Took a nudge, but off the c “Ouch!!” Old Judge, 1969 was a painful year for this Baltimore sports fan. As you point out, we had our share of great players. That made losing with them that much harder. Hope everyone had a great Thanksgiving!
"Everybody Get Together!"
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Naptown Kid
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CPJohnson
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- Location: Kingsport, TN
I am really bad at the "sounds like" metas. Probably won't get this one.
Cynthia
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Al Sisti
- Posts: 2067
- Joined: Thu Apr 11, 2019 1:28 pm
- Location: Whitesboro NY
Well hello, Muggles! It’s time for this week’s reveal.
The 1969 song “(Everybody) Get Together” was supposed to be a carrion call for peace, as was the meta; a simple puzzle representing a simple concept. It ended up being… not quite that way. Whereas many metas have us shifting letters, extracting bigrams, filling in black squares and sifting through clues, I wanted this one to be right under your nose. Eyes. Whatever body part you solve with.
I’ve been wanting to do a puzzle based on the premise of that old game show, “Fractured Phrases,” where nonsensical phrases, when read aloud, suddenly make sense…kind of like the aural equivalent to what happens when you blur your focus on those Magic Eye pictures.
Unfortunately, two things happened. One, I didn’t provide anything other than the title -- “Everybody Get Together” -- as a hint to the metanism (“read grid entries together”), and two, it turns out “Fractured Phrases” only ran for about 4 months in 1965. Even with those unintended constraints, several solvers figured it out before the nudges, and several others got it after that (btw, did anyone get my fractured nudge? "Ewe, toucan get tough thug; ouch!" translates to “You too can get off the couch!”)
Taken together, the seven symmetrically placed entries spelled out:
SELL + EBB + RATE (“Celebrate”)
WHIRLED (“World”)
HELL + OWE + DAYE (“Hello Day”)
And the third of those two things that happened was that, even when they found it, "Celebrate World Hello Day" didn't make sense to most people. But eventually, solvers went to Mr. G. and put in “World Hello Day,” and found that it’s been celebrated every November 21st (the day this puzzle came out) for 50 years… it was started by two guys to demonstrate the importance of personal communication for preserving peace (and how touching it was to have so many solvers say "hello!" to me in their comments).
Okay, enough talk. With his answer of "November 21st," the winner of either a Utica Club keepsake, or a Blarney Rebel Band CD, or $15 donation to any charity – randomly picked from our 53 solvers – is @Bird Lives. Congrats, Jay, and let me know what prize you want…
I’ll hopefully be back with a new meta in the next few weeks. In the meantime, hello!
But before I go, I want to (possibly) introduce you to my favorite “hello” song. It’s an incredibly moving song by the great John Prine, called Hello In There . Check it out and keep those tissues close by.
The 1969 song “(Everybody) Get Together” was supposed to be a carrion call for peace, as was the meta; a simple puzzle representing a simple concept. It ended up being… not quite that way. Whereas many metas have us shifting letters, extracting bigrams, filling in black squares and sifting through clues, I wanted this one to be right under your nose. Eyes. Whatever body part you solve with.
I’ve been wanting to do a puzzle based on the premise of that old game show, “Fractured Phrases,” where nonsensical phrases, when read aloud, suddenly make sense…kind of like the aural equivalent to what happens when you blur your focus on those Magic Eye pictures.
Unfortunately, two things happened. One, I didn’t provide anything other than the title -- “Everybody Get Together” -- as a hint to the metanism (“read grid entries together”), and two, it turns out “Fractured Phrases” only ran for about 4 months in 1965. Even with those unintended constraints, several solvers figured it out before the nudges, and several others got it after that (btw, did anyone get my fractured nudge? "Ewe, toucan get tough thug; ouch!" translates to “You too can get off the couch!”)
Taken together, the seven symmetrically placed entries spelled out:
SELL + EBB + RATE (“Celebrate”)
WHIRLED (“World”)
HELL + OWE + DAYE (“Hello Day”)
And the third of those two things that happened was that, even when they found it, "Celebrate World Hello Day" didn't make sense to most people. But eventually, solvers went to Mr. G. and put in “World Hello Day,” and found that it’s been celebrated every November 21st (the day this puzzle came out) for 50 years… it was started by two guys to demonstrate the importance of personal communication for preserving peace (and how touching it was to have so many solvers say "hello!" to me in their comments).
Okay, enough talk. With his answer of "November 21st," the winner of either a Utica Club keepsake, or a Blarney Rebel Band CD, or $15 donation to any charity – randomly picked from our 53 solvers – is @Bird Lives. Congrats, Jay, and let me know what prize you want…
I’ll hopefully be back with a new meta in the next few weeks. In the meantime, hello!
But before I go, I want to (possibly) introduce you to my favorite “hello” song. It’s an incredibly moving song by the great John Prine, called Hello In There . Check it out and keep those tissues close by.
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Joe Ross
- Moderator
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Bird Lives
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Ergcat
- Posts: 785
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Ugh…. I misinterpreted the nudges and
I was trying to read across 7 rows, not just 7 words/entries!! Never could make sense out of 7 rows ( I did get some of it like “celebrate” “world” and “holiday” ( not hello day) . Oh well… new meta-week ahead!
I was trying to read across 7 rows, not just 7 words/entries!! Never could make sense out of 7 rows ( I did get some of it like “celebrate” “world” and “holiday” ( not hello day) . Oh well… new meta-week ahead!
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MaineMarge
- Posts: 1622
- Joined: Tue Apr 09, 2019 9:57 pm
Hello friends
And thanks @Al Sisti and @Joe Ross for posting this lovely song. It would be timely to post it on the big forum too, along with a link to Al’s reveal post.
And thanks @Al Sisti and @Joe Ross for posting this lovely song. It would be timely to post it on the big forum too, along with a link to Al’s reveal post.