MGWCC #725 - “Black Is the New Black”

[BrennerTJ]

[patpatchica]

Submitted with confidence after a kindly nudge. What a SAD puzzle, but what an amazing construction!

[TeamDoubleTow]

We have lots of things we have explored that led no where. Will reach out for a nudge tonight.

[ky-mike]

Sliding in at #309 (not a spoiler)

[ajk]

Beamed aboard thanks to a kindly nudge and even kindlier shove. Fortunately the rental rate on the bulldozer required for the latter wasn't too ruinous.

[TeamDoubleTow]

I think we missed the opportunity to ask for a nudge... But if anyone is around we would love one. We have a whole lot of nothing.

[rjy]

Wowwwww… got an artful nudge that preserved the AHA, and quite an AHA it was! Folks may quibble over the WSJ this week, but Matt rarely ceases to amaze. Such a clever construction!

[Katiedid]

Beamed up! Cool puzzle! Feeling fortunate to have solved MGWCC and WSJ while traveling. Whew!

[MikeyG]

Like a cinematic triumph or a musical tour de force, this was one of those puzzles that lingered in my brain this weekend. There have been some phenomenal ones recently, such as RAPIDLY and MAKE TIME, and I still think of things like PERISCOPES from last year.

Are you sure he has to quit at #1000?

[TeamDoubleTow]

If the answer we just submitted is right... It is because we were dragged there. Thanks to the very, very kind and patient nudgers.

[Joe]

Like a cinematic triumph or a musical tour de force, this was one of those puzzles that lingered in my brain this weekend. There have been some phenomenal ones recently, such as RAPIDLY and MAKE TIME, and I still think of things like PERISCOPES from last year.

Are you sure he has to quit at #1000?

I asked him that very thing at a Zoom meeting that he was gracious enough to attend, and he just said "We'll have to wait and see what happens."

I need more assurance than that!

[Charles Stevens]

Jeez, this took a while. Felt like I was knocking on the door for days before I finally kicked the damn thing down. Cool puzzle!

[Joe Ross]

[MikeyG]

I didn't want to give it away by this wording on my last comment, but this puzzle was definitely (and perhaps literally) a work of art.

Curious what gave it to you guys! The proliferation of LAC at both 12 and 6 pm, if you will, was very suspect to me, and then I realized those were in the word BLACK, and I kind of took it from there.

Congrats to all who got it! I had a ball with this one!

[ajk]

The proliferation of LAC at both 12 and 6 pm, if you will, was very suspect to me

This is the one piece of it that I got on my own, but I (a) failed to distinguish its significance above the noise of many other oddities, and (b) failed to develop it any further even when its significance was highlighted for me.

[DrTom]

Well it took way too long and way too many nudges for me to FINALLY let go of my preconceived notion that it was a word I was looking for. I had early on seen all of the BLACKS and the letters to spell it but never tumbled to the fact that I was supposed to make the BLACK BLACK (not for lack of the title or someone saying "read the title literally" (which though certainly good information is exactly what we all do every time - perhaps I should have taken it as "read the title as if it were an instruction".

Anyway I tried taking the vowel-less words (because of 1A which sounded like a hint clue if I ever saw one) and adding vowels. I got as far as LILAC with LLC but no farther. I tried making BLACK out of the "almost" but got no words. It was a series of nudges telling me, it appeared, to do the same things I had been doing and me saying "I'll never get a word that way" when a light went on and the little voice said "what if it ISN'T a WORD". So I filled them in and there I was. Unfortunately it was probably 12:15 when I did that and I went to the site (thinking that since the puzzle came out at 3 PM I had until 3 PM to solve) and alas I was 15 minutes late.

Great puzzle, and a teaching moment in the "don't assume that since it was this way the last time it will be that way again". I cannot imagine how difficult it was to build but it had to be a problem and I'll bet he was snookered any number of times.

[burghman]

I was very tempted to drop a Magic Eight Ball response in my pre-deadline post but figured that might be too spoiler-y. Like “It is decidedly so.” Definitely a work of art from Matt.

[MikeM000]

Curious what gave it to you guys! The proliferation of LAC at both 12 and 6 pm, if you will, was very suspect to me, and then I realized those were in the word BLACK, and I kind of took it from there.

This one was very beautiful, in multiple ways.

Solving steps:
-There is nothing here. No long answers, no hint-y clues..nothing.
-Stare...
-Boy, BLACK seems to show up a lot.
-Math..13, 13..169...count...40(!) letters of BLACK in there, out of 169-however many black squares
-Hey wait, they are symmetrical too, aren't they?
-Walk dog. Make dinner. Make sure kids and wife are content for a few minutes.
-Snipping tool + MS Paint.
-Half-expected "jockstrap" to appear on screen. Pleasantly surprised it didn't.

[auee89]

I saw a couple of black labs, oil, soil, ink, ten (roulette!), rum.

After all that, my magic eight ball said "Outlook not so good." Fun one Matt!

[MaineMarge]

Well, that one took a village for my solve.

In lieu of beaming up I was offered private transportation. It arrived last Friday meta day on my page-a-day art calendar.
So it seems fitting transport for this meta.

1898 oil painting