"Better Together" by benchen71

[ChrisKochmanski]

Crossed. Stormed.

Good fun!

[KayW]

Very clever!! Inside the castle enjoying a certain musical genre...

[whimsy]

Crossed the Moat. Fun! (And a little mayhem.) Thanks, Ben.

[benchen71]

We are approaching the end of the first 24 hours and the survey results are in: this is definitely more of a "week 2" puzzle. Which is good since that makes up for the "week 3" puzzle last week! Here is the first batch of successful solvers:

Hector
Laura M
Alex Sisti
markhr
SeamusOL
Mikey G
rjy
Dow Jones
Schmeel
edestlin
Cindy Weatherman
Meg
lbray53
Abide
BarbaraK
boharr
Cindy Heisler
woozy
MatthewL
Ergcat
Dave C
Tyrpmom
jbird
ChemBrewer
DIS
ChrisKochmanski
Carolyn
Gutman
whimsy
ChrisCross
DebbieC
KayW
Jaclyn
CPJohnson

That's 34 to get us started.

Meanwhile, for those who are interested "Two Can Play At That Game" is still climbing my personal charts. It's now in 3rd spot and making a decent play for 2nd!

[Darth]

MOATo crossed. Whee!

[ky-mike]

Nice puzzle Ben.

Stormed and crossed!

[benchen71]

Solver update:

Mr Tex
Darth
dplass
Pair O Ducks
kymike
Johnny Luau
Spid4567

We're up to 41. Nudges coming tomorrow morning (Australia time!)

[benchen71]

Just one more solver to list before I release the nudges...

LindaPRmaven

bringing us up to 42.

[benchen71]

Nudges, in order of increasing blatancy:

1. 36 across has the hint: "Word for words like "Slithy" or "mimsy" which is itself a 36 across (how meta can you get!)" which is PORTMANTEAU (a portmanteau of the French words porter, "to carry", and manteau, "cloak").

2. Did you notice that there were some portmanteaus in the grid?

3. What is the etymology of those portmanteaus?

[ajk]

lol two for two this week on nudges forcing me to properly execute what I was already doing

Had this one solved very quickly, but didn't realize it for multiple days.

[jhseeman]

after getting over the scars of the term "Better Together" (was part of a merger between Lucent and Philips that the term Better Together was the motto to get us excited...when actually the internal term was Better To Get Out)... had the right idea, just piss poor implementation...finallly over the moat (and I still like my original guess!)

Thanks for the fun puzzle and Meta.

[MikeyG]

lol two for two this week on nudges forcing me to properly execute what I was already doing

Had this one solved very quickly, but didn't realize it for multiple days.

That happens to me so often.

[ReB]

Nudged across the moat this week. Noticed what was going on, but was just too mentally sluggish to make the connections without help.Not to mention being hung up on the two long entries.

[DrTom]

Got this fun puzzle before the nudges now that my brain has returned to normal operation. That is not to say I have become a good solver, but last week if the grid had been full of ROYGBIV references and the prompt was " A beautiful natural phenomenon" I'd have answered "Sunrise".

Nice mechanism Ben

[Qmark]

Crossed the moat without looking at the nudges...just needed to let it sit for a few days and come back to it with "fresh eyes". Thanks Ben!

[benchen71]

Before I reveal the answer, here's the last batch of successful solvers, bringing the total up to 48:

ajk
Darrell
JHSeeman
ReB
DrTom
Qmark

(Oh, and in case you were wondering "Two Can Play At That Game" did manage to take over the 2nd spot in my personal top 5 with 246 completions!)

[benchen71]

Here's the answer and explanation for "Better Together":

If you have the time the following mashups are awesome!

Nirvana + Europe:


Metallica + Huey Lewis & the News:


And if you're a fan of unusual time signatures like me, Radiohead + Dave Brubeck:

[benchen71]

Feel free to post your own mashup favourites!

[Al Sisti]