MEOW #143: "Lifeline"

[kurtalert]

Freed the cat - great puzzle, thanks Wendy & Dr. Tom!

[DrTom]

Freed the cat - great puzzle, thanks Wendy & Dr. Tom!

The cat is grateful you threw him a lifeline

[whimsy]

Would have been here earlier but I was out at my Overthinkers Anonymous meeting.

Thanks for the warm and fuzzy puzzle, Wendy and Tom!

[DrTom]

Would have been here earlier but I was out at my Overthinkers Anonymous meeting.

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Thanks for the warm and fuzzy puzzle, Wendy and Tom!

I was going to go to that meeting but then I thought, what if it rains and I can't get home in time for the Gaffney, or what if I'm on my way home and there is a detour and I have to take the detour and get lost and then when I am lost I ask someone for directions and they inadvertently give me a possible mechanism to solve the puzzle but I think that having that would give me an unfair edge and so I try to find a different mechanism....ah well, you know how that overthinking goes....

Thanks for solving Claudia

[DrTom]

Well, the rush to solve has slowed a bit. Here at MEOW we call that the WSJ Pitfall. People are anticipating the drop of the WSJ and only have so much time to work on these and chose, frivolously of course, to do the WSJ over the MEOW. Ah well. Still we now have:

33 Dow Jones
34 LindaPRmaven
35 JakeDaSnake
36 HeadInHome
37 Hoover
38 lbray
39 kurtalert
40 Mr Tex
41 whimsy

and that is very respectable. Again our appreciation to all of our fans.

[schmidzy]

Would have been here earlier but I was out at my Overthinkers Anonymous meeting.

I'm still here and it seems they've locked me in, hoping some nudges will help me (and the cat!) break free.

[DrTom]

Alrighty then, Nudges it is:

Nudges!

LIFELINE was originally Wendy's title and it is what made me go - "Hey there is another meta here!" Considering the forum, can you see why?

32A is, as it says, a hint, but how?

Would it have helped if 32A had been "An element found 7 places after Lithium (LI)..."

Would it have also helped if you did not think of the "element" above as another in the periodic table, but rather an "element" of the solve?

[DrTom]

Well now, drastic halt to the people solving/trying to solve. Jut posted some nudges tonight, hopefully I can entice people to try it again?

Only one new solver:
42 Pair O Ducks

T

[DrTom]

Wow, Mr. Gaffney must be occupying EVERYONE'S day, as he has occupied mine. No more solvers despite nudges. Give yourself a break, come to the MEWO and solve, I promise it is easier then the MG!!!

[DrTom]

Well, sorry to say, no new solvers all day. Perhaps some Sunday solvers on the way?

[DrTom]

OK, OK, I know you are all out there waiting for the "Last Minute Solver" badge...news flash, we don't have one so go ahead and submit now. You still have a day and a half before the reveal and the backstory! Avoid the rush...

[DrTom]

Well the computer ate my homework, or at least last night's message. I said we had one more solver, Abide, who bumped it up to 43 cat unbaggers. I also thought I posted a nudge, or rather a shove, but that did not appear either. It is on Crosshare but let me put it here for certain:

My original rabbit hole with this title was seeing it could be parsed into, essentially, and ion and a cat (and since Lithium carries a positive charge it is a cation ) so I just looked for things that came after the ion.

[DrTom]

The Reveal (and, "the rest of the story")
We promised you a back story and a back story you shall have.
Lifeline started out as a puzzle Wendy sent me after a request for some MEOW help. It was one she had sitting around and had done for fun. When I saw it, I tried to solve and immediately overthought it because I saw LI FELINE and since the prompt was that the meta was the full name of her cat, what would be more reasonable than the FELINE coming after LI. There were also a lot of LIs in the grid, apparently a VERY common combination as we found out while trying to fill the grid and not have inadvertent LIs.

Anyway, with the mechanism I inferred I got very close to SATANIC and I KNEW that would not be what Wendy would name her cat (me perhaps, Wendy, no). Well as any of you know that did hers under its new name “Where’s that Cat” that was not the mx.

At that point I asked if I could hijack her title for another meta that we would do together and she graciously accepted. And that how Lifeline came into the Meta world.

We were particularly tricky in that we actually gave everyone the answer in the intro with a comment that the Puzzle was somewhere between a Calico and a Puma, and of course MEOW fans know that is Persian, the answer to the meta. We had a lot of help from several testers, and Al Sisti once again came through with the perfect nudge clue about NEON. By what I can only describe as serendipity, Neon comes 7 places on the periodic table after Lithium (atomic symbol LI) and the answer came in 7 places after LI.

[Wendy Walker]

Thanks for creating such a good summary and reveal, @DrTom! I hope everyone enjoyed our puzzle.

[dsbened]

Outstanding collaboration! And I liked the inclusion of "Cisco & Poncho", and especially "Gas Bubbles" (but don't stand too close to me after too many tacos on a Tuesday, lol!).

[DrTom]

Outstanding collaboration! And I liked the inclusion of "Cisco & Poncho", and especially "Gas Bubbles" (but don't stand too close to me after too many tacos on a Tuesday, lol!).

Or we will have to call the Police, that'll Sting!