What Are The Odds? - June 17, 2022

[ricky]

This month's meta just went out to the email list. Blog post to follow shortly - watch this space.

EDIT:

http://www.lexicondevil.live/2022/06/pu ... -meta.html

[Meg]

Finally!! Last step took awhile, and it really shouldn’t have. Nice twisty fun meta!

[boharr]

^ that

[ricky]

Leaderboard so far:

[ChrisKochmanski]

Got it. With a slight nudge. But I somewhat guessed on the last step. I’m checking with another solver to find out how, at that final stage, I could have been sure I was doing the right thing.

[benchen71]

Needed a slight nudge (or two!) but made it to the solution. Nice puzzle.

[ricky]

updated leaderboard:

BTW, I'm trying to be more available to provide nudges, I just often forget to check my DMs on here, but I'll try to remember to do so this week if anyone needs a nudge.

[lbray53]

Got there with help. This is a great puzzle. Very interesting construct.

[ricky]

Yikes, I just realized I forgot to post an answer to this puzzle - or notify the winners

The starred answers were

SKEEVIER NOTTHERE EYEOFHORUS ROTTENNESS INXS

Since the title asks "What Are the Odds?" let's look at only the odd letters of those entries.

SEVE NTHR EEFOU RTENS IX

So let's look at entries SEVEN THREE FOUR TEN and SIX. (Only one of those, FOUR, is both an across and a down entry. The other four are solely downs, which was hopefully a signal that you should ignore 4-Across and look at 4-Down only.)

ACTII THESPIAN TREED TRY GTAV

Now let's try looking at only the odd letters of _those_ entries:

ATI TEPA TED TY GA

Remove the spaces:

ATITEPATEDTYGA

Then look closely and you'll find four other grid entries, two acrosses and two downs, in order:

ATIT EPA TED TYGA

Now let's look for a way to extract an answer. Stacking them up but keeping them in the same order:

ATIT
EPA
TED
TYGA

Successful solvers noticed that the last letters of these entries, in order, spell TADA, the meta answer.

Thanks again to Abide for test-solving - and suggesting the meta prompt I ultimately used.

[ricky]

And for the winners:

Congratulations to Megarrific and Hashbrown!

[FrankieHeck]

It was just the last step that threw me for a while. Maybe an alternate title could have been "Odds and Ends."

[Laura M]

Wow, that was involved! But cool! I got the first step with the numbers but never figured out what to do with them.