A weekly meta crossword on the forum started by member Josh (aka madhatter5). These puzzles are often very creative with solving mechanisms out of the norm and skewing towards the more challenging. Puzzles are posted every Wednesday, and the solution appears the following Tuesday.
You’ve had a DrTom holiday with some really good puzzles from other constructors, but your luck has run out. As usual, this came to me while doing another puzzle and thinking, “hey I’ll bet that could be a mechanism”. My testers (Wendy, Whimsy, Cinny) helped me hammer this into a useable form and pushed me back on track when I got lazy with cluing.
Difficulty, hmmm – well given what my testers went through it is definitely not a Kitten but I think the tip off to what is going on is pretty obvious so I’ll say it is a:
Kitten
CALICO
Persian
Puma
Lion
Nudges, if required, will be Friday and solving deadline is Tuesday Noon.
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.
Like @woozy I was initially extremely wary. But my fears were unfounded!
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Meg wrote: Wed Jul 26, 2023 8:22 am
The cat spent the morning rolling her eyes. I think she passed out in the bag. Nice puzzle, Dr. Tom.
Wow, same thing happened to me on college once. I passed out because I was in the bag. Did the cat have a raging headache when it awoke??
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.
The cat has escaped. A couple of weeks ago actually. I was feeling pretty proud of my quick solve until I remembered that I had the honor of being a test solver.
My avatar proves that it is sometimes better to be lucky than good!
benchen71 wrote: Wed Jul 26, 2023 1:05 am
Cat's out!
Like @woozy I was initially extremely wary. But my fears were unfounded!
I can understand why UR both afraid of a "sound" puzzle. I didn't want to be CD and do something similar, mainly because I whiffed on that meta until the first and last were pointed out. For some that was right up their LE, but I did not XL at it. This was designed to be MUCH easier.
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.
