XWord Muggles Forum

I've solved 88% of the first step and have no idea what direction to go next...

Leslie wrote: ↑Thu Dec 05, 2019 10:57 am My experience is a bit different from what others have described. I’m pretty sure I have all the pieces, including one very tricky one and others that were quite obscure to me. But I can’t figure out what to do with them, which seems to have been the easy part for others, even when missing a piece. So either I’m missing something obvious or I’ve gone wrong somewhere.

I had all the pieces and then realized that I actually screwed up one that I was sure of. Fixed that, rubbed my eyes, and got the the next part.

Leslie wrote: ↑Thu Dec 05, 2019 10:57 am My experience is a bit different from what others have described. I’m pretty sure I have all the pieces, including one very tricky one and others that were quite obscure to me. But I can’t figure out what to do with them, which seems to have been the easy part for others, even when missing a piece. So either I’m missing something obvious or I’ve gone wrong somewhere.

This is exactly where I am, minus (I think) the very tricky part you refer to.

spotter wrote: ↑Thu Dec 05, 2019 11:37 am I've solved 88% of the first step and have no idea what direction to go next...

Ditto.

Got this one! Whew, it's the first one we've gotten in months. I think we only solved 6 of 'em this year.

Would someone message me what (7) is? It's driving me crazy!

spotter wrote: ↑Thu Dec 05, 2019 7:30 pm Would someone message me what (7) is? It's driving me crazy!

PMed.

BTW, those who are stuck at 88% are probably not really at 88%.

Hector wrote: ↑Thu Dec 05, 2019 7:58 pm

BTW, those who are stuck at 88% are probably not really at 88%.

I thought I was at 100% but I was actually at 88%. (Though not the same 88% as most people, I think.)

I got stuck on this one because I was assuming that a characteristic of the first pieces I figured out was required in all of the pieces. Needless to say, that made them very hard to find and in once case led me astray. (Somedays google helps, some, not so much.)

I'm still not positive about one piece - it may be like with the one I had wrong and I'm overlooking something better.

But it all worked.

Leslie wrote: ↑Thu Dec 05, 2019 10:57 am My experience is a bit different from what others have described. I’m pretty sure I have all the pieces, including one very tricky one and others that were quite obscure to me. But I can’t figure out what to do with them, which seems to have been the easy part for others, even when missing a piece. So either I’m missing something obvious or I’ve gone wrong somewhere.

Same - got all the pieces, no idea what to do with them.

I didn't start on the meta until Saturday. I almost gave up, but then I noticed something. It took me another hour or so to solve.
I still don't know what (7) is for sure (I have a guess), but I was able to solve the puzzle without it.

pgw wrote: ↑Sun Dec 08, 2019 12:11 am
Same - got all the pieces, no idea what to do with them.

I concur with Hector. If you have all the pieces but don’t know what to do, some of your pieces are wrong.

BarbaraK wrote: ↑Sun Dec 08, 2019 7:58 am

pgw wrote: ↑Sun Dec 08, 2019 12:11 am
Same - got all the pieces, no idea what to do with them.

I concur with Hector. If you have all the pieces but don’t know what to do, some of your pieces are wrong.

oh - i see (and should have earlier)

Finally got it! So glad because I didn’t miss any others this year!

Have been in meta hell. When I can’t get the MMMM by Thursday, I usually end up missing WSJ, too! Had put MMMM aside pretty much since Thursday, but found some of the recent comments inspiring, and took another look. Also got some of my own additional inspiration! I’ll credit the morning run for freeing my mind up enough to at least solve one meta this week!

I know, there’s still time for WSJ...

Got it. With a little bit of help. I'm not in the running for any prizes, since I started in May and already missed two. I hope he does this again next year - it'd be nice to do one all the way through.

I got the basic idea quickly, but I had Good Brothers for 3 and no idea for 6 & 7.

I did find the Good Brothers iffy, but not because they were unknown - I'm not familiar with White Stripes or Living Colour either. Rather I was thinking that the contrary answer also had to work for the clue because every other piece that I'd figured out did. White side in chess. 7 solids in pool (per google, black doesn't count as a solid). Ship by air. Etc, etc. The only iffy one was 'grateful living" and google says that's a thing. So "Breaking Good" is a phrase and a TV series but it didn't have a Walter White as far as I could find out, and I wasn't sure if that was good enough.

When I did finally let that go and get to Righteous Brothers, I backsolved the rest. Or rather, I backsolved Iron Maiden. The best I could get for the O was Oh Well. Never heard of OK Go or found any mention of them in my googling.

I spent a little time with Good Brothers instead of Righteous Brothers, and it took me a while to come up with Iron Maiden. (Finally got "maiden" to come up in a thesaurus as an antonym of final, and the lightbulb went off.) Before I had all those pieces, I got distracted by "scuba" appearing in MISSCUBA, and I took this as matching with Air Supply. And "green" in another answer as matching with Living Colour. After spending all weekend with Matt's Week 5, at this point I thought I was going to cry. But eventually I corrected Good Brothers (using Spotify was a fun way to search, and was also a good way to gauge relative popularity) and got to WARMTOIL. My brain was so fried that I searched for that in Spotify before I realized what the answer was. Many, many Aha moments in this one!

I impressed my kids by actually being familiar with all the bands in this puzzle!

Ok Go made me laugh. They had a viral video a few years ago of them singing on treadmills.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dTAAsCNK7RA

For a 12/12 difficulty meta, the mechanism wasn't super hard to grok, but Righteous Brothers and Iron Maiden are definitely not easy gets, and without those . . . I got Iron Maiden by looking for bands starting with "I" in an alphabetical list. Neither "righteous" nor "iron" nor "maiden" were in my lists of possibilities. A year of very nice puzzles (though I only stumbled into the meta world this spring, I did the earlier ones for enjoyment). If you're out there, thanks, Pete!

(And OK Go has several amazingly creative videos.)

BarbaraK wrote: ↑Mon Dec 09, 2019 8:29 am [...] I was thinking that the contrary answer also had to work for the clue because every other piece that I'd figured out did. White side in chess. 7 solids in pool (per google, black doesn't count as a solid). Ship by air. [...]

Same! I loved this meta but this inconsistency (maybe intentionally) made it a lot harder.