"Power Pack" May 26, 2023

[Bob Cobb]

Lame

[EdStrong]

KAS 5 here.

[escapeartist]

umm... not on my radar.

I was searching for other sorts of power - thermite in 18A, evil in 29A, star in 40A, verse in 63A to no avail.

can't solve them all *shrug*

[JerryF]

A little help please from those who made it to shore, what in the puzzle caused you to look to Tarot cards? I'm at a total loss.

[Richard]

I have mixed feelings on this one. I did see the words Hermit Devil Star Tower Lover in the theme words, googled them and saw that with Lovers they were from tarot cards. I guess if you don't know anything abut tarot cards and don't use google you were out of luck which is unfortunate. I was about to give up but then saw the number thing and the eight etc.

It is nice that my world has been expanded to include tarot cards and I commend Mike for finding another unique puzzle for us.

Seeing the 8 was a real Ah HA moment fo rme.

[Bob Cobb]

umm... not on my radar.

I was searching for other sorts of power - thermite in 18A, evil in 29A, star in 40A, verse in 63A to no avail.

can't solve them all *shrug*

There were many potential ones, though several felt like rabbit holes, which should have been a clue sooner to…google tarot cards…

THERM / THERMITE (heat?)
Power of the DEVIL / EVIL power
LOST power / STARpower
TOWpower (?) / TOWER of Power
Power of LOVE / OVERpower

[Plymouthrock]

This was another brilliant puzzle idea. Amazing how he brought it together.

[escapeartist]

There were many potential ones, though several felt like rabbit holes, which should have been a clue sooner to…google tarot cards…

quote of the week!

[Franklin.Bluth]

A little help please from those who made it to shore, what in the puzzle caused you to look to Tarot cards? I'm at a total loss.

Tarot was mentioned in the clue for 62D...should be my answer, but in reality I thought "HERMIT, DEVIL, STAR, those seem like mystical Dungeons and Dragons type stuff" and googled those three words together and the first result was a tarot website.

Never made it to the numbers > EIGHT > STRENGTH step; instead I just looked at the other cards in the Major Arcana and saw that only STRENGTH appeared to fit the mold of an eight-letter quality. Plus it's a synonym for "power", as in the title. So a little luck there, but I still think it's a fair solve.

[woozy]

A little help please from those who made it to shore, what in the puzzle caused you to look to Tarot cards? I'm at a total loss.

The clue about the Fool having number zero was the trigger.

I saw words such as Hermit, Verse, and other words that go nowhere. I didn't like Devil because it didn't span words. But then I saw Tower and I realized that Hermit and Tower were tarot cards and the clue about the Fool clenched it. So I *looked* for Tarot cards and got them all.

Maybe I'm more familiar with Tarot cards than others. (I knew the devil was 16 but not the others). But I don't think Tarot cards should be considered obscure by any means. We've had metas based on board games, monopoly spaces, trees, car models (like a *dozen* times), authors, and gemstones. Tarot cards are certainly legitimate, I'd say.


EDIT: I'm going to prequote to respond

A little help please from those who made it to shore, what in the puzzle caused you to look to Tarot cards? I'm at a total loss.

I saw words such as Hermit, Verse, and other words that go nowhere. I didn't like Devil because it didn't span words. But then I saw Tower and I realized that Hermit and Tower were tarot cards and the clue about the Fool clenched it. So I *looked* for Tarot cards and got them all.

The Cadillac is “Coupe de Ville” so devil does span.

I meant begin in the middle of a word and end in the middle of another. I was speaking imprecisely for simplicity's sake. I was worried about someone calling me out on it but hoping no-one would.

I don't know if there's a term for spanning two words but specifically not aligning with the beginning or ending of the other.

(Of course there was no reason the themers had to do that... It's just that before I saw the Tarot connection I wasn't sure of Devil [and I had nothing concrete for Star... and I was dead wrong with VERSE for Lovers])

[lacangah]

I submitted SOBRIETY.

18A - featHERMITE - Hermite, the mathematician from which is named a polynomial sequence, or POWER SERIES. SERIES shares 4 letters with AYESIR, leaving out E and S.
29A - COUPdeville - a POWER GRAB. GRAB shares 3 letters with RAGS, leaving out B.
40A - loSTART - a POWER BUTTON. BUTTON shares 4 letters with UNBELT, leaving out T and O.
48A - OTTowernicke - Mr. OTT is a POWER HITTER. HITTER shares 4 letters with HOTTEA, leaving out I and R. (Having ‘OTT’ seemed like a sign we were on the right track…)
63A - clOVERSEEds - to OVERSEE is to have a POWER EYE (ok, a stretch). EYE shares 2 letters with EEL, leaving out Y.

Anagram ESBTOIRY to get SOBRIETY. Easy-Peasy .

Congrats to those who correctly solved it. Have a great week and see you Thursday!

[CAe39]

A little help please from those who made it to shore, what in the puzzle caused you to look to Tarot cards? I'm at a total loss.

I saw words such as Hermit, Verse, and other words that go nowhere. I didn't like Devil because it didn't span words. But then I saw Tower and I realized that Hermit and Tower were tarot cards and the clue about the Fool clenched it. So I *looked* for Tarot cards and got them all.

The Cadillac is “Coupe de Ville” so devil does span.

[CAe39]

I submitted SOBRIETY.

You must not know how muggles celebrate making it ashore.
Sobriety is foreign to us.

Have a great week.
Frank

[Bonnibel]

A little help please from those who made it to shore, what in the puzzle caused you to look to Tarot cards? I'm at a total loss.

The clue about the Fool having number zero was the trigger.

I saw words such as Hermit, Verse, and other words that go nowhere. I didn't like Devil because it didn't span words. But then I saw Tower and I realized that Hermit and Tower were tarot cards and the clue about the Fool clenched it. So I *looked* for Tarot cards and got them all.

Maybe I'm more familiar with Tarot cards than others. (I knew the devil was 16 but not the others). But I don't think Tarot cards should be considered obscure by any means. We've had metas based on board games, monopoly spaces, trees, car models (like a *dozen* times), authors, and gemstones. Tarot cards are certainly legitimate, I'd say.

After spending way too much time trying to make word combos such as STAR POWER & TOWER of POWER, or THERMal POWER and POWER COUPle.... and knowing it was unlikely that an 8 letter answer would arise from 5 starred themers, I realized I was overthinking again as usual. So I took the obvious themed words such a as LOVERS (as opposed to LOVER which does not span 2 words), searched them together in google in hopes of finding how they were related... at first I thought it could be a video game where certain symbols add power to a character, definitely out of my knowledge base. Once I found my way to Tarot cards, and thinking about the ZERO clue, I knew immediately that the card numbers on the grid would reveal the path to success. Bingo!

I thought this was a very clever puzzle that tested my limits. Grateful to muggles who sugggested that the theme would make sense only after solving.

Cheers!

[mheberlingx100]

I wouldn’t have gotten it if I hadn’t seen the movie Live and Let Die. As I recall, Bond had Solitaire use the tarot cards to tell their future and the Lovers came up. Of course, Bond stacked the deck to make sure that card came up.

[steveb]

I got very lucky on this one, in a way. When I couldn’t get it quickly on Thursday, I set it aside because my daughter and her family were visiting for the weekend. I never got back to it, so I didn’t spend any more time not solving it.

[lacangah]

I submitted SOBRIETY.

You must not know how muggles celebrate making it ashore.
Sobriety is foreign to us.

Have a great week.
Frank

Lol - I thought 17A (GIN) was kind of a ‘reverse hint,’ and it seemed to me that the ‘drink celebration ideas’ were a little subdued this weekend. A mirage of my own making

[mrmd]

I got all the way to EIGHT, and then couldn't flex enough to realize that I needed to use that number to get the answer from the Tarot deck. Duh.

[Ergcat]

A little help please from those who made it to shore, what in the puzzle caused you to look to Tarot cards? I'm at a total loss.

Similar to others…. I saw in the long themers the words hermit, star, power, devil and verse ( I didn’t see “lovers” yet). And thinking “ how was I going to get 8 letters out of 5 themers”? I thought maybe it was referring to a poem ( or “verse”) that would lead me to an answer. Soooo, I googled those 5 words and it led me to Tarot Cards. The hint about the “fool card being zero” then led me to the right path.

[JAQT]

Wow, amazing, but for me, not in a thousand years. But again, wow.