"Land Ho!"

[Cap'n Rick]

Leaderboard Update

20 more solvers bring our total to 71:

Mg305
Cindy Heisler
hoover
DCBilly
Mr Tex
Johnny Luau
Steve M
rayyandroid
JimDeVona
BethA
cbarbee002
edestlin
JeanneC
minimuggle
Sharkicicles
ajk
SeamusOL
MaineMarge
DebbieC
AxelPlays

Please let me know if I've missed anyone.

[BarbaraK]

Finally off the couch. Read (and loved) the poem on Monday, but didn’t get a chance to look at the puzzle til I finished WSJ. No nudges needed. As always, great fill. Some of those clues put a big smile on my face. And a clean and elegant meta.

[Bird Lives]

I found a version I'd written in 2019...

“’Twas the night before Christmas…”,
Well, you know the rest.
Here’s my end-of-year tribute
To the best of the best.
<snip>

This reminded me of the one I posted at the end of 2020 (WSJ forum 12-30-2020) mimicking the "Greetings, Friends" in The New Yorker at the end of each year. In case you'd forgotten, this was pre-vaccine peak COVID times. It includes this bit,

A champagne toast as we look back
To xword-muggles creator BrianMac.
Let’s hear it for Joe Ross as well.
He lets us shade things in Excel.
And keeping the ship heading towards
Smooth sailing on the other boards –
Salud Al Sisti, Abide, Hector,
And certainly Bob cruise director.

[Cap'n Rick]

Leaderboard Update

11 more solvers bring our new total to 82:

Mike D
Matt A
michaelm
Graham Sanson
kamashdad
Sendhil Revuluri
BarbaraK
SJMcK
frostyjhammer
Matthew
Sanne

Please let me know if I missed anyone.

And what a great job by @Bird Lives on his "Greetings, Friends" poem from a few years ago! Very entertaining as is his upcoming MMM meta on Christmas Day. Don't miss it!

[Naptown Kid]

Crosshare confirmed a nudgeless solve. Thanks Cap’n for helming another fun boat ride, and for producing so much enjoyable content for this site (doggerel included). Best wishes to all for a great holiday season and much successful solving in the New Year

[Annabelle]

whew! Off the couch, thanks for the hints!

[Cap'n Rick]

Leaderboard Update

Four more solvers bring our final total to 86:

Naptown Kid
James Williams
Jerry Miccolis
Annabelle

Reveal on "the Night Before Christmas".

[Cap'n Rick]

Ahoy, Muggles!

The meta answer is "HOLLAND" (or more correctly, Kingdom of the Netherlands), the country that gave us the name "Santa Claus" from the Dutch "Sinterklaas" (short for Saint Nicholas). To solve, puzzlers first needed to avoid the HOs/country names pitfalls and instead follow the title and keep a sharp lookout for "land", or rather grid entries that could be paired with "LAND" to form other words. Those 7 symmetrically-place grid entries were 17A TIMBER, 23A CROP, 28A GAR, 41A ICE, 49A WET, 55A MARY, and 64A MOTHER.

The next step was to look for other clues that matched these 7 new "LAND" words. The first letters of the original answers to these 7 alternate clues, in grid order, spelled "HOLLAND" - a truly "Dutch" (unlike 50D AMISH) location famous for 7D TULIPs, 67A CLOGs, and that great vacation destination - 33A ARUBA!

I hope you enjoyed the puzzle and my little holiday poem. Many thanks to @Bob cruise director and the other Muggles mentioned there for being good friends and good sports.

Happy holidays, everyone!
Cap'n Rick

Correction: Thanks to @JeanneC for pointing out that the BEEGEES, whose parents were English, were actually born on the Isle of Man. So the correct wording on that clue should have been "Self-governing British Crown Dependency band of brothers".

[lbray53]

And if you switch the words in the title you get Ho!land. I am not sure if this was intentional. In any case, that was an early hint for me.

[Cap'n Rick]

And if you switch the words in the title you get Ho!land. I am not sure if this was intentional. In any case, that was an early hint for me.

Thanks, @lbray53. Yes, that was intentional. I used it in one of my Nudges:

You could have saved yourself a lot of time by simply reversing the two words in the title.

Happy holidays!