XWord Muggles Forum

DrTom wrote: ↑Thu Aug 05, 2021 11:07 am Could NOT resist this cartoon given the reference in the puzzle and the obvious relevance to METAs in general (particularly with our group)

hoover wrote: ↑Wed Aug 04, 2021 4:20 pm
Hmph. The nudges didn't do anything but confirm what I already suspected.

Al Sisti wrote: ↑Thu Aug 05, 2021 12:08 pm

DrTom wrote: ↑Thu Aug 05, 2021 11:07 am Could NOT resist this cartoon given the reference in the puzzle and the obvious relevance to METAs in general (particularly with our group)

...and to that, I'd like to add a painting by my good friend, Stephen Fletcher, who recently entered it (and won) Utica's sidewalk art festival. He's calling it "The Impractical Pursuit of Idealistic Goals (Self Portrait)."

179652534_4619853914716175_4739677903080845312_n.jpg

Al Sisti wrote: ↑Thu Aug 05, 2021 10:33 am Thursday morning leaderboard update:

11 Small Wave Dave
12 auee89
13 SewYoung
14 Hector
15 whimsy
16 Darth
17 BarbaraK
18 MamaE
19 michaelm
20 Dplass

Pretty low solve count for an MMM. More often than not, that's a reflection on the constructor, not the solver.

DrTom wrote: ↑Thu Aug 05, 2021 12:50 pm

Al Sisti wrote: ↑Thu Aug 05, 2021 12:08 pm

DrTom wrote: ↑Thu Aug 05, 2021 11:07 am Could NOT resist this cartoon given the reference in the puzzle and the obvious relevance to METAs in general (particularly with our group)

...and to that, I'd like to add a painting by my good friend, Stephen Fletcher, who recently entered it (and won) Utica's sidewalk art festival. He's calling it "The Impractical Pursuit of Idealistic Goals (Self Portrait)."

179652534_4619853914716175_4739677903080845312_n.jpg

OMG, what a fantastic painting. It is a META in its own right! Please pass on my praise to your friend.

Al Sisti wrote: ↑Fri Aug 06, 2021 8:55 am I do want everyone to solve it, so feel free to PM me if you need another nudge.

BarbaraK wrote: ↑Wed Aug 04, 2021 9:53 pm

Anita wrote: ↑Wed Aug 04, 2021 9:14 pm Have tried several times to email Al with my answer, but the emails are sitting in the Outbox. Hopefully they will go out eventually...

Private messages on this board stay in your outbox until the recipient reads them. They're not like regular emails that only sit in your outbox if they can't be sent.

Al Sisti wrote: ↑Sat Aug 07, 2021 10:18 pm What an odd meta that was… a title that (too?) strongly suggests a foothold and four obvious theme entries (long acrosses) with no obvious connection. Where to start? Maybe the prompt will help. But no… the ambiguous prompt asks for two acceptable answers and a super-answer. Well thanks for that help, Al.

So, yeah, let’s go back to the title. Either you knew, or dropped the whole title in a search bar and saw the returns, that I was referring to Oliver Twist… the first concrete step towards solving. He was asking for more food, but my hope was that the solver would take that to mean that he was asking for “…some[thing] more to make a food item.”

And, applying that mechanism to the four themers, solvers noticed that:

L + IMEIGHTEEN gives LIME
CONTRAVIOL + I gives RAVIOLI
V + EALSBRIDGE gives VEAL and
HOLLEREDAT + E gives DATE…

… therefore, adding “Something more” to the (alternating) beginning and end, we get LIVE. Yay! Solved it! But no, LIVE doesn’t make sense as an answer. However, adding “something more” to LIVE, we can create another food item: O + LIVE = OLIVE. Oh wait, and (since I alternated between adding at the start and end of each themer), we can also see that LIVE + R gives yet another food item, LIVER. And if that wasn’t enough, doing both, we can get our super-answer, OLIVER, who – in a seredipitous “twist” – is the speaker of the title quote.

So okay, I know it was odd – having the “super-answer” also be the obvious foothold from the title… but I thought the idea was worth pursuing, although I did shelve it in frustration several times over the months, weighing some great suggestions from Abide and BirdLives. Turns out there aren’t a whole lot of foods that start with V or end in I. And BirdLives suggested an alternate title, “Starters and Afters,” which is Brit-speak for “appetizers and desserts”… and maybe that would have helped boost the number of solvers.

We did end up with 31 solvers who gave me one or two of the acceptable answers, and/or the super-answer, although most submitted all three. Our random winner this week was Abide, who will receive his choice of a) a Blarney Rebel Band CD, b) a Utica Club keepsake or c) a $15 donation I will make to a charity of his choice (Peter, PM me with your address so I can get it to you).

Anyway, thanks for solving, and I hope to be back on a Monday in the not-too-distant future!

Cindy wrote: ↑Sun Aug 08, 2021 8:54 am

Al Sisti wrote: ↑Sat Aug 07, 2021 10:18 pm What an odd meta that was… a title that (too?) strongly suggests a foothold and four obvious theme entries (long acrosses) with no obvious connection. Where to start? Maybe the prompt will help. But no… the ambiguous prompt asks for two acceptable answers and a super-answer. Well thanks for that help, Al.

So, yeah, let’s go back to the title. Either you knew, or dropped the whole title in a search bar and saw the returns, that I was referring to Oliver Twist… the first concrete step towards solving. He was asking for more food, but my hope was that the solver would take that to mean that he was asking for “…some[thing] more to make a food item.”

And, applying that mechanism to the four themers, solvers noticed that:

L + IMEIGHTEEN gives LIME
CONTRAVIOL + I gives RAVIOLI
V + EALSBRIDGE gives VEAL and
HOLLEREDAT + E gives DATE…

… therefore, adding “Something more” to the (alternating) beginning and end, we get LIVE. Yay! Solved it! But no, LIVE doesn’t make sense as an answer. However, adding “something more” to LIVE, we can create another food item: O + LIVE = OLIVE. Oh wait, and (since I alternated between adding at the start and end of each themer), we can also see that LIVE + R gives yet another food item, LIVER. And if that wasn’t enough, doing both, we can get our super-answer, OLIVER, who – in a seredipitous “twist” – is the speaker of the title quote.

So okay, I know it was odd – having the “super-answer” also be the obvious foothold from the title… but I thought the idea was worth pursuing, although I did shelve it in frustration several times over the months, weighing some great suggestions from Abide and BirdLives. Turns out there aren’t a whole lot of foods that start with V or end in I. And BirdLives suggested an alternate title, “Starters and Afters,” which is Brit-speak for “appetizers and desserts”… and maybe that would have helped boost the number of solvers.

We did end up with 31 solvers who gave me one or two of the acceptable answers, and/or the super-answer, although most submitted all three. Our random winner this week was Abide, who will receive his choice of a) a Blarney Rebel Band CD, b) a Utica Club keepsake or c) a $15 donation I will make to a charity of his choice (Peter, PM me with your address so I can get it to you).

Anyway, thanks for solving, and I hope to be back on a Monday in the not-too-distant future!

But Al….O AT in the upper left and GA R in the bottom right are both edible. Was that not intentional?

Al Sisti wrote: ↑Sun Aug 08, 2021 8:58 am

Cindy wrote: ↑Sun Aug 08, 2021 8:54 am

Al Sisti wrote: ↑Sat Aug 07, 2021 10:18 pm What an odd meta that was… a title that (too?) strongly suggests a foothold and four obvious theme entries (long acrosses) with no obvious connection. Where to start? Maybe the prompt will help. But no… the ambiguous prompt asks for two acceptable answers and a super-answer. Well thanks for that help, Al.

So, yeah, let’s go back to the title. Either you knew, or dropped the whole title in a search bar and saw the returns, that I was referring to Oliver Twist… the first concrete step towards solving. He was asking for more food, but my hope was that the solver would take that to mean that he was asking for “…some[thing] more to make a food item.”

And, applying that mechanism to the four themers, solvers noticed that:

L + IMEIGHTEEN gives LIME
CONTRAVIOL + I gives RAVIOLI
V + EALSBRIDGE gives VEAL and
HOLLEREDAT + E gives DATE…

… therefore, adding “Something more” to the (alternating) beginning and end, we get LIVE. Yay! Solved it! But no, LIVE doesn’t make sense as an answer. However, adding “something more” to LIVE, we can create another food item: O + LIVE = OLIVE. Oh wait, and (since I alternated between adding at the start and end of each themer), we can also see that LIVE + R gives yet another food item, LIVER. And if that wasn’t enough, doing both, we can get our super-answer, OLIVER, who – in a seredipitous “twist” – is the speaker of the title quote.

So okay, I know it was odd – having the “super-answer” also be the obvious foothold from the title… but I thought the idea was worth pursuing, although I did shelve it in frustration several times over the months, weighing some great suggestions from Abide and BirdLives. Turns out there aren’t a whole lot of foods that start with V or end in I. And BirdLives suggested an alternate title, “Starters and Afters,” which is Brit-speak for “appetizers and desserts”… and maybe that would have helped boost the number of solvers.

We did end up with 31 solvers who gave me one or two of the acceptable answers, and/or the super-answer, although most submitted all three. Our random winner this week was Abide, who will receive his choice of a) a Blarney Rebel Band CD, b) a Utica Club keepsake or c) a $15 donation I will make to a charity of his choice (Peter, PM me with your address so I can get it to you).

Anyway, thanks for solving, and I hope to be back on a Monday in the not-too-distant future!

But Al….O AT in the upper left and GA R in the bottom right are both edible. Was that not intentional?

Completely unintentional! You had to pull the "more" letters out of thin air, as you did to get L-I-V-E. But how weird was that? And nearly symmetrical in the NW and SE corners!

Cindy wrote: ↑Sun Aug 08, 2021 9:02 am

Al Sisti wrote: ↑Sun Aug 08, 2021 8:58 am

Cindy wrote: ↑Sun Aug 08, 2021 8:54 am

But Al….O AT in the upper left and GA R in the bottom right are both edible. Was that not intentional?

Completely unintentional! You had to pull the "more" letters out of thin air, as you did to get L-I-V-E. But how weird was that? And nearly symmetrical in the NW and SE corners!

The air here was thick with OAT and GAR. I even googled to make sure gar was edible.

Al Sisti wrote: ↑Sun Aug 08, 2021 9:06 am A lot of things are edible... but not all of them should be ed. I mean et. Eaten.