63. Byron
64. MamaE
Crosshare stats
Total completions: 217
Total contest submissions: 51
Total correct submissions: 46
Synonym City
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Abide
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The site is just a web page, a meeting place, a clubhouse - it's the group that's special.
—Brian MacDonald
—Brian MacDonald
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Abide
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Your solution to the mega-multi-step MMM follows:
Explanation and reveal provided by @KayW
What a great meta guys! But did I catch all the steps?
I see the SYNONYMS...
LIMIT - LIMA - CAP
REPAIR - RIO - MEND
DROOP - DOHA -SAG
BEST - BOISE - TEN
And ala clue 26D (which I must confess I remember Peter mentioning in the last Zoom)
KNOCK KABUL - RAPACITY
we go to
CAPACITY - EXTENT
MENDACITY - LIE
SAGACITY - ACUMEN
TENACITY - NERVE
And ELAN is a synonym for VIVA(city) LAS VEGAS baby
Which is of course what I immediately thought of anyway from SYN(onym) CITY and ELVIS
Jackpot!
Like Bugsy Siegel, sixty-four hardy souls eventually crossed the desert and found the promised land.
As Jay mentioned in Post #1, we both independently picked up on this mechanism idea from the title “A City of Puzzles”. Jay’s puzzle had short words in the grid like MEND and RAP with asterisk clues, which would lead to words in grid (UNTRUTH, AVARICE), spelling out URBAN. My idea was more amorphous, trying to see if we could get four [verb][city] entries to spell a four-letter word that could lead to another city. (Sounds easy right?) After email brainstorming, we settled on this set which necessitated the Elvis tie-in.
The first draft of this puzzle was probably Week 6. The original title was “A City of Puzzles: Elvis Edition”. There was also no helper clue in the 26-Down portion. While Test Solver 1 made short work of the puzzle, Test Solvers 2 and 3 had …a bit more trouble. Reworking the 26-Down area, adding example clue, and changing the title (“Synonym City”) made the puzzle much more accessible to most of you determined solvers.
I personally had a lot of fun with this and appreciate the partnership with Jay. Thanks for solving, and thanks for all the nice comments here and on Crosshare!
Explanation and reveal provided by @KayW
What a great meta guys! But did I catch all the steps?
I see the SYNONYMS...
LIMIT - LIMA - CAP
REPAIR - RIO - MEND
DROOP - DOHA -SAG
BEST - BOISE - TEN
And ala clue 26D (which I must confess I remember Peter mentioning in the last Zoom)
KNOCK KABUL - RAPACITY
we go to
CAPACITY - EXTENT
MENDACITY - LIE
SAGACITY - ACUMEN
TENACITY - NERVE
And ELAN is a synonym for VIVA(city) LAS VEGAS baby
Which is of course what I immediately thought of anyway from SYN(onym) CITY and ELVIS
Jackpot!
As Jay mentioned in Post #1, we both independently picked up on this mechanism idea from the title “A City of Puzzles”. Jay’s puzzle had short words in the grid like MEND and RAP with asterisk clues, which would lead to words in grid (UNTRUTH, AVARICE), spelling out URBAN. My idea was more amorphous, trying to see if we could get four [verb][city] entries to spell a four-letter word that could lead to another city. (Sounds easy right?) After email brainstorming, we settled on this set which necessitated the Elvis tie-in.
The first draft of this puzzle was probably Week 6. The original title was “A City of Puzzles: Elvis Edition”. There was also no helper clue in the 26-Down portion. While Test Solver 1 made short work of the puzzle, Test Solvers 2 and 3 had …a bit more trouble. Reworking the 26-Down area, adding example clue, and changing the title (“Synonym City”) made the puzzle much more accessible to most of you determined solvers.
I personally had a lot of fun with this and appreciate the partnership with Jay. Thanks for solving, and thanks for all the nice comments here and on Crosshare!
The site is just a web page, a meeting place, a clubhouse - it's the group that's special.
—Brian MacDonald
—Brian MacDonald
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eagle1279
- Posts: 310
- Joined: Mon Nov 11, 2019 7:00 pm
- Location: Indianapolis
An amazing and fun puzzle! I got as far as ELAN, then added R from Rapacity to get RENAL (ha ha).
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bhamren
- Posts: 243
- Joined: Fri Apr 12, 2019 12:15 pm
- Location: Urbana, Ohio
I got it by chance then. I just went by the alliterative city names and thought immediately “Viva (Las) Vegas”
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Abide
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Spelling Bee relevance
The site is just a web page, a meeting place, a clubhouse - it's the group that's special.
—Brian MacDonald
—Brian MacDonald
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Bird Lives
- Posts: 2723
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- Location: NYC
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Yep. I entered the pangram first, but VIVACITY was my second.
Jay
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Dplass
- Posts: 1739
- Joined: Sat Dec 28, 2019 10:09 am
+100 same.