MGWCC #747 - “Admixture”

[AaronT]

I first noticed the clusters of X’s, Y’s, and Z’s in the SE area of the grid and attempted to use them to make semaphores but quickly moved away from that because a) it yielded nothing and b) I thought that mechanism was too much “puzzle hunt” (my other current obsession) and not enough “meta crossword”.

Then I re-focused on the hint in 86D and took it in its most literal sense. I started scanning the entries and very quickly saw TWO in TOWED, thought “hmm, that’s potentially interesting” then immediately saw FAROUT right next door. Then I was off to the races.

However, like many others I ended up with 12 letters. A cluster of A’s and D’s and what looked like the makings of THE ___ S. So I jotted down THE AAAAA DDD S, let out a very masculine “eep!”, and quickly submitted my answer. That empty leaderboard was too tempting so I spent no more time on it and fired off my answer.

It wasn’t until helping another group on Discord that someone (oggy, if I recall right) pointed out the need to factor the A/D indicators into the anagram. I appreciated that because it gave me closure. And helped me help others over the next few days.

I’m relatively new to metas, having only started doing them in the last few months. I wonder if my relative lack of experience actually helped me keep it relatively “simple” and avoid some of the rabbit holes others fell into.

[joequavis]

I first noticed the clusters of X’s, Y’s, and Z’s in the SE area of the grid and attempted to use them to make semaphores but quickly moved away from that because a) it yielded nothing and b) I thought that mechanism was too much “puzzle hunt” (my other current obsession) and not enough “meta crossword”.

Then I re-focused on the hint in 86D and took it in its most literal sense. I started scanning the entries and very quickly saw TWO in TOWED, thought “hmm, that’s potentially interesting” then immediately saw FAROUT right next door. Then I was off to the races.

However, like many others I ended up with 12 letters. A cluster of A’s and D’s and what looked like the makings of THE ___ S. So I jotted down THE AAAAA DDD S, let out a very masculine “eep!”, and quickly submitted my answer. That empty leaderboard was too tempting so I spent no more time on it and fired off my answer.

It wasn’t until helping another group on Discord that someone (oggy, if I recall right) pointed out the need to factor the A/D indicators into the anagram. I appreciated that because it gave me closure. And helped me help others over the next few days.

I’m relatively new to metas, having only started doing them in the last few months. I wonder if my relative lack of experience actually helped me keep it relatively “simple” and avoid some of the rabbit holes others fell into.

Brilliant! I have a weak spot for anagrams, particularly anagrams +/- x letters = new word. Very very difficult for me to spot.

I took 86D literally, but in a different sense (geographical rather than numerical). I saw things like TESLA, AMP+ERE (I'm an EE) and kept looking for other such pairings. Really never took the "mixture" --> anagram thing seriously.

Kind of crazy that in your method you ended up with 8 As and Ds.