XWord Muggles Forum

How many people spent time trying to coerce ROCKS from ROCLS, I wonder? Lost 36 hours down that rabbit hole before reevaluating. Excellent puzzle again!

I need to listen to my wife more often!

She guessed "WATER" and I was like "How do you get that from these?"

I liked that each body of water was a different type: canal, sea, ocean, lake, river - I just couldn't pull it together

The bodies of water connecting the cities in order are River, Ocean, Locks (canal), Lake, Sea. So I submitted ROLLS. A sailboat rolls, pitches, and yaws.

I liked Matt's ingenious additional pointers: NAUTICAL, for obvious reasons, and BASELINE, because four of the five three-letter entries that sandwich the answer (RWR, ETC, LEM, and MRS) abut the bottom edge, and even PAO is entered in the lower third of the grid. I usually miss something, but even so, this was another great contribution to the Gaffney collection!

Crap. I didn’t get that last step but I wish I had. Brilliant puzzle. I enjoyed the first few steps.

I got hung up for a while on the Mohawk River, which I believe also connects Rome and Utica.

oldjudge wrote: ↑Mon Jun 21, 2021 12:18 am I got hung up for a while on the Mohawk River, which I believe also connects Rome and Utica.

Me too. Fortunately, I crawled out of that rabbit hole on Saturday.

CPJohnson wrote: ↑Sun Jun 20, 2021 2:58 pm I am now on shore, thanks to a nudge from Meta Daughter, and thanks to those who nudged HER. We were in the 90% group. I'm sure I've seen this mechanism before, but I can't remember when. If anyone else remembers, please tell me on Monday.

As Joe Ross posted:

Joe Ross wrote: ↑Mon Jun 21, 2021 12:00 am
Identical final step as last week's MGWCC #680:

This was why I described the mechanism as "common" in an earlier post; I didn't want to say more than that in order to avoid spoilers.

I've also seen that mechanism in other recent-ish metas (though I don't want to do the research to find them), so it seems like this is a good one to keep in one's solving toolbox.

oldjudge wrote: ↑Mon Jun 21, 2021 12:18 am I got hung up for a while on the Mohawk River, which I believe also connects Rome and Utica.

I was in that same rabbit hole. But I had W A _ E R, figured that I needed a T, found ETC, and thought it must be the Erie Canal.

Since I was staying up late to check the answer, I heard the Tornado Warning alert go off. Hanging out in the basement until the sirens stop, just to be on the safe side.

Good! Got it right!

In other news, though, I managed to screw up my password here and emailed a plea for help to ... someone here ... which can now be ignored, since I managed to fix the problem myself (but I'm not sure to whom my message may have gotten). (And, yes, I'm embarrassed.)

like a lot of you, I had the Mohawk River not the Erie Canal. I'm a Chicagoan, we don't know much about Eastern geography. In fact, if you ask a Chicagoan about eastern rivers, thy'll probably reply "You mean like the Yangtze?" But I digress. This was a great meta.

P.S. getting the erie canal instead of the mohawk was the backsolving I talked about.

I had the Mohawk River also.

I almost threw a Hail Mary with ROILS or ROLLS, given that I saw a River, an Ocean, a Lake, and a Sea...and must have been wrong about the middle.

Anyway...standard rant about how much I hate geography metas.

I had Mohawk River too but then realized Matt’s puzzles are too elegant to repeat a body of water like that… a google maps flyover of Rome gave me a satisfying canal click.

And I was in fifth grade when Reagan was elected, but I can’t ever recall seeing his initials in a puzzle like that… pondering that got me to the Rhine. Great puzzle!

Like a freight train light in a tunnel, I didn’t see that one coming! Got some of the two cities but couldn't figure the sail / body of water connection. Very clever and congrats to those who figured it out.

The final step never did click, so I did not submit my guess. Which turned out to be correct anyway.

(Insert head slap here)

I am fortunate that I was too busy teaching scuba classes this weekend to spend hours not solving the meta. On Thursday evening, I found the five city pairs and identified the bodies of water connecting them, except for being in the Mohawk River rabbit hole.

I did not get a chance to return to the puzzle before pumpkin time. And it is just as well. I could have spent all weekend on it without drawing any nearer to the answer.

To all who solved it: you have my admiration.

Threw in the towel and threw a Hail Mary last night. Figured out on Friday that the numbers were distances by water in statute miles between ports, and the bodies were the Rhine, Pacific, Erie Canal, Lake Michigan, and the Med. Spent the rest of the weekend looking for a mechanism to extract a letter per theme answer. Gave up last night about 10.50 pm and passed WATER. Never saw the actual confirming mechanism. But hey, we'll take the accidental win and call it a learning experience.

I said FJORD to complete the sequence of waterways. I like my answer better, but grant that I'm a sore loser.

There's always next week!

Agree with many of the comments above. My reaction was “cheeky Matt” for two reasons:

- Erie Canal v. Mohawk River (I also resolved it with a Google Maps flyover — “hey I can’t even see Mohawk but what’s that really straight one?” Ha ha); and
- As noted, he used the same mechanism for the final step just last week!

All is fair in love and metas.

Franklin.Bluth wrote: ↑Sun Jun 20, 2021 7:55 pm

MaineMarge wrote: ↑Sun Jun 20, 2021 7:36 pm Beached here on the sandbar, per the new Muggle nudgie rules.

What are the new nudge rules?

There are no new nudge rules. Sorry, bad choice of words on my part. I have edited my post #261 to clear that up. But I do think it was a good suggestion to report yourself ashore at the Sand Bar rather than the Tiki Bar if you got a nudge. Only difference is no Cabana Boy- DIY all the way.