XWord Muggles Forum

Wow. Remarkably, amazingly convoluted.
Really need to know your songs for this one.
Got it with some help from my friends. Thanks.

So I submitted FEEL IT STILL. I found all the IT songs, it happened to be last (lower-right) in the pattern, and googling it turned up 2008. Ah, streak broken going back to last year. Eh, onward and upward!

Edit: 2018 not 2008. Eh, it all blends together anyway.

BethA wrote: ↑Fri Oct 08, 2021 7:49 pm Nice Dan voluntarily came out of meta retirement to consult with me on this one! If all collaborations could be like this, I’d be more open to them! Will write more after the solution.

I had been looking at lists of top songs of 2018, just to have in mind. They mostly consisted of rap, pop, and country. When Dan came along and did a search of top rock songs of 2018, he discovered FEEL IT STILL, because of the IT. I said wait! FEEL and STILL are in the grid!!! …that tingling feeling when it feels like we’re on to something!

So it was lucky that one of the theme answers was from 2018. I wasn’t familiar with most of the rest. Had heard LET IT BLEED, and was most familiar with TAKE IT EASY, but not the others.

And I had thought of trying to fill in missing letters in the black squares, but was thinking 1-dimensionally, instead of turning a corner to connect the words in an L shape.

I think normally when collaborating, it’s natural that one person will get to the answer first. This time neither of us were sure we were really on the right track or where it was leading. (Our first pass yielded BYNEOD ). It was a lot of fun!

Sadly streak broken. Busy weekend not much time but no excuse. Too tough!

I went the Donald Glover/Childish Gambino route, wrongly believing the "where" was geographical. Alas, "This Is America" was just the beginning of my wrongliness.

After finding FEEL IT STILL, a much more popular 2018 song (per Billboard lists) and which fits the theme much better, why should we go on to PAGEANT... I mean BEYOND?

I was fixated on the "Where" as well (and also saw the hints of "This Is America" and worked that for a while. But one meta-meta angle was that Pete often performs covers of the meta answers, and maaaybe this would be a challenging one for him to pull off...)

The only instance of "it" in the entire puzzle was the clue for 19 Across - and that's a geographical answer. The "where" theme! So - what other countries share a border? Among them, Greece - also appearing in the cluing with Greek in 61A! Watson, the game is afoot!

And the "it" in the 19A clue seemed intentional, since many other similarly phrased clues could also have started with "it" but didn't. The clue could have said "Shares a border with North Macedonia"

Or - in the "where" theme - the two longest entries are a "Street" and a "Drive" (kind of). To the maps!

Or the lyrics to "Bulbs" (clue for the one of two longest words in the grid) include "Show biz" and "Batteries" - both in the cluing elsewhere - and the repeated phrase "It was outside"... as if an answer to "Where is it?"

Many other red herrings and rabbit holes that I'm sure most went down... it was a tough one. I do enjoy the challenge, and it did get me to discover this board and meet some fine people, but man!

I couldn't solve this one in time. Read Pete's hint, figured out what was going on, tried to get some letters from the grid only to fail. Then I decided to look at a list of hot 2018 songs, saw "The Middle" and said "OH WOW I COULD'VE GOTTEN THIS"... only to realize that was also the wrong answer lol.

I've been kinda pageanted twice this week, first with ESSAY SET and now this. Will solve MGWCC today, let's see how I'll screw that one up.

Joe Ross wrote: ↑Mon Oct 11, 2021 9:24 am After finding FEEL IT STILL, a much more popular 2018 song (per Billboard lists) and which fits the theme much better, why should we go on to PAGEANT... I mean BEYOND?


October 2021 MMMM reveal .png

During my solve, I found that FEEL IT STILL was actually released in 2017, though it seems to be on 2018 Billboard charts.

joequavis wrote: ↑Mon Oct 11, 2021 12:38 pm

Joe Ross wrote: ↑Mon Oct 11, 2021 9:24 am After finding FEEL IT STILL, a much more popular 2018 song (per Billboard lists) and which fits the theme much better, why should we go on to PAGEANT... I mean BEYOND?

During my solve, I found that FEEL IT STILL was actually released in 2017, though it seems to be on 2018 Billboard charts.

Thanks! That makes me feel better.

I also submitted “The Middle.” My problem was that I found BEYOND first, but it didn’t sound like it answered the title question (“Where Is It”), and for some reason, I never checked to see if there was a song from 2018 with that title. Instead, I sent in The Middle — after checking to see that that was a 2018 song — because I thought it answered the title question better.

Hi all-

Just a quick comment before I start seeing pitchforks

I don't think this is a PAGEANT situation...

If I had chosen a different six letter song and prompt ("Well known pop hit" and BEAT IT, say) that everyone recognized, would there have been any confusion?

So if the puzzle has a flaw, I think it's that I picked a song that many weren't familiar with.

Note that the meta prompt is "A song from 2018," not "A song from 2018 that answers the question posed by the puzzle's title."

That said, I am always bummed when people don't have a great time solving. Sorry!

Pete

PS Feeling a little nervous about next month, since it's going to be hard. Should I go easier?

pmxwords wrote: ↑Mon Oct 11, 2021 5:52 pm Hi all-

Just a quick comment before I start seeing pitchforks

I don't think this is a PAGEANT situation...

If I had chosen a different six letter song and prompt ("Well known pop hit" and BEAT IT, say) that everyone recognized, would there have been any confusion?

So if the puzzle has a flaw, I think it's that I picked a song that many weren't familiar with.

Note that the meta prompt is "A song from 2018," not "A song from 2018 that answers the question posed by the puzzle's title."

That said, I am always bummed when people don't have a great time solving. Sorry!

Pete

PS Feeling a little nervous about next month, since it's going to be hard. Should I go easier?

I think that "usually" with your metas they can be solved without a lot of music knowledge. This one was different in that regard and the title just led a lot of people (myself included) a bit astray in all the countries and cities in the clues. I eventually did get it, but with a lot of googling before I saw the pattern. Lots of songs with "it" in the middle! Maybe a different title, something with "it" in the middle to give more of a hint? I don't know, but what I do know is that all's fair in the meta world! We love your puzzles Pete, don't beat yourself up about it. And, bring on November!

I had exactly the same grid annotations as @Joe Ross above, with the "I"s and "T"s in blank squares, and I submitted "Poke It Out" (after some Googling) to refer to getting rid of those letters. When that was wrong, I thought that the answer had to be "The Middle" because it answered the title question. I don't know why my mind gets stuck like this, but no matter how long I looked, I never would have thought about using the letters in the diagonal boxes when the blank spaces were so obviously the connectors. But thanks to a PM comment from @Al Sisti, "The ITs are not in blank squares," I had one of those vertiginous moments where my worldview was upended, after which everything made sense again! Overall I think that this was a tough-but-fair and typically elegant MMMM, and I was just outclassed :-)

(Edit: Dangit, I realized I should have said it was BEYOND me...)

pmxwords wrote: ↑Mon Oct 11, 2021 5:52 pm Hi all-

Just a quick comment before I start seeing pitchforks

I don't think this is a PAGEANT situation...

If I had chosen a different six letter song and prompt ("Well known pop hit" and BEAT IT, say) that everyone recognized, would there have been any confusion?

So if the puzzle has a flaw, I think it's that I picked a song that many weren't familiar with.

Note that the meta prompt is "A song from 2018," not "A song from 2018 that answers the question posed by the puzzle's title."

That said, I am always bummed when people don't have a great time solving. Sorry!

Pete

PS Feeling a little nervous about next month, since it's going to be hard. Should I go easier?

I'm one of the "The Middle" submitters, and I totally agree with you: it's a wrong answer. Period. What irks me is that I actually got BEYOND but I wasn't sure about it (actually, I didn't read the letters left-to-right, so I got BEYOND by anagramming the letters I did circle... and I know you rarely use anagrams). In the Mistake of the Year (so far), I didn't even check to see if there was a 2018 song by that name. That's totally on me. And please don't soften up your November MMMM!

Beyond was my wedding song, so it's not an obscure song to me at all. I wish I got there...

Edit: Post was too long and whiney...

Pete, the puzzle was awesome. Not your fault I got it wrong

^^ This.