"Significant Digits" Oct. 13, 2023

[JerryF]

Not again! I just can't seem to make it to shore anymore. Back on the ship with my Chevis and soda.

[Ann]

Crawled to the shore.

[Miki]

After staring at the puzzle for 4 days, I'm ready for a hint. With only 2 hours to go, I'm cutting it close...
Help please? PM me please.

[Katiedid]

away celebrating our grandson's first birthday, so we'll just stay on board this time.

[JAQT]

Totally lost at sea, which "troubles" me since it should have been in my wheelhouse

Next week!

[PQ63]

Last minute Hail Mary!

[hcbirker]

[CAe39]

Yikes!

[PQ63]

Brilliant. My Hail Mary was caught in the end zone.

[C=64]

I had a feeling that this wasn't going to be as straightforward (in a mathematical sense) as the Global Powers puzzle a few weeks ago. I'm not great with metanisms that require a leap like this one. When I wasn't able to solve the meta on Thursday, I had to put it aside because I had an all-day conference on Friday. I thought you folks might like to see my name badge.

[meowmiao71]

Didn't get much time to work on the puzzle this week, but I think I could have worked 24/7 and still not gotten it! Congratulations to those who did.

[Sleepy]

The first thing I did after completing the grid was google 11 letter words relating to mathematics. It gave a small list of words. But I didn’t even think about the fact that mathematics was 11 letters

[Laura M]

I never got off the ship. First time missing a Patrick Berry puzzle, I think! I figured out what the themers must be, but not what to do with them. It all makes sense now though, as I figured it would :-)

[Cindy N]

I was able to solve, but MATHEMATICS was going to be my Hail Mary if I didn't. Imagine my surprise...

[mbryant]

Never saw this one. But I did break the years in the two clues into its digits but didn’t think of doing that with the perfect squares. Congrats to those who solved.

[BisbeeTam]

Ugh, I had all the “perfect square” clues, but never in a million years would I have thought to break the numbers down in order to get the letters. Maybe one more hidden clue would have helped. My “Hail Mary” would have been “extremities.” (Digits…fingers/toes…extremities).

[Jace54]

I finally realized late Thursday evening that significant “digits” in the title had to be applied to the significant “numbers” in the grid. I faintly recalled missing a meta in my early days that required using the digits of the relevant clue numbers, which quickly led to the answer.

[chriscross]

Mathematics was going to be my Hail Mary. I didn’t submit because I didn’t want to win a mug (as if, right?), have people ask how I got it, and have my story be “I guessed an answer.”

As for the meta, I am extremely disappointed. I actually started this way and got “MAT”. I decided to stop because of course there is no 16th letter in the 16th answer. I convinced myself I was going down a rabbit hole trying to convince myself my Hail Mary was correct. IMHO this meta is very inelegant. It seems empirically to have been difficult, but when you look at the solution there isn’t really much substance.

[clonefitz]

My "Hail Mary" submission was ODD-NUMBERED. The letters in "PERFECT" can be found (in order) in these numbered SQUARES:

13 P
15 E
23 R
27 F
31 E
49 C
53 T

Some of these are prime, some aren’t, but they are all odd. I knew this wasn't the answer, but it clicked all the boxes.

Lesson learned: When the number of theme entries does not match the number of letters in the contest answer, the trick is always to figure out how to make the transition. In this case, there are seven themers (the perfect squares), but eleven letters in the answer. The trick was to note that while there were seven themers, there were a total of eleven "digits" in those perfect squares.

[MaineMarge]

I found the 11 digits, but needed help adding it all up.
Great meta, PB. Even though my usual feeling about math metas is