An excellent puzzle written by one of the innovators of the meta crossword format. It comes out every Friday at noon and increases in difficulty throughout the month. Available for modest subscription (worth every cent) here: www.xwordcontest.com
ricky wrote: ↑Sat Jul 16, 2022 7:12 pm
I was coming here to ask for a nudge but after seeing so many comments saying it was easy / just required an "aha" moment I'm going to hold off until at least tomorrow. For the record, though, I have spent a couple of hours mulling this one over and as of tonight I have absolutely nothing. Not a thing. Zippo.
Okay, I need a nudge. I suspect I am either misreading the directions or mentally stuck on some incorrect assumption about what needs to happen. But I still have nothing. Please DM me! (But don't DM me asking "What do you have?" - I have the completed grid and a list of the [redacted] entries and nothing else.)
EDIT: got it with a nudge from boharr - thanks to all offering help.
Last edited by ricky on Mon Jul 18, 2022 2:51 pm, edited 1 time in total.
On the leaderboard. Solved with a nudge. In retrospect, it was easier than I was making it. I was just overlooking one thing which I should have thought of.
Maniacally refreshing to see if I've submitted the correct answer but I CERTAINLY solved the mechanism at least.
I danced halfway to the answer about half a dozen times and kept stopping short?? Feels silly now like I should've gotten it yesterday but just happy to get it without any nudges!
Beamed aboard with some assistance. The time zone situation made for a nervous night. I submitted some time after 8:00 pm. Matt's last update was after 21:00 which is, of course 9:00 pm. I was NOT on the board this morning and was in a bit of panic, in spite of having my solution confirmed by my nudger. I finally remembered that I live in the central time zone, but I still had that tiny seed of doubt until the next update late this morning.
My avatar proves that it is sometimes better to be lucky than good!
This one possibly has the most confusing prompt I've ever seen in a meta crossword. My command of the English language isn't enough to understand what's being asked of me.
Beamed up last night and on the board this morning! I am so happy to have solved this without a nudge. I've had so many misses lately, I was wondering about my brain .
The nudge I needed was basically this: At the end of the clue for 4D ("Man of a Thousand Voices") that last character is NOT an asterisk (*), it's a quotation mark ("). Now I see, literally. What I needed was not a nudge; it was a new prescription. Or a bigger font.
That said, I think the puzzle is ambiguous and that there are two justifiable answers.
Bird Lives wrote: ↑Tue Jul 19, 2022 10:37 am
The nudge I needed was basically this: At the end of the clue for 4D ("Man of a Thousand Voices") that last character is NOT an asterisk (*), it's a quotation mark ("). Now I see, literally. What I needed was not a nudge; it was a new prescription. Or a bigger font.
I mix up asterisks and quotation marks all the time as well. Eyes getting old. Even the size of the font in these posts strains them.
They make a mini crosswords with across and downs the same but we haven't been given the central words
AMISH
MANTA IN ER
STEED
HARDY
TAPAS
ALIST PI CE
ASCII
STEIN
And we need to provide the INNER PIECES which are N.E.
=======
But that's very convoluted in my opinion. Sure we know we are supposed to apply something to get N out of AMISH, MANTA, STEED, and HARDY and to get E out of TAPAS, ALIST, ASCII, and STEIN, buy why on earth are you supposed to think the way to do that is rewrite them all and put them in crosswords and find the inner piece? (Rhetorically for me it was seeing the SH, TA corner STEED and HARDY was the same as the SH,TA corner of SLASH and MANTA and realizing if I put the AMISH above MANTA).
Isn't it a lot simply and more reasonable to figure to get there is exactly one N in MANTA, AMISH, STEED, and HARDY and one E in TAPAS, ALIST, ASCII, and STEIN. But the question is how to extract those letters but not any other?
And if you list the words in clue given order... then are the center letters of the extreme words. So the two word phrase is EXTREME CENTER (or EXTREME MIDDLE).
I realize it sounds like sour grapes but.... I think my answer actually *is* better. What do others think.
Last edited by woozy on Tue Jul 19, 2022 12:53 pm, edited 1 time in total.
Funny story. I was all set to enter Par for the course for the CrossHare midi contest for April but I mistakenly thought midi meant 7x 7 and not 11 x 11. Oops. Well.... Here's a complex but **small** meta on the subject of golf.
Well I did stagger across the finish line just in time with nudging, though I might have made it on my own if I hadn't shot myself in the feet by overlooking two of the (*) answers while trying to solve. This definitely was one of my least favorite metas.
.
