XWord Muggles Forum

Nudges, in order of increasing blatancy:

1. There are no hints in the grid, but you should have had trouble with four across clues (which may also have required some Googling! I was definitely plumbing the depths of arcance knowledge this week.)

2. Can you find what happened to the missing letters?

3. Hopefully that will be enough to trigger a specific horror movie trope!

Nice write-up for "Horror Movie Trope II" in the weekly Crosshare newsletter. (Of course, I am only posting this because it calls me a genius! )

Fun clue for 17 across. I like this puzzle because it has a fun pattern as well as good clueing from Ben. I’m trying to get better at these metas, and this one took some Googling. A very clever answer. YOU ARE A GENIUS BEN!!!

Actually, the best bit was at the bottom when the reviewer said, "I had such a good time writing these reviews and this has inspired me to try my hand at constructing a meta puzzle."

Crossed the moat! Nudges helped!
Clever one, Ben!

Monday morning, and it's time for the answer reveal. But first, 10,000 solves!


And second, joining the list of successful solvers we have:

News Nerds
dplass
MH
MrTheHan
kieranjboyd
Anonymous Crossharer
Ergcat
Spid4567
prog plus chat
ChrisCross

That's 54.

Here's the solution to "Horror Movie Trope II":


I was slightly surprised that quite a lot of solvers required Google to identify the trope in question. In my family, we talk about jump scares all the time. Essentially, if we're watching a suspenseful movie while drinking any sort of beverage one of us will warn the others about the possibility of jump scares so that we can all put our drinks down until the danger has passed. There's nothing worse than spilling your G & T all over yourself because something unexpected happens to the protagonist on the screen! (Based on a true story )