XWord Muggles Forum

Week 1 of 5

This week’s contest answer is a country in Africa.

#7 on the board. Easy, but a nice palate cleanser after last week. And let me add that I appreciate Matt's acknowledgement of the disappointment of the Spider Nightmare in his write-up on the site! Have a nice weekend, all!

Speedy one, finished the meta in 4 minutes. Probably would have made the top ten, if I hadn't stopped to read last week's post mortem.

I read the post-mortem just before 11 (it does go live early).
Let me get to the puzzle (once I got the PUZ file from Patreon) pretty quickly.

Indeed a quick solve, on the board at #19. I try to be faster, but it's hard to shake the habit of filling in the whole grid before addressing the meta.

I was actually rather moved by Matt's explanation on SPIDER DREAM, not because he felt compelled to address it (the way I see it, he didn't have to at all) but that you could see how deeply committed and passionate he is about the meta process. I only learned it through him, and it's almost to the point that other than NYT, the Gaffney and this wonderful forum is enough to keep my crossword passion alive.

Happy October! Spooky season - but a nice Week 1 to start!

Beam me up!

stmv wrote: ↑Fri Oct 01, 2021 12:16 pm Indeed a quick solve, on the board at #19. I try to be faster, but it's hard to shake the habit of filling in the whole grid before addressing the meta.

I'm in the same boat. Saw the meta pattern early, but still feel compelled to do the whole grid before even thinking about the answer.

I always feel bad reading Matt’s meta culpa wraps. If you don’t like his puzzles, don’t subscribe, is my hot take.

Easy week 1, but there are 4 more.

Beamed up without Mr G. Thanks to Mr Douglas my 8th grade geography teacher!

Stay well all

Beamed up….now back to all the other metas this week that I haven’t yet solved LOL.

Fast and easy solve to start October -- and all is forgiven, Matt, after the heaping helping of crow you dined upon in your write up of last week.

In at 107 due to stupid work getting in the way of rapid solving.

Reminder that this month is an opportunity for the 'Nothing Scarier' achievement (solving a Week 5 puzzle on Halloween). Does require solving the week 5 by Sunday...

Easy breezy week 1. Beamed aboard.

I can make an argument for 2 different answers, albeit one has a much stronger case than the other.

Soon to be on the board.

Beam me up!

Beam me up! #135, I don't even try for a high spot on the leaderboard on Week 1s. Took me around 20 minutes, so if I had started right on time I might have barely made top 50 :-) Congrats to all the crazy quick solvers!

beamed up and ready to get back to the WSJ one, I've got the grid, but that's about it for Mr. Shenk's puzzle this week.

Beamed up at #180.

Does anyone know if there's significance to the TENTH MONTH branding? It almost sounds like some sort of Muller-esque mega meta developing for the month. (Or maybe it means...something else that plays into this week's puzzle and perhaps the theme will just be repeating for the next four weeks?)

Nice week 1.
Erik Agard got it at 12:01, but I didn't even receive the puzzle until 11:03 CDT!
I know he sometimes makes guesses without doing the puzzle.