XWord Muggles Forum

Fireball is back this week with a meta by Peter A. Collins.

The answer is the three additional clues in the puzzle that need to be asterisked to complete the theme.

Also, if you're solving online, Peter [Gordon] notes that the puzzle has circles in 8 squares. See the email for a picture if they aren't showing up on your solving platform.

The deadline is this Sunday, September 8, at 6:00 p.m. Eastern.

Enjoy and good luck!

Clever & fun!

Loved it!

I believe I have it.

Fun! Nice "aha!" moment.

I had a bit of trouble with finding the final AHA. Very cute construction.

Hmm ...

The solution here seems pretty simple to me ... I got to it quickly. Which leads me to suspect there's more to it than I'm quickly seeing. So I'll sit on this for a while, before submitting.

Also, I'm seeing four more clues to potentially assign an asterisk to, not just three. Which may also suggest that I'm missing a step.

I have submitted an answer that I think is defensible, but there is an inconsistency that is bothering me.

I didn't see the lone asterisked clue at first, so for a while I assumed they'd goofed and meant to indicate the entries with circles. That might be a way to not be at 100% with exactly three entries.

Also, I am curious how much harder this would have been without the circles (certainly a lot, and maybe it would have needed a more helpful title to even be doable?).

Oops!

Sorry to have misled, by saying I found four clues, not three, to possibly apply asterisks to. I commiserated with a known solver, who let me know I was off-track. Down a rabbit hole. So I returned to the puzzle, recognized my haste for what it was, and found the correct path. There are just three more to-be-asterisk-ed clues, as requested.

Good one!

To others who've wondered if this meta would have been do-able without the circled letters, well, my view is: probably not by me!

But maybe PG could have offered the puzzle two-ways: (1) EASIER, with the circled letters, and (2) VERY MUCH HARDER, without.

Another decidedly not-Fireball. But still stumped on the meta...as well as three Rush Hour puzzles. But that's something different entirely.

Since this one has closed, I'll say this turned into what a lot of metas are for me. No logical linkage to lead me to do what the solution ended up doing (synomym of the starred word appears later on in the theme entry).