MGWCC #741 - “Time Travel”

[ReB]

Aargh! I figured out all the months and got to the last step, of looking at April-June (the missing four months), but it just didn't occur to me to repeat the three letter pattern and look at the remaining letters. That was just a bit beyond my vision it seems. That's two metas this week that I stumbled after making it to the last step (the other being "Hello Operator" where I performed the math operations and generated the correct letters but couldn't order them correctly).

[KayW]

...not to mention, 6A YUST gives me an opportunity to share this Christmas-in-August link:

[MikeM000]

RUST obliterates the elegance of 6A.

Indeed; my points being "when you're filling in the grid, your mind wants to make a real word, even if you have already filled in other month-endings elsewhere in the grid", and "Y"AP would have been more sensible (in my mind; YMMV) with a clue tuned more toward annoying, long-winded conversation, like this could qualify as if I do another reply.

[Joe Ross]

Early this morning, a solver entered the answer as their 'unique name' which showed at the bottom of the Overall tab as having 0 cumulative correct solves - it has since been removed & the solver given credit, (I'm sure).

[Bird Lives]

Or banned for life.

[woozy]

... but it just didn't occur to me to repeat the three letter pattern and look at the remaining letters. That was just a bit beyond my vision it seems. ....

That's why I said it wasn't elegant. The mechanisms are not consistently applied. But the puzzleness of it all really makes up for it in my opinion. Anyone can do a puzzle where you just have to spell something out but one where you have to really chew at it is a real treat.

[ajk]

Wasn't until I actually wrote out the March-May set splitting off the first three that I figured out 6D. Took me 4 or 5 sessions to spot that.