I'm typing this up while watching my beloved Cubbies during their first spring training game! Have to get used to that pitch clock, that's for sure!
The incomparable Will Nediger gave great feedback on this one, calling it "really elegant" and, more importantly, "ridiculous" (but in a good way). That's all you can hope for! It was not a Level 2 or 2.5 to create, but I think it should be to solve!
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49. 7 by 7
The answer to the meta consists of two 7-letter words.
Deadline is Tuesday, March 7 at 1 pm ET.
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Best of luck, and may all your solves be beautiful!
Phew, got it! Glad I stuck with it too, was tempted to solicit a nudge a few times, but the payoff was worth the repeat visits. Enjoyed the clueing too!
Will there be any nudges? Enquiring minds want to know!
Check out "The MOAT Mini Pack of Marching Bands" here. US$5 gets you 7 Marching Bands which, hard enough on their own, now contain metas too. And once again there's a mega-meta!
We're at 39 solvers so far, which is perhaps what I would glean for this. Maybe leans toward a Level 3, but let's see if some nudges get more on the right track!
1.This might seem like an unusual first nudge, but it's worth stating that by an absolute long-shot, this puzzle has the lowest no-help completion percentage of mine...at 3%. (The next-lowest is 20%.) There is a reason this one is harder than usual.
2.Per this puzzle being so hard, I try to be as precise as I can with my clues. But some clues were a little more vague than usual this time around.
3.Note the clue for MATHEMATICIAN in the spanner: mathematicians do a lot more than substitute quantities (certainly that's part of it!), so there must have been a reason for that.
4.There are 7 boxes in the grid, all numbered, where the letter in the blank is not the only letter that can work.
5.One of these happens to be square #1, in fact: PEA/PAM satisfies both clues, but *EA can give us another type of green...and *AM can give us another name for a popular NBC sitcom character...think back to the '80s for that one! (A lot of these clues in the grid happened to revolve around the 1980s, which was unintentional!)
6.For what it's worth, the hardest one to clue by far was 4-Across, and it's a bit of a stretch for the alternate. Will Nediger loved that clue, though, because of the way it repurposed "saucers" in the alternate *TS entry.
7.Once you have those seven squares and the seven alternate letters, that should give you what you need to figure out the 2-word phrase!
Even if you get the puzzle, feel free to check out Nudge #8 after it all:
8.It's also worth stating that these 7 numbered squares are not random! For instance, "by" is used in multiplication in math, as in "multiply 7 by 7." This would signal 49, one of the numbered squares. Also note that there are exactly 49 squares in the grid! I've already told you as well that two of the other numbered squares are 1 (1 x 1) and 4 (2 x 2). That should give us the pattern to get all seven!
I'm not the world's biggest fan of a meta where actually grokking it helps elucidate the title, as opposed the other way around, but I felt it was the most perfect title for this one.
9.I've also used both 7-letter words somewhere in Nudge #8, haha.
Best of luck! Reveal on Tuesday. Now off to solve a Pandora, a MEOW, and eventually a WSJ! Here's to a great weekend!
1.This might seem like an unusual first nudge, but it's worth stating that by an absolute long-shot, this puzzle has the lowest no-help completion percentage of mine...at 3%. (The next-lowest is 20%.) There is a reason this one is harder than usual.
Mikey G
I often solve on paper from the pdf then autofill the crosshare grid to plug in my meta answer. Does that skew this what you're referring to here?
1.This might seem like an unusual first nudge, but it's worth stating that by an absolute long-shot, this puzzle has the lowest no-help completion percentage of mine...at 3%. (The next-lowest is 20%.) There is a reason this one is harder than usual.
Mikey G
I often solve on paper from the pdf then autofill the crosshare grid to plug in my meta answer. Does that skew this what you're referring to here?
Actually, no! This was a fun stat behind-the-scenes that shows how challenging this puzzle is. I do admit that my grids lean challenging, but there is a specific reason, in retrospect, why this one is harder than usual, regardless of how you solve it. And, in a way, that can almost be a bit of a clue!
Solved using up to nudge 4 darn it. What is maddening is that (1) I had the right idea (but was doing it wrong - common criticism I'm afraid) and (2) I mistakenly had the RIGHT mechanism and never went back and said to myself "hey, isn't that odd????"
Good puzzle, and Mikey continues to hone his skill. Heck, Matt might just as easily ask Mike if he could do a "Pun of a Kind" someday as opposed to the other way round.
NUDGES!I am always willing to give nudges IF ASKED; metas should be about fun, not frustration. PM me what you have done so far, because often you are closer than you think, and I will try to help you move along.
Solved with the nudges. Now, with the benefit of hindsight, I can see that my interpretation of the meta clue in 27A lead me far, far astray!
Check out "The MOAT Mini Pack of Marching Bands" here. US$5 gets you 7 Marching Bands which, hard enough on their own, now contain metas too. And once again there's a mega-meta!
