentional, but that was nasty. Thankfully, I gave up on it (after consulting lots of keyboard shortcuts to produce the theme letters).

Yup, spent way too much time there. Had a natick in square #55, because I don't know the band or the author and anything can be a keyboard combo, so I probably gave those clues more attention than I otherwise might. So I was sure it was meta-significant that 53-A referenced a Mac keyboard even though Mac keyboards don't have "alt" keys. (They have "option" keys which are in the same place and have a similar function.)

And then, when I typed an option-J and saw that Greek delta show up, I was absolutely sure that was the mechanism and started trying to figure out how to type the Greek letters hidden in the theme clues. Some of them are not simple option- combos, and there are multiple ways to get them, so deeper and deeper in that hole.

[boharr]

Did anyone else get stuck in the Alt-J rabbit hole? That's how you type the Greek letter Delta: ∆

I'm sure it was unintentional, but that was nasty. Thankfully, I gave up on it (after consulting lots of keyboard shortcuts to produce the theme letters).

Also Macs don’t have an ALT key. They have an OPT key instead.

[HeadinHome]

ˆ¡™£¢∞§¶•ªº–≠“πøˆ¨¥†®´∑œœåß∂ƒ©˙∆˚˚¬……æ÷≥≤≤µµ˜∫√ç≈Ω. Holy crap, y’all. I had no idea!! That ALT/OPTION key is da bomb!

[Joe Ross]

💣 Online Character Map

🐪🗓

[HeadinHome]

@Joe Ross does that chart tell you how to type that character on a keyboard? I don’t know anything about coding or what all the “character symbol details” are referring to. If they’d tell me “alt-J” then I’d know what to do!

[Joe Ross]

@Joe Ross does that chart tell you how to type that character on a keyboard? I don’t know anything about coding or what all the “character symbol details” are referring to. If they’d tell me “alt-J” then I’d know what to do!

Wendy,

Click on any character in the chart & it will open in a new window.

Alternatively, use the search box at top & the character(s) will show below the search box.

They are text characters, even if images/emojis, which you can copy & paste anywhere.

Joe

[HeadinHome]

Click on any character in the chart & it will open in a new window.

Alternatively, use the search box at top & the character(s) will show below the search box.

They are text characters, even if images/emojis, which you can copy & paste anywhere.

Joe

yeah - problem is - what pops up (the chart) doesn’t tell me how to type that character using a keyboard (or doesn’t tell me in a way that I can understand!)

[Joe Ross]

@HeadinHome,

Dunno'bout no keystroke combos.

I clicked on this: ‡ in the chart

which opened this page: ‡

then I highlighted & copied the character on that page to paste in this message :

[HeadinHome]

Ahhh - I typed my gobbledygook (that started this thread) by holding down the ALT key and typing other keys. I had been totally unaware that there were so many (not just ∑, Ω, etc.) but also ¶, £… all kinds of useful characters! Those are listed here: https://www.freecodecamp.org/news/alt- ... dows-list/!