MEOW #148 Do You Give Up?

[Ergcat]

Cat is free! Thanks, DrTom!

[DrTom]

Goodness me! Only 5 more people today, looks like everyone is giving up!

19 ChrisKochmanski
20 Berto
21 markhr
22 Darth
23 ergcat

Nudges tomorrow so maybe a few more. Darn, cause I really liked this one. Oh well, meta fatigue I suppose.

[schmidzy]

I haven't given up, I'm just stuck! Can't wait for those Friday nudges.

[DrTom]

Nudges:

If you are one of those people who subject the puzzle to letter analysis, you had to notice the paucity of something

Since that is not "natural" or "common" it MUST have something to do with the solve

Not only is the anomaly in the puzzle, it is symmetric

If you watched Jeopardy on Thursday evening, one of the $800 questions in the Double Jeopardy round was a spoiler!!!

[ajk]

Solved. Needed the first nudge and the bonus nudge, though as usual I'm not sure why I needed the latter in retrospect. Fun idea, thanks.

[DrTom]

It would appear that the nudges were not all that helpful, either that or everyone is still struggling with the WSJ like I was. OK, fine then I don't want you going into a MGWCC week 5 with this one hanging over your head, here are a few more nudges:

Everybody knows about "special" places in the grid, and the one most special of all. Surely there is a reason THAT word is THERE?

There is a very big "nudge clue" in the puzzle that makes use of the phenomena mentioned in Nudge 1

If you are doing what the nudge clue told you to do, you might want to do it in red...

[DrTom]

Well the second set of nudges did not seem to move the needle much, there were 6 more but most of them cam after the 1st set and I don't think I have seen more than one after the second set. Perhaps I can come up with a Saturday nudge that will be better?

24 JM
25 DIS
26 ajk
27 woozy
28 Laura M
29 badgey

[lbray53]

On a fishing trip but it’s raining this morning so I get to work on puzzles. Cat is out but I needed the first nudge and two guesses to do it.

[ReB]

Well, for me the problem was not the nudges - the first and last were helpful, the others just reiterated what I had deduced. The problem was that DucDuckGo behaved terribly, and I needed a shove by Dr. Tom before I could enter a search string that confirmed the answer which I had deduced from Dr. Tom's shove (but would never have come up with otherwise on my own). Oh well, a very ingenious puzzle even if the solving process went badly.

[whimsy]

Cat's out but not until the first nudge let me know I'd been looking in all the wrong places.
For me, this kitty thought he was much tougher --

Thanks for the puzzle DrTom!

[schmidzy]

Finally got there with the first couple nudges. Clever construction! Thanks, DrTom!

[DrTom]

Cat's out but not until the first nudge let me know I'd been looking in all the wrong places.
For me, this kitty thought he was much tougher --
Capturesmtigerdream.PNG
Thanks for the puzzle DrTom!

Obviously I once again mistook the difficulty level. I think I am going to stop trying to handicap these because I am INVARIBLY wrong. I think that this may have been one of my more difficult ones in a while judging from PMs. Glad this Kitten/puma finally worked its way out of the sack, thanks for solving Claudia.

T

[DrTom]

Well, for me the problem was not the nudges - the first and last were helpful, the others just reiterated what I had deduced. The problem was that DucDuckGo behaved terribly, and I needed a shove by Dr. Tom before I could enter a search string that confirmed the answer which I had deduced from Dr. Tom's shove (but would never have come up with otherwise on my own). Oh well, a very ingenious puzzle even if the solving process went badly.

If it went that badly, and a major search engine failed you then the finger may point to the expectations of the constructor more than the expertise of the solver. Lots of folks are having more trouble with this than I thought. It is probably why I was never good picking teams for pools...bad handicapper.

I apologize for it, and for some of its brothers coming up in the future which are more "can you determine what I want" than "the answer is spelled out when you do ..." I'll try to release them slowly from the box as opposed to a Pandora-like (no relation to Will's excellent series I might add) free for all.

[DrTom]

A few more have joined, but it is playing MUCH harder than Kitten/Calico so, two last nudges:

There are two big nudge clues which, as it turns out, are both symmetric and contain one of the mechanism elements in them. One if quite near the start, the other quite near the end

The title of the puzzle, given that the sword wielder is facing a dragon and we are talking a little bit of a back in time or archaic language thing, is there another phrase for "Give Up" that was used?

[DrTom]

OK, the extra nudges seemed to have helped, though I am sure the MG did not!

29 badgey
30 Carolyn
31 lbray53
32 DCBilly
33 whimsy
34 ReB
35 Pair O Ducks

Thirty five is not a bad number so I'll console myself and not give up yet!!!

[DrTom]

Four more have persevered (have not given up!)

36 Trypmom
37 SeamusOL
38 Mwoychick
39 MaineMarge

[DrTom]

This puzzle came to me on a morning walk as I passed a YIELD sign. "Hmm that would be easy to draw" a voice in my mind said.

After getting back home (and feeding the cats) I started on it. The hardest part was using only a few Os. I mean most puzzles have 12 but this one had to have only 6. It made the fill harder because so many "good" words have O's (had to skip OREO completely - seemed sacrilegious). But it came together quickly and my testers felt it was a pretty fair puzzle.
1) Very few O's
2) Symmetrically placed
3) Two symmetric nudge clues - 5A Universally recognized octagonal warning, 77A Logical way to solve a mystery, connect the ___
4) one of the few and symmetrical Os in each nudge clue
5) DEFER, a synonym for YIELD, smack in the middle
6) a Title that references "Giving Up" or yielding
7) A prompt that mentions "sign of our times"


I figured that people would have it solved in seconds...not to be though because it was so different than my usual silliness that people didn't see what was right there.

I had almost 40 solvers so I cannot complain, I just feel badly that it gave some people such a workout. Well the good news is that you get three weeks of the Awesome Aussie, the Roo Wrangling Riddler, the Wallaby Wannabe...BEN!

I'll be traveling a bit and my internet access will be spotty at best and my time for puzzles (since I am driving and it is a long trip) minimal. So, until later in October (the 25th I think) I'll say so long for a while.

[benchen71]

MwAhaaAhaaHaaa! Three whole weeks of me!! Twice!!!