#707 - “By the Numbers”

[mntlblok]

LATTE anagrams from the letter "by" the left sides of the "4"s. Ran it by Joe, figuring he'd just laugh at me. He did.

Teased the wifey through the revealed process, as usual. She doesn't do fora. Both agreed that not in a million years would we have come up with it on our own - even after I'd gone to the trouble of determining that "meast" was not a word, but that "fusty" is.

[HunterX]

Anyone care to share the answer?

As a general matter, you can hop onto crossword fiend at 12:01 on Tuesdays and get the answer. Or 12:05 if blogger Joon doesn't solve the meta and a commenter spells it out. Here is today's update with a full explanation:

https://crosswordfiend.com/2021/12/21/m ... ore-132698

But to specifically answer your question: FORTH.

Thanks! Good to know.

Yeah, not sure I would have gotten this one without a little help, or a lot more experience. Less than 2 full years of doing the WSJ Friday meta may not have been enough for this level of difficulty. (Well, 4 me, anyway.) I did look at all the letters around they '4's, but in groups according to where they were: the 5 to the left, the 5 to the right, etc. Didn't "see" them as a group around each '4' with one letter missing, though. Great construction!

[Bird Lives]

On the board -- 50 to the left of me, 50 to the right, there I am, stuck in the middle with who, I don't know.

I know Matt says that he doesn't put red herrings in his puzzles, but I see a couple of them swimming around in the grid, and one of them could have been de-herringed with a single change of letter.

I couldn't be more specific pre-reveal, but now . . .

My first stab was to search for words that contained the 4-crossroads letters. And what to my wondering eyes should appear but EOLA at 58D and TENT as the final across entry, a place that often has a special significance. Surely this could not be coincidence. EOLA is just too weird a word (is it even a word?), and if TENT weren't part of the solution, it could easily have been changed to TEND, crossing with WEND. But it turns out that these two were not part of the solution and just somehow swam inadvertently into into the grid.

[Joe Ross]

As a general matter, you can hop onto crossword fiend at 12:01 on Tuesdays and get the answer. Or 12:05 if blogger Joon doesn't solve the meta and a commenter spells it out. Here is today's update with a full explanation:

Solvers submitting their answers here at 12:01 PM ET, Tuesdays, would be excellent!