XWord Muggles Forum

MikeyG wrote: ↑Mon Oct 18, 2021 1:38 pm

DrTom wrote: ↑Sun Oct 17, 2021 10:46 pm

Wendy Walker wrote: ↑Sun Oct 17, 2021 6:26 pm Got the idea (with a hint from Meg) while washing up our dinner dishes. And Mark says we need a new dishwasher -- pfft!

If you are ever REALLY stuck I offer our dishes to be washed as a favor to your solving process............

If not I'll let my usual helper assist with the task.

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Looks like a cat-astrophe.

Well the cat does charge by the hour., and he keeps track of his hours on line (I know because I have seen the Cat E-log).. the invoice is staggering, mainly because of the amount on the FEE LINE.

TB

HeadinHome wrote: ↑Mon Oct 18, 2021 1:50 pm Feeling thick, but maybe just because we are traveling (vacay - Yellowstone!) If anyone wants to throw a weary traveler a good tip, that would be most appreciated! ( : (Not asking for sympathy, of course… just hate to break my streak just because I can’t obsess over this one as I normally do, due to fast pace of touring Yellowstone and Tetons!)

UPDATE: GOT IT! Thanks for a couple of helpers.. funny that the Hail Mary I had already decided on was actually the answer. That doesn’t happen much!

Now back to enjoying the big sky today here in Idaho, just west of the Tetons. Saw some moose today, grazing by a random stream we stopped to photograph!
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LOVE Yellowstone, I worked at the Lake Hospital one summer during my days at University of Utah - we treated mainly burns, breaks and heart attacks. Please when going through the park do NOT be a TOURON, that is the park word for MORON TOURISTS who stop their car in the middle of the rather small (and only) road in the park to observe Moose, Elk, rocks, trees, etc.

stmv wrote: ↑Mon Oct 18, 2021 7:08 pm This is one that I never would have gotten without a healthy nudge from Wendy Walker (thank you!), but it's nice to see my name on the board in any case. I still feel quite conflicted about asking for a nudge - I get much less of a sense of triumph after a nudge, but it's still better than not getting it at all.

It all depends. If it is a "consider this" and you do and that leads you to the solve then that is a "slight" nudge. If it is "take all of X Across, subtract from Y down, translate into French and then take the ascii value of the accented words to chose the correct entries to give you a answer comprised of the first letter of each answer for that clue" that is a full fledged, no holds barred SHOVE. Feel bad about those (I usually do for 10 minutes) then move on. It's OK, att he end of the year there is no Peace Prize for Metas (yet!).

Tom

My self-imposed rule is to not ask for nudges unless I have a pretty good streak going. I'm nowhere near that now, so I'm committed to just staring at it until bedtime. I'm sure I'm part of the way there, but that big CLICK just won't come.

Beamed up with help. Although I had to puzzle and ponder quite a bit even then. Enough that the solution was still satisfying. How did he construct this! I considered but dismissed the eventual mechanism at one time as improbable to create because I have a habit of dwelling on impossible mechanisms that somehow make sense to me.

Okay, successfully beamed. Had a right idea but executing wrongly prior to a friendly nudge. As others have commented, incredible construction.

DrTom wrote: ↑Mon Oct 18, 2021 9:46 pm
Well the cat does charge by the hour., and he keeps track of his hours on line (I know because I have seen the Cat E-log).. the invoice is staggering, mainly because of the amount on the FEE LINE.

TB

yeesh

Beamed up with a slight nudge. Thanks RPardoe!

If anyone is around and willing, I’d appreciate an 11th hour nudge. I thought I knew what I needed to do, but not seeing it.

Solved but with a shove. I feel guilty for even submitting, even with checking "not a solo solve." Matt should have a check box for "really really not a solo solve."

It seems like a difficult construction, one where auto-fill isn't going to be any help. Maybe Matt will drop in at Fiend and reveal all.

About to end my anemic streak, and I'm oddly at peace about it. On the plus side, I have 714 new mechanisms for future metas.

lbray53 wrote: ↑Tue Oct 19, 2021 8:18 am Beamed up with help. Although I had to puzzle and ponder quite a bit even then. Enough that the solution was still satisfying. How did he construct this! I considered but dismissed the eventual mechanism at one time as improbable to create because I have a habit of dwelling on impossible mechanisms that somehow make sense to me.

I don't think it's too much exaggeration to say crosswords - and some of Matt's metas, specifically - read like works of art. This one fits the bill, IMO!

Never got out of this rabbit hole….

I'm looking forward to reading the intended path to solving this one. Pretty sure it doesn't go like this:

- Learn about Battleship, try to figure out how to pick squares from the grid or find the ship types

- Look for games that use an 11x11 grid - Elements, maybe?

- Note all the weird grid entries and wonder if "Looking Up" refers to google

- Try reading up all the columns and doing anything with the stray words I found

- Look for words that go with UP - burn up, roll up, etc

- Note exactly 10 six letter entries, all across, that must be it

- "Many sizes" - SML

- After the blank grid comes the seed entries, right? Seeds, buds, flowers, anything

- Last entry is ONSETS - sets of double letters, there are exactly 10

- Something that I circled a bunch of letters for, can't even figure out now what I was thinking then

- Other stuff that was too weak to even make any notes about

- Realize I'm out of highlighter colors and margin space; print a new grid

- Count the black squares - 21! aha! Write out the 10x10 and there it was

So was there a reason to count black squares (or squares with letters)? Is that something people usually do? I count words sometimes, as a hint to theme density, but never thought of paying attention to the square count. Not even sure why I did it last night, other than desperation.

Constructing a suitable nudge was tough this week, especially when two of my nudge-requesters told me they had PERISCOPES as their "Hail Mary" answer!

I was sure that Matt did not have the Gershwin song in mind. But I (and probably nobody else) did.



Unfortunately, the lyric makes no mention of periscopes.

Yeah, this was never going to happen for me. Too fixated on Battleship mechanics and the idea that grids came in many sizes meaning the 11x11 was ok rather than trying to make a 10x10. Fun one though.

I went thru many of those paths - the 10 sets of letter pairs, trying to plant Battleship ships, etc.

Interestingly I landed on PERISCOPES way early (before getting the correct mechanics) due to "Looking Up", "Battleship", the many "Periscope" letters in close proximity, AND! the fact that the black squares on the top and bottom LOOKED like a periscope! I'm hoping that was intentional...

Still took a while (and a nudge) to find the path to the answer I already had...

It took me a while to count the black squares. Plenty of multiplication-table quizzing for the kids helped with the relevance of 21.

I got on the right path relatively quickly, only a short detour into Battleship territory (waters?). But like joon on CrosswordFiend, I found ELAND first. I had the 23D clue "Second-to-last letter" in my head instead of the (10-letter) 39A clue "Beginnings," so as I filled out the 10x10 I was thinking hey, D-N-A-L, this is going to spell something! And then it fell apart. I almost set it aside at that point without even looking at the first column :-)