MEOW #111 Chain Letters

[markhr]

Didn't see it for a while, and then there it was. Out of the bag at last.
Cool meta.

[DrTom]

Sorry, I’ll probably have to update the board tomorrow, family medical issue. A bunch more solvers on Crosshare, maybe 7 or 8. Nudges tomorrow as well.

[DrTom]

Well back from the ER (late), advice to all, unless you are spurting blood from somewhere or in the midst of a massive stroke or MI avoid the ER, even if you know (or knew) most of the folks or their former bosses. Nine (9) hours in the ER for a moderately serious event, most of it waiting to get a bed. I'm going to be busy tomorrow with phone calls.

At any rate, the day's tally:

15 edestlin
16 Pair O Ducks
17 Majordomo Tom
18 BarbaraK
19 Mwoychick
20 Benchen71
21 dplass
22 markhr

As mentioned earlier, nudges tomorrow afternoon.

[Dplass]

Well back from the ER (late), advice to all, unless you are spurting blood from somewhere or in the midst of a massive stroke or MI avoid the ER, even if you know (or knew) most of the folks or their former bosses. Nine (9) hours in the ER for a moderately serious event, most of it waiting to get a bed. I'm going to be busy tomorrow with phone calls.

At any rate, the day's tally:

15 edestlin
16 Pair O Ducks
17 Majordomo Tom
18 BarbaraK
19 Mwoychick
20 Benchen71
21 dplass
22 markhr

As mentioned earlier, nudges tomorrow afternoon.

Oy. Hope everything is ok now.

[DrTom]

This is the day you get nudged by your Cat, initially just a soft head butt, but getting more persistent as time goes by. If there were a Nudge 7 it would be an out and out scratch

The theme answers are symmetrically placed

If you had to put together "chains" of letters, how would you know where one ended and the other started?

What if instead of "chains" they were line segments, would that nudge you better?

There are 8 theme answers

All of the theme answers are Across

A variation of the mechanism was used in a Matt Gaffney in the first quarter of 2010

[lbray53]

Cat is out of the bag. I nearly had to ask to be scratched but the path finally emerged. I was on to the basic idea of the mechanism but just could not bring it home. This puzzle was even enjoyable as a non-meta due to the clever clues.

[Cinny]

Cats is out, but only after a nudge from @CPJohnson . Very clever clues, as usual. Thanks, DrTom.

[ReB]

Cat is out of the bags. Several grid answers were definitely Dr. Tom trademarked.

[woozy]

So the nudges essentially say "Read the title". Cat's in the bag, tied down with stones, and behind three padlocked doors in the basement and getting seriously hungry.

[DrTom]

So the nudges essentially say "Read the title". Cat's in the bag, tied down with stones, and behind three padlocked doors in the basement and getting seriously hungry.

Well I kind of beg to differ. Maybe Spoiler 2 but certainly not the rest. I'll try to send you a little more personal help.

[woozy]

Okay.... The cat having been given a microscope courtesy of Dr. Tom now knows the composition, thread count, and tensile strength of the bag she encased in. She's still stuck in it though.

[MatthewL]

Right there with you @woozy. Cat is getting a bit pissy about being trapped in the bag so long.

[ajk]

Got it without the nudges after staring off and on for a few days. In retrospect I think I got a slight nudge from yesterday's zoom call, though I wasn't thinking about it directly at the time. Fun one, thanks.

[DrTom]

End of day 1/14

29 Tyrpmom
30 JM
31 Bbaack
32 ajk

[HeadinHome]

still completely without ideas. any more blatant nudges coming??

[MatthewL]

Well, the cat is finally out of the bag, but only through the efforts of a couple of very patient muggles who helped me untie all the knots. Don't know why this one was so hard for me to see. In any event, thanks for the puzzle, Tom!

[Dave C]

We've been on vacation and just catching up on metas, so didn't get to this one until now. Fortunately, my wife saw the metanism quickly, so the cat escaped the bag without any nudges.

[DrTom]

OK, the last few solvers.

Sorry for the early posting (reveal comes next) but I have a number of things going on that will keep me from working on this tomorrow.

33 MatthewL
34 DaveC
35 ChrisCross
36 THC

[DrTom]

REVEAL

OK, this may have been harder than I originally thought but that has to do with the hidden mechanism:

Oh, and my "line segments" nudge that I have gotten a lot of HUH's on:

Thirty six did solve so I cannot be disappointed, I hope everyone liked it.

EDIT:
Two more joined the group
MikeyG
Dowjones
Total is now 38 so pretty good showing!

[MikeyG]

I need to start resetting my schedule so I get to these at the beginning as opposed to the end! I took all the nudges just now once I realized the reveal was coming, but I have covered the reveal right now, so let's see if I can pull it off with all of those nudges (the last one doesn't help me, though!).

Edit: Just got it but with every nudge possible, haha, mainly the first three.

Thankful for all of those for keeping the MEOW alive!!