There Goes Rhymin' Simon -- November 2021

[jbird]

I submitted for the hint but never received the email. Could someone share the hint with me via PM?

Edit: received the hint. Thx

[MamaE]

Would anyone like to work together?

I think I may just give up on this one.....I'll be interested to see the write up though!

[m5rammy]

Would anyone like to work together?

I could work with you.
If you've got nothing, I can tell you what I have.
If you've got something, I would guess it's what I have.

How many more "steps" are there? I couldn't say

[hcbirker]

Finally got it after a little help from Meg. Good one Pete!

[HoldThatThought]

Could someone forward me the hint, because I did what I thought I was supposed to do to get the hint, but received nothing by email.

Thanks in advance!

[HoldThatThought]

Thanks to the kind Muggle who forwarded me the clue. Let's see if it helps!

[ChrisKochmanski]

Got it.

Phew! That was an ordeal!

And I definitely needed help, even beyond Pete’s hint.

[sharkicicles]

Got what I think is the first couple steps, but still stuck. If anyone would like to compare notes I'm happy to send along what I have.

Edit: Thanks to a hint from @hcbirker I'm on the board. A satisfying solve, and yet another tool to put into my meta-solving arsenal.

[Joe Ross]

What a week for metas! Excellent across the board.

This was a slog. If I don't have the correct answer, I'm still damned proud of it. Submitting after hitting the Submit button, below. WOW!

These incredible constructors must have declared the past couple of weeks an all-out competition for ingenuity. How long will it last? I cannot wait to see.

[Cinny]

Very tough, but finally got it. Needed a nudge or two.

[stmv]

I'm on the board at #60 after getting the hint. Like many on here, I saw step 1 pretty quickly, though I needed a conversation with my wife to refine it a bit. Then step 2 took me forever, but I was very proud that I figured it out yesterday, but it seemed to lead nowhere. I finally caved and asked for the hint. Like many, the first part of the hint told me what I already knew, and I could not at first decode the last part of it, but then I got a blinding flash of inspiration and there it was!

[rexthree]

I submitted to MMMM for a hint and never got an email back either. Could someone forward me the hint?

[higgysue]

I submitted to MMMM for a hint and never got an email back either. Could someone forward me the hint?

There is a little lag between the asking & the getting. Let me know if you haven’t received it yet and I will send it along.

[Katiedid]

Thanks to a hint from sharkicicles which clarified the official hint, I got it!

[TMart]

Got it - Pete's hint was helpful. I'm on a roll today - knocked off this one and WSJ. Maybe I should wait until Sunday every week.

[Abide]

This was my intended Hail Mary but I forgot to submit. (I have 13 witnesses on the Zoom call)

[BarbaraK]

From Pete on Fiend:

A total of 78 solvers found their way to the answer this month – looks like 31 with the hint.

That makes 47 mug-eligible hintless solvers. Can't beat those odds. Good luck muggles!

My two biggest rabbit holes were:

"Simple Simon met a pieman going to the fair" and there at 17A is FLAIR - aha, L must be the first letter. Tried everything to find more and/or backsolve Layla.

And Saint Simon is a song by Shins, mentioned in the clue for 33D - again looked at everything recorded by all bands mentioned in the clues for more like that.

I definitely needed the hint to get the answer. And glad Pete gave us that option. That was fun.

[ky-mike]

I had Kodachrome as an early maybe as it is the first song on the There Goes Rhymin' Simon album by Paul Simon.

I also went down the simple simon path and got nowhere.

I also had YODA ROAM but just didn't get the rhyming connection to the meta. Oh well.

[Laura M]

Oh man this one was so good, I'm kicking myself that I couldn't see my way past my faulty second step. (Got PAUL/CARLY/NEIL and their rhymes, was iffy on SAINT and FLORA (only one of those with good reason), and for some reason never saw SIMPLE as a Simon at all. Then I couldn't figure out what to do next! I tried to find other Simons (first name, maybe) who would rhyme with other words in the grid, but pretty much struck out. I never even thought about looking at words with the right first/last letters; I've used that mechanism in the past, but I think only with 3-letter words. Odds are I would have discounted that path since the words were different lengths and wouldn't have appeared to be spelling a song name. Amazing Kas 5 (for me) meta, and love the song too!

[rjy]

Welp, the first MMMM that I've not gotten in two years.

Because there was so much rhyming in the grid, I took Pete's clue (different in email than what's on his website) and went down a path of linking rhymes by chaining together first letters, starting with SIMPLE (same first letter as SIMON, and SIMPLE SIMON seemed to fit). So: SIMPLE/DIMPLE to DORA/FLORA to FLAIR/ONAIR to OTAY/TOGAE etc. And so many rhymes to work from: OREAD/TOD, CLUE/REDO, STASH/ECASH, NOAM/PROAM, BANDB/PHD...

Some were not perfect, and that's where I was thrown a bit - what is a precise "clickable" rhyme?

Specifically - and here I quibble a bit - SAINT and PAINT maybe don't really rhyme?? in that Camille Saint-Saens is French, and this use of Saint should sound more like "zen"... (as a better example of quibbling this way, you wouldn't reasonably think DOES and ROSE rhyme, unless the former were clued as female deer)

Bad coincidence in solving this alongside Matt's "Three by Three" puzzle where he clued the need for French pronunciation, so I discounted SAINT/PAINT. And even tho I got the Neil, Carly and Paul connections to Simon, I could not find my way to the end.

Nonetheless... I still love the creativity and challenges. So glad there are such talented, diabolical minds creating these!