MGWCC #733 - "Couples Only"

[oldjudge]

Thank you for clarifying that for me. I will try it (when no one else is around). God knows I can use all the help I can get.

[BrennerTJ]

[Laura M]

In the unlikely case that anyone was wondering, now that the deadline has passed I can tell the part I was unsure about. I submitted "recurring nightmares," and explained in the comments why I added "recurring" (because of the duplicate letters), and Matt took pity on me and accepted that :-) It looks like just "nightmares" was the expected answer, but at the time I still had no idea so I didn't want to nudge anyone to one or the other!

[MikeM000]

Meat ax: really a thing?

I thought the "couples" referred to things like ORE/ IDA being right next to each other and FIAT/ LUXOR, and so on. I didn't get far with this one. Like I said... streak of 7 once upon a time....

[ajk]

Yeah, this was in the not-my-week category. Saw the two-word entries, received a kindly nudge to focus on them and away from all the other rabbit holes I saw, and then did lots of things, including looking at the initials, but got nowhere. I did fail to put the initials in grid order, which is bad form, but I’m not sure I’d have seen it even then. Oh well.

[Jacksull]

I had the ten two word entries and the spent too much time on two word clues. Thanks to the late Zoom meeting, I found the answer. But I was only able anagram the answer. I know that Matt had a more elegant solution in mind, but I’m still having trouble seeing it.

Thanks to the Zoom host and participants for a fine meeting. I was only able to attend part of the session and had to leave abruptly. I wish I could have contributed.

[TMart]

I don't know if there was a more elegant way to know how to order the "couples", but this is how i did it:

NOIDEA_______NI
INDIGOGIRLS____IG
GOHOME________GH
HELLOTHERE______HT
TEXTMESSAGE______TM
MEATAX (?)__________MA
ATRISK_______________AR
REALESTATE____________RE
EVERSO_________________ES
SAYNO___________________SN

[woozy]

Did anyone notice that if you take the horizontal double letters the letters spell NOELS.

[MikeyG]

It was definitely a fitting meta answer, since the last time I was part of a couple, that was a NIGHTMARE.

[Dannyvee]

Anyone else submit the Hail Mary METAMORPHOSIS?

[hcbirker]

Meat ax: really a thing?

I thought the "couples" referred to things like ORE/ IDA being right next to each other and FIAT/ LUXOR, and so on. I didn't get far with this one. Like I said... streak of 7 once upon a time....

I really wanted meat ax to be “meta” but it didn’t work with the other entries.

[woozy]

Meat ax: really a thing?

I thought the "couples" referred to things like ORE/ IDA being right next to each other and FIAT/ LUXOR, and so on. I didn't get far with this one. Like I said... streak of 7 once upon a time....

I really wanted meat ax to be “meta” but it didn’t work with the other entries.

I really wanted AT RISK to be AsTeRISK.

[MikeM000]

Kind of amusing this came across in a cracked listicle in my Facebook feed while the big MGW streak discussion was happening...

[MikeyG]

Meat ax: really a thing?

I thought the "couples" referred to things like ORE/ IDA being right next to each other and FIAT/ LUXOR, and so on. I didn't get far with this one. Like I said... streak of 7 once upon a time....

I really wanted meat ax to be “meta” but it didn’t work with the other entries.

I really wanted AT RISK to be AsTeRISK.

This was such a rabbit hole!!

[Al Sisti]

Hmmm. So it was in the grid, eh? My grid didn't help.

[oggy]

I really wanted meat ax to be “meta” but it didn’t work with the other entries.

I really wanted AT RISK to be AsTeRISK.

This was such a rabbit hole!!

Also VERSO/RECTO staring at us in the grid, along with a few other junk “couples” like IN/OUT, YES/NO.

Also the fact that if you take the entries corresponding to the 2-word clues whose words each have the same length ("couples?"), their first letters can be arranged to form GUITARS, and I _really_ want Matt to send us guitars after all this because that would be so much better than NIGHTMARES.

Fun seeing all the red herrings people found now that the dust has settled.

[Joe Ross]

Hmmm. So it was in the grid, eh? My grid didn't help.

Area 51, right?