"Ball Control" - November 26, 2021

[Commodore]

Solved, by gawd. Additional crew in port for the holiday, instrumental in the victory. Medals awarded posthaste.
Task complete, we can return to what is crucial. Adding ballast.
Piece o' leftover Apple Pie or Dutch Apple Pie?

[MajordomoTom]

Double Dutch

[Scott M]

Since it's still Thanksgiving weekend, and I need a bit of humor after the debacle I witnessed at UVA's football game this afternoon, I offer my favorite seasonal cartoon

[FKelly]

On the beach. Refreshingly easier.
Happy Thanksgiving to all Muggles!
Back to the grind of weekly covid-19 testing and assignments. Nice to have a break!

[Flying_Burrito]

Late start, finally back on the meta beach after a 3 week hiatus (with the added bonus of the Dawgs being included in the grid).

[steveb]

On shore - nice to be back after an unfortunate streak of DNFs

[Isw]

After a long dry spell…finally ASHORE!

[M and M]

A nice classic solve. We enjoyed our trip to shore and remain in awe of the convoluted mind that can create such puzzles.

[bread-girl]

Got this one! Finally, some relief after so many difficult weeks.

[Streroto]

Wow major major head slap. When I woke up this morning it was right there. So now I can post what I had been thinking about while LAS

There once was an old man on St John
Without a device which to print on
He copied the grid
The puzzle he did
In his email to Mike he said “hey mon!”

Deepest rabbit holes EVER
Stay well all

[HunterX]

Wow major major head slap. When I woke up this morning it was right there. So now I can post what I had been thinking about while LAS

There once was an old man on St John
Without a device which to print on
He copied the grid
The puzzle he did
In his email to Mike he said “hey mon!”

Deepest rabbit holes EVER
Stay well all

Agree with you and others on the deep rabbit hole. (Same one? Who knows!) My son and I started down one and quickly realized it was WAY too deep to be right. Quickly changed course and got the same head slap.

It's gotta be one of the standard hints for solving, at least for me. If you find yourself getting into a really deep rabbit hole, (especially those where a spreadsheet is involved), then you are probably on the wrong course. Either that or the puzzle constructor is a sadist who doesn't want anyone to solve their puzzles.

[JJD]

I struggled on the grid, but then the Aha Fairy visited me after I spent a satisfactory amount of time on the meta. Ashore.

I’m thankful for the puzzle creators, all you muggles, and a meta I could solve after a long drought.

[mlvilv]

I'm pretty sure that out of nowhere I just got it. I swear I looked at this potential mechanism early on and didn't get anything, so maybe I just made a mistake at that time bc suddenly I have something. I hope this is it. That was a several week dry spell of getting nothing. So many rabbit holes on this one and I think lots of time spent on making it more difficult than it needed to be. I've submitted and am going to count myself onshore until I find out otherwise.

[Jim and Anita]

Ashore. After sleeping off our Thanksgiving turkey coma, we had smooth sailing. Thanks for the fun Mike.

[EdStrong]

Late start but thankful for coming to shore after a month at sea.

[Barney]

Took a push and a pointer to get me out of frozen fear mode (my default; it’s a problem) but …. This is not hard and is 100%.

Not submitting.

[Olaf]

On shore after ages at sea! Which means this was an easy one. The grid came without any trouble also. Happy to be back in business on my quest for the mug!

[JoeS]

Ashore. As usual, I was trying to be too tricky. The little Russian woman, with little knowledge of the theme, looked at what I had done and immediately applied the next step.

[mflaminio]

On shore! Nice!

[auee89]

Ashore! Took me way too long. Too much turkey?