XWord Muggles Forum

Hello solvers! There's a new contest puzzle from Fill Me In. I'll rate this one 3.8 bananas on a scale of 5 bananas. (Bananas has nothing to do with the puzzle, it's just a 1-to-5 scale we made up.)

The puzzle is called "One of Four" and was constructed by me (Brian Cimmet). The solution to the puzzle is the name of a "major four" sports franchise.

The crossword can be downloaded from here. You're welcome to solve, you're even welcome to join in the chatter about the puzzle -- but if you want to be eligible for a prize, you have to listen to the podcast for this week's password. The podcast can be found on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, Google Podcasts, our own website, or wherever you collect your podcasts.

Once you've solved the puzzle, submit your answer and this week's password by email to fmi@bemoresmarter.com. You can also contact us with any suggestions, questions, comments, or ideas. Thanks for playing along!

Just bumping this up as Brian posted this notice first, then the solution to #311, so that one is showing as most recently active on the front page.

Did the grid and I have a feeling 3.8 is the minimum banana score from first glance at meta thoughts.

Well, looks like the first thing I'll need to do is google to find out what the "major four" sports franchises are. I suspect that means I'll have a hard time with this one.

BarbaraK wrote: ↑Wed Sep 22, 2021 11:53 am Well, looks like the first thing I'll need to do is google to find out what the "major four" sports franchises are. I suspect that means I'll have a hard time with this one.

In my "bump" post above, I almost added in "I'm presuming since Brian Cimmet is American, the "major four" sports in the meta prompt would be Major League Baseball, the NFL, NBA, and NHL, for anyone who isn't a sports fan or (North) American." I guess I should have!

I don’t know exactly how many bananas this puzzle is but I do know it is a bunch.

I think I have it, but this is my second defensible answer, albeit more elegant than the first.

I think I have it too.

Finally got it, but only with a shove.

Taking another look at this and still seeing nothing useful. Not being a sports enthusiast, should I not even bother, or is it solvable? If answering that here would be a spoiler, a PM would be appreciated.

Post enlightenment really is an amazing thing. I believe I’ve got it!

Hello solvers,

The solution to this contest was the MIAMI HEAT.

The prompt was to find the name of a "major four" sports franchise -- and by this, we meant the four major sports of North America: baseball, basketball, football, and hockey.

The title, "One of Four" simply meant that we were looking for one team out of a quartet of teams. There are very few cities in North America that host all four major sports. One of them is Miami. In the grid, there were three long entries:

MICKEY MANTLE whose two-word name begins with the bigrams MI-MA, which are also the opening bigrams of the MIAMI MARLINS
FLOWER PAINTER / FL-PA / FLORIDA PANTHERS
MIXED DOUBLES / MI-DO / MIAMI DOLPHINS

So the fourth team missing from this quartet was the Miami Heat.

We openly admit that this was not the smoothest puzzles we've made, and the meta of it was perhaps too obscure (in being very sports-trivia-specific) and too hidden (no real hints to help you look at those initial letters). Hey, we do the best we can!

There's a new contest puzzle -- definitely more "gettable" than this one! -- and a new post in the forum for it. I hope you give it a try!

I went with Jacksonville Jaguars; "J" being "one of four" letters not used in the grid. Ah well, on to the new one...