Welcome to Phil's Crossword Corner (PCC)! Philip Chow (aka Phil) is an auditor at NYC Dept of Parks and Recreation who makes crossword puzzles for fun in his free time. A new meta puzzle posts every other Saturday weekend on Crosshare.
Phil’s metas will usually include immediate nudges, a great tool for new solvers. You can reach him at pchow13@gmail.com
Please see below for the latest puzzle PCC#34 - "Don't Go Chasing Waterfalls"
[Level 5] Meta prompt: The answer to the meta is a traffic sign
CAUTION This puzzle contains several red herrings designed to lead you astray to fake (but very plausible) answers!! Please don't get too discouraged, keep looking, and try try again!!
Many thanks to FrankieHeck and Peter Abide for test-solving and suggestions for improvement. Shout-out to Joe Ross for his tech wizardry, patience and guidance. Many thanks to the Muggles and Crosshare community for solving my puzzles - I love reading about your experiences so please leave comments
Note: The level is the intended difficulty I had in mind when I designed the puzzle, but may play differently since every solver has their own area of expertise... what one person may find easy, another may find difficult.
Have fun and keep in mind if you're ever lost at sea, google is your best friend (actually, I don't know if you'd get internet service in the middle of the ocean)
-Phil
Edit: Here are a couple of clue rewrites due to grammar issues (subject-verb agreement and/or awkward phrasing). Thank you to the keen editorial eye of Emma Oxford for catching these. Please note that these changes have been updated in the Crosshare version of the puzzle but not in the puz/pdf files.
22-Across: "If boyhood and ___ are but vanity, must it not be our ambition to become men?" (quote from "Bank of the Seine" painter Van Gogh)
29-Down: Wildly deducts too much from one's paycheck (yielding a bigger refund upon filing taxes)
40-Down: "Be ___ Guest" (Disney song sung by a candelabra)
NOTE: The grid is oversized 17x21 so I had trouble formatting the pdf version and the text size is extremely tiny and difficult to read. I have attached a second pdf "Clues Only" which you may print in addition to the regular pdf and then go back and forth between two sheets of paper
Nudges below:
Hint #1: The title of the puzzle is "Don't Go Chasing Waterfalls" (emphasis on the DON'T)
Hint #2: Did you look up the lyrics to the song mentioned in 65-Down?
Hint #3: "Don't go chasin' waterfalls / Please stick to the rivers and the lakes that you're used to"
Hint #4: There are a total of 8 clues with a well-known lake or river in them
Hint #5: Here's a breakdown of the 5 rivers and 3 lakes: 3 in the US, 2 in Africa, 1 in South America, 1 in France, 1 in China
Hint #6: If the first letters of the relevant entries don't make any sense in grid order (top to bottom) , perhaps you're looking at it the wrong way?
Solution below - SPOILER ALERT:
Answer explanation:
Solution: WRONG WAY
Answer Explanation: In TLC's song "Waterfalls"... the first two lines of the chorus is "Don't go chasin' waterfalls / Please stick to the rivers and the lakes that you're used to"... There are 8 entries whose clues contain a well-known river or lake... in grid order, they are: YOUTH (the Seine (river)), ASP (the Nile (river)), WWE (Mississippi River), GAYBAR (Lake Victoria), NNE (Lake Tahoe), ORDERS (Amazon River), REAIRS (Lake Superior), WARN (Yellow River)... the first letters spell out YAWGNORW... this seems like gibberish but if we read it from bottom to top and add a space we spell out WRONG WAY
There are a total of 4 Red Herring answers (these are the fake answers that you get by chasing waterfalls and not heeding TLC's advice)... Spoilers below in case you want to see if you can find all 4 of them on your own...
(1) STOP is spelled out from the four entries whose clues contain the word "waterfall"... in grid order: SALMON, TLC, OUTPOURED, POSE
(2) SLOW DOWN is spelled out from the four down entries with the string HHO (hinted at by the chemical formula for water H2O)... the first letters of the entries spell SLOW and the first letters of the clues spell DOWN... in grid order: SLEUTHHOUND, LUNCHHOUR, OVERWITHHOLDS, WASHHOUSE
(3) DEAD END is spelled out from the starts of the clues whose down entries contain the EAU rebus (hinted at French for water)... in grid order: MOREAU, CHATEAU, THOREAU, LEBEAU, GATEAU, PLATEAU, BUREAU
(4) NO ENTRY is spelled out from the starts of the clues whose across entries contain the O where the down EAU rebus occurs... in grid order: IONS, VOICEMAIL, ONTOE, WELLNO, OUTPOURED, IKIDYOUNOT, EMOTES
"Waterfalls" (TLC song) was released on May 22, 1995 from their second album CrazySexyCool... it's full of meaning and it's very sad... but it's so damn catchy... check it out here: TLC - Waterfalls
Attachments
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Last edited by pchow13 on Sat Jun 15, 2024 7:37 am, edited 1 time in total.
Turned the corner... but only because you provided the nudges up-front. Great construction!
Check out "The MOAT MEOW Mashup Pack" here. US$10 for 14 metas that don't always abide by the "rules" of the game: asymmetry, 2-letter words, uncrossed letters, who knows. And this time there's a mega-meta!
CAUTION
Nudged around the corner after chasing a few red herrings. Very well done, Phil. Lots of fun.