XWord Muggles Forum

Crossed the MOAT...thanks Ben! Good one, eh...

I'm slightly early with this, the first solver update, given that there is still one and a half hours until the conclusion of the first 24 hours. But I have a busy afternoon coming up, so here it is:

SeamusOL
LindaPRmaven
Schmeel
woozy
Dow Jones
Berto
Tom Wilson
Cindy Weatherman
Pair O Ducks
rjy
BarbaraK
Hector
boharr
Meg
jbird
lbray53
Pedro
KayW
JM
kymike
Cindy Heisler
Bird Lives
Tyrpmom
rayyandroid
DIS
Alex Sisti
Carolyn
kurtalert
Darrell
MatthewL
markhr
Andrew Bradburn
MrTheHan
ChrisKochmanski
Jaclyn
Laura M
DrTom
DebbieC
Sharkicicles
heidi
whimsy
JeffsPuzzles
JHSeeman
Johnny Luau
ReB
chslv
Ergcat
Qmark
SJMcK
Golem
lankratz
Kent
moron
Spid4567

Woo hoo! That's 54 successful solvers - which is amazing for what I thought would be a "week 2" puzzle.

Moat crossed - got delayed on the meta answer because of doing this on Crosshare. Wish there were a way to do Crosshare WITH all the grid and clues showing at the same time! (is there?)

Fun one, and easy breezy.

Another update for you:

JasonKB
Zoe
Joe
HeadinHome
Bbaack
THC
frostyjhammer
SewYoung

We're up to 62 now.

Friday morning here in Oz which means it's time for the nudges! But first, a solver update:

Gutman
Mikey G
azonfrelli
K7
imontoo
Maria
Alex R

That brings us to 69.

Nudges, in order of increasing blatancy:

1. There is a hint in the clue for 22D. Please don't try and find the band based on looking through a list of artists! Please do search the grid for names!

2. There are additional hints/allusions in 17A, 29A, and 62A.

3. If the only names in the grid don't mean much to you, perhaps the location of the hint in 22D gets you looking at a significant aspect of the grid.

4. If you're still stuck, do a letter frequency analysis on the completed grid (for example, https://boisvert42.github.io/mechapuzzle/)

Solved, with an additional nudge from @Cinny.

came back to this, as I was out of town last week. Got it sans nudges. Fun, thanks.

Rocked the castle!.... :o Thanks, Ben.

Last batch of solvers:

Taiga Watanuki
Jerry Miccolis
Cate C
CPJohnson
Tane
SJ
Sanne
ajk
Mr Tex
Darth
Oskar
Jeremy Smith

That's a total of 81! Good show, everyone!

Here's the solution to "Thinking Music":


I know that some of you missed the diagonal. While that was the intended route, a solve is a solve no matter how you get there! And there were plenty of additional hints in the grid.

Another nice one, as usual, Ben! Thank you!