MEOW #196 45 Degrees Clockwise

[Meg]

Cat is out. He sort of rolled out of the bag…….drunk on Doritos I think.

[benchen71]

Here we are near the end of the first 24 hours, and in a total coincidence we have 24 successful solvers:

kieranjboyd
Tom Wilson
Berto
markhr
woozy
Mr Tex
DIS
I K Snamhcok
kurtalert
Hector
hoover
Jaclyn
Danny K Bernstein
BarbaraK
DrTom
KayW
whimsy
Morendil
Laura M
Meg
Cindy Weatherman
Darth
William Phillips
Seb

Nudges in approximately 24 hours!

[lbray53]

Did not get to this until late last night. Our county fair is going on this week.

I finally figured out how to release the cat.

[benchen71]

Solver update, followed by nudges:

noneuclidean
rjy
lbray53
JM
Johnny Luau
Pair O Ducks

That brings us to 30.

[benchen71]

Nudges, in order of increasing blatancy:

1. Your only clue is the title. But my guess is that, when you first opened the puzzle, you very quickly realised that something very screwy is going on! Why are some clues blank, and other clues have two parts to them?!?

2. This puzzle might be somewhat easier to complete if you print it out.

3. Apply the puzzle title *literally* to the puzzle: turn the paper 45 degrees in a clockwise direction: now the clues will make sense!

4. There are actually two grids superimposed over each other. Look for where they combine to give you the answer.

[Cinny]

After a very late start to this week's metas, I am making some progress. The cat is out of the bag. Now back to the MOAT.

[benchen71]

A final few, bringing us up to 35:

JakeDaSnake
rfj
Cindy Heisler
frostyjhammer
CPJohnson

Answer time!

[benchen71]

Here's the solution to "45 Degrees Clockwise":

Well, this was a constructing challenge, let me tell you! I had the idea of turning the grid 45 degrees and then using the diagonals for the grid entries. But I had no idea if I could make it work. The problem turned out to be that you can't just assume that every square will end up as part of an entry that has a clue number. I quickly realised that a 15x15 would be way too complicated. So I went for an 11x11, put the meta answer in its locations, and then blacked out a few squares in the middle. Once I had a possible grid, I took a screenshot and opened it in paint.net. Then, I rotated the grid and started looking for orphaned squares. I found quite a few, so I adjusted the grid in paint.net until I had a suitable layout:

Then, I used this layout to define the two separate grids and used Crosshare to help generate the fill and then I worked out the clues:

Finally, I generated the final grid and painstakingly entered all of the clues. I had one minor snag: I'd made a slight mistake with an entry that ended up not having a clue number. So, I made one slight adjustment (TUBETOP became TUBNTOP) and the puzzle was done!

[DCBilly]

Hmpf. Saw HALF but not RIGHT. A vision thing.