"One Is The Loneliest Number" by benchen71

[rjy]

Swam every inch of the moat so I barely had energy to enter the castle. Needed a nudge AND a baseball bat to the brain but finally uncovered the AHA! Thanks for the puzzle, Ben

[benchen71]

Some more solvers!

Alex Sisti
MatthewL
rjy
Bbaack
Flora Wynn
ChrisCross

We're up to 25 now. Nudges in the (Aussie) morning!

[benchen71]

No further solvers, so it's on with the nudges, in order of increasing blatancy:

1. The central entry/clue contains a hint: "How many times each letter of the meta answer appears in the meta answer, which is also a hint on how you might find something that will then hint at the meta answer", to which the answer is ONE.

2. The hint suggests looking for any letters in the grid that only appear once. It is possible that as you were filling in the grid you might have noticed the frequency distribution was a bit different to the usual.

3. If you have trouble locating single-frequency letters, this tool will help: https://boisvert42.github.io/mechapuzzle/.

4. But the resulting word is not 6 letters long! Recall that the central entry/clue says that this word "hints" at the meta answer. You might need to use some word-association as you keep the puzzle title in mind; and remember there are no repeated letters in the meta answer either.

[lbray53]

Crossed the MOAT with the drawbridge part of the way down.

I needed two spoilers and some pondering time.

[Qmark]

Needed your nudges to get me past the last step to cross the MOAT...thanks for another great puzzle, Ben!

[jhseeman]

Had first step but couldn't see what to do with it....put it aside for a day, then came back and saw the light....doh..should have seen it earlier.

Thanks for the puzzle.

[benchen71]

A solver update while many of us bash our heads against the WSJ wall!

Pair O Ducks
lbray53
hoover
Qmark
DIS
JHSeeman
MrTheHan

32 solvers. One more update right before the answer reveal Monday morning Aussie time.

[MikeyG]

Had first step but couldn't see what to do with it....put it aside for a day, then came back and saw the light....doh..should have seen it earlier.

Thanks for the puzzle.

I'm here, minus seeing the light, haha. Definitely see the first step and have a clue but am musing on what to do with it.

Now "Coconut" is in my head. (Now let me see if I can get this meta straight...)

[MikeyG]

Crossed the moat after trying to make this much harder than it was.

I'm still doing this. All four nudges confirmed exactly what I'm thinking, but the association is eluding me so far!

[benchen71]

Special bonus nudge, just for @MikeyG:

5. Think "lonely crab"

Also, don't whatever you do miss this week's MOAT. You will be one of the only muggles who will be able to solve it!

[MikeyG]

Special bonus nudge, just for @MikeyG:

5. Think "lonely crab"

Also, don't whatever you do miss this week's MOAT. You will be one of the only muggles who will be able to solve it!

I just checked, just to be sure: MIKEYG was not the answer.

Edit: Ohhh my goodness, of course. Actually, with that being said,

MIKEYG should also be acceptable!

[MikeyG]

Also, don't whatever you do miss this week's MOAT. You will be one of the only muggles who will be able to solve it!

I'll start reading my autobiography again, just in case.

[ajk]

OK, need a new term for cross-puzzle enlightenment. Just got the MEOW after many days of flailing, so came back to this one thinking I'd give it another go and *bam* this one fell too. Finally did properly what I had been doing all along. Phew. Fun stuff, thanks.

[benchen71]

Final batch of solvers:

Katiedid
Jaclyn
Mikey G
Rufus T Firefly
JM
Carolyn
ajk

So that's 39 in all. Answer soon...

[benchen71]

Here's the solution to "One Is The Loneliest Number":

I construct my puzzles well in advance of release. (The one I completed most recently won't come out until October 2024!) So I found it very amusing that MikeyG's recent puzzle Don't Judge employed a similar mechanic to this one. But I figured mine was sufficiently different not to cancel its release!

This week's MOAT will be a "week 4". Sorry to give you yet another difficult meta in a week of difficult metas!

[Darth]

Here's a fun little story about a "you know what" in a moat! --> https://caerphilly.observer/news/952291 ... tallation/