XWord Muggles Forum

lol got it after nudge 2. Really should have gotten it without the nudges, because it meshes with one of my hobbies. I was considering two different sets of things, and it turned out I needed to be focused on a third set with components of each.

Very cool, thanks.

Confirmed Off The Couch before the nudges. I came at it a little askew at first, but that still pointed me in what was the right direction. Very enjoyable!

Thanks, Jay!

Confirmed on Crosshare, but I needed nudges. Great puzzle!

Needed 3 nudges! Very fun puzzle! Thanks so much Jay!

Another dozen solvers have arrived, but there’s still plenty of space in the movie theater for those who want to watch this 9-letter no-so-classic film.

49. Naptown Kid
50. JeanneC
51. Snood
52. Bbaack
53. ajk
54. CPJohnson
55. Pair O Ducks
56. Cindy Heisler
57. Dow Jones
58. SeamusOL
59. jbird
60. Teamdoubletow

Off the couch! Finally saw what I should have seen earlier. Sweet puzzle.
And thanks to Peter Abide for my Biloxi winner pack which arrived yesterday. The pen will be used sparingly and lovingly on future metas!

Finally off the couch - many rabbit holes! Thanks, Jay

Ditto what Mark said above. Fun one! Thanks, Jay.

Time's up; pencils down.
At the end of the day — the end of the week actually — we have 76 solvers thanks to these latecomers.

61. K7
62. Max Chemtov
63. JR
64. Sharkicicles
65. cbarbee002
66. Jimbo
67. Sanne Budd
68. frostyjhammer
69. Golem
70. Mark Woychick
71. Adam
72. Capn Rick
73. Tane
74. Jim Dean
75. Pandora's Blocks Weekly Meta Crossword
76. bergie

The answer is Magic Mike

The prompt asked you for a “nine-letter movie that would complete the sequence.” What sequence?

The puzzle brought together two old friends of crossword solvers — the NATO alphabet and Roman numerals. In six entries, the final word was one that NATO designated as the indicator of a letter. Those letters just happened to be letters used as numbers by the Romans, and in the grid, they (the numerals, not the Romans) appeared in increasing order:
I = 1
V = 5
X = 10
L = 50
C = 100
D = 500
. .
There’s only one left.

M = 1000

In NATO, M is designated by the word MIKE. So you were looking for a nine-letter movie title whose last word was “Mike.” The answer we were looking for was “Magic Mike” though one intrepid contrarian submitted “I Like Mike.” The latter is an Israeli film released in 1961 and seen by literally dozens of people worldwide, none of them in the US. But it’s nine letters and ends in “Mike.”

Other responses included “Paper Moon” (apparently there’s a campaign to revise the NATO alphabet), “M is for Murder” (apparently there's also a campaign to override Sue Grafton’s rejection of Hollywood), and “Anastasia” (your guess is as good as mine).

For a bonus puzzle, see the next post.

BONUS PUZZLE

The title may have a familiar ring for WSJ Crossword Contest fans. The metanism in the one that first occurred to me when I saw the title of Matt Gaffney's puzzle. I spent so much time in that rabbit hole that after I emerged I thought, When the rabbit hole in Matt's puzzle gives you lemons, make your own meta.

https://crosshare.org/crosswords/6cLju8 ... -and-again

(I had to delete the earlier, flawed version of this puzzle that was up on Crosshare. But thanks to the people who solved it and commented.)

I'm off the couch again. Thanks for the bonus!

Thanks, Jay. That must have been some rabbit hole you went down!

The couch has been vacated again.
Thanks for the bonus puzzle!

And although I am not of the dozens who saw (or even heard of) the Israeli movie I Like Mike, it seems it was Chaim Topol's first role on film. He passed away last week, I figure he deserves the mention.

Bird Lives wrote: ↑Sun Mar 12, 2023 10:10 am BONUS PUZZLE

The title may have a familiar ring for WSJ Crossword Contest fans. The metanism in the one that first occurred to me when I saw the title of Matt Gaffney's puzzle. I spent so much time in that rabbit hole that after I emerged I thought, When the rabbit hole in Matt's puzzle gives you lemons, make your own meta.

That Voice Again Again crosshare

That Voice Again Again PUZ

That Voice Again Again PDF

That Voice Again Again spreadsheet

This is great. I think we should make it a thing to riff off the WSJ regularly.

Great meta AGAIN - thanks for the bonus!

Saw the bonus puzzle this morning but then forgot about it until it was mentioned on the zoom call.

The couch is doubly vacant. Very nice! Now I have to go back and look at how it would work on WSJ

I was down. I got up. Sat down again. Up once more. (Seesaw couch at Reed College Student Union)
Thanks for the encore, Jay!

Ok, I was the one who guessed “Anastasia” but for the life of me I can’t remember why ( amnesia perhaps! Lol!) I’m sure I followed a very tricky rabbit down a very deep hole and was convinced that “Anastasia” was the answer! I did eventually see the NATO alphabet connection but not the Roman numeral sequence.

I'm stumped by 54A. Can anyone explain who "Djoker Novak" is? Thx!

dsbened wrote: ↑Mon Mar 13, 2023 9:34 pm I'm stumped by 54A. Can anyone explain who "Djoker Novak" is? Thx!

Novak Djokavic,,,, amazing tennis player