MGWCC #734 - “Three-on-Three Matchup"

[MikeyG]

It's the truth, the HOLE truth, and nothing but the truth: This puzzle was a brilliant construction.

[benchen71]

I'm going to be the one to complain about sour grapes, but as someone who didn't solve this puzzle I remain unconvinced of its brilliance. Sure, it was a week 4. But I prefer metas that have more signposts, or at the very least more feedback that you are on the right track.

[Joe Ross]

@benchen71, you know I love you & your brilliant puzzles, but for a Week 4 difficulty, where signposts are few, this will be one of a very few puzzles I consider true masterpieces.

If a had to complain, which I won't, Matt could have saved this for a rarer Week 5.

[madhatter5]

@benchen71, you know I love you & your brilliant puzzles, but for a Week 4 difficulty, where signposts are few, this will be one of a very few puzzles I consider true masterpieces.

If a had to complain, which I won't, Matt could have saved this for a rarer Week 5.

I agree, while there were not many signposts it's hard to complain about a puzzle when the metanism (and construction) is just so amazing

[Al Sisti]

@Al Sisti

This was the "White Whale" meta that I couldn't get to work for last year's Zoom talk. Note AHAB and THAR in the grid...

I was wondering if you were going to let it beat you. It sure beat me...

[MattGaffney]

I'm going to be the one to complain about sour grapes, but as someone who didn't solve this puzzle I remain unconvinced of its brilliance. Sure, it was a week 4. But I prefer metas that have more signposts, or at the very least more feedback that you are on the right track.

Intended insight was title + 12 3x1 bars + 12 3-letter entries = can't be a coincidence

[Abide]

I only gave it five stars because of the made-up phrase.
Had that been an in-the-language entry we would have had to create a new scoring system.

[benchen71]

I'm going to be the one to complain about sour grapes, but as someone who didn't solve this puzzle I remain unconvinced of its brilliance. Sure, it was a week 4. But I prefer metas that have more signposts, or at the very least more feedback that you are on the right track.

Intended insight was title + 12 3x1 bars + 12 3-letter entries = can't be a coincidence

I hear you. But even when someone told me what to do (put the 3 letter entries into the black areas) I couldn't work out how. I was caught up with matching the 3 letter words to 3 adjacent letters in the grid. I found SERMON and SENTRY and BERTHA and ISHTAR (using various directions, admittedly), but I knew it was a dead end. I never thought to ignore the rest of the grid completely.

Please don't take my sour grapes the wrong way. If I had solved it, I'm sure I would have been singing the puzzle's praises!

(I might also have been feeling sad, since my weekly MOAT numbers are down, and my most recent puzzle was not picked to be featured on Crosshare when pretty much all of the previous ones have been, which then helps with the numbers!)

[Joe Ross]

I'm going to be the one to complain about sour grapes, but as someone who didn't solve this puzzle I remain unconvinced of its brilliance. Sure, it was a week 4. But I prefer metas that have more signposts, or at the very least more feedback that you are on the right track.

Intended insight was title + 12 3x1 bars + 12 3-letter entries = can't be a coincidence

I hear you. But even when someone told me what to do (put the 3 letter entries into the black areas) I couldn't work out how. I was caught up with matching the 3 letter words to 3 adjacent letters in the grid. I found SERMON and SENTRY and BERTHA and ISHTAR (using various directions, admittedly), but I knew it was a dead end. I never thought to ignore the rest of the grid completely.

Please don't take my sour grapes the wrong way. If I had solved it, I'm sure I would have been singing the puzzle's praises!

(I might also have been feeling sad, since my weekly MOAT numbers are down, and my most recent puzzle was not picked to be featured on Crosshare when pretty much all of the previous ones have been, which then helps with the numbers!)

'Cuz you're one of the nicest people around:

8, 2, 17, 9, 43, 6, 19, 7, 32, & 4.

C'mon, muggles. Get Ben's numbers up!

[woozy]

From the Explanation:

and the black squares in the grid exhibit an unusual property: they appear only in 3×1 rectangles, of which there are a dozen.

Even after being told the solution and having it explained and thinking about it for 5 days and feeling I understood the puzzle I never noticed that. Sure I noticed that there were 12 three letter blank spaces but I never noticed there weren't any others or they were isolated from each other or that that was note-worthy.

Sheesh..... not my month. And by the looks of things July won't be either.