"Marked Deck" December 1, 2023

[Richard]

I should have got the one Thursday when I had everything but I guess also had a brain cloud or something.

Anyhow on shore.
Going to a friend's house to watch football this afternoon since the 49ers - Eagles is the game I want to see but in LA we get the Browns-Rams and my friend has the NFL package. Will celebrate with a cold beer there.

SoCal

[bread-girl]

On the shore!

[Bird Lives]

Ashore. I forgot to ante up till this afternoon. Then I sat in the big blind for a few minutes till I finally saw it.

[femullen]

Still hanging with Isaac. With so many ashore, i have a feeling this is going to be a palm-to-forehead Monday.

[RichA2]

Ashore. Took me far longer than it should have.

[eagle1279]

Ashore after a long dry spell.

[SingleMalt]

Ashore!

[OliviaL]

On shore

[Bob cruise director]

Good evening muggles

Our final count is 1 on the ship and 226 o the shore

Good luck to all winning the mug and have a safe week

[Craven_Mug_Craver]

That was fun and easy. Was so tired Friday that I didn't even bother trying to solve after getting the grid. A bit of thought today and it dropped right out. Good one by Sr. Gaffney.

I'll have Matini Nero from Manini's. Shaken, stirred, and danced across the beach to the greatest hits of Bobby Darin, if you please.

[dot]

On dry land! Like last week, we got the first step fairly quickly, but didn't see how to advance until we came back a day later. H will have a virgin strawberry daiquiri, and J will have a spiced (but not spiked!) eggnog.

[haydendog]

Ashore!

[hcbirker]

[steveb]

Like most everyone else, I got GRIFT and submitted it, but I wondered what the "bit of deck marking" referred to.

[hoover]

Like most everyone else, I got GRIFT and submitted it, but I wondered what the "bit of deck marking" referred to.

The old-school way of marking a deck for cheating would be to make a small mark with a fingernail on a different corner/edge of the card.

I have a small quibble in that the corners for SEVEN and EIGHT are the same corner with 180° rotation. Depending on the card deck, that may make them indistinguishable.

[Relic]

Celebrating a successful submission with a Blackbox cabernet. I procrastinated the solution 2days before submitting.

The NE, central, and SW 3x5 answers were solid, but the NW and SE 3X5s concerned me because the 17A and 57A answers were 9 letters not 5,
and I feared that grift should be grifts based on the framing of the solution prompt.

After wrestling with these concern for a couple of days, I concluded I was placing unreasonable expectations on the META and submitted the solution that was yelling "here I am" at me.

Fun META from Matt that I over complicated.

[woozy]

I don't think the technique of deck marking is as well known as Matt Gaffney thinks it is. But then again I assumed Tarot cards were much more well known than they were.

I sort of thought the idea was a *printed* marked deck had the identity of the card hidden to look like part of the pattern. It sort of didn't quite but kind of worked.

[Richard]

For some reason the 3 x 5 thing threw me off. I saw the five 5 letter word changes but not the answer. Then I thought maybe there are three 3 letter word changes and I saw you could change MTM to ATM (not a playing card but neither is a 3 x 5 card) and add a g to kin and get king. Never saw the 3rd.

The def of 7 down is "One of a quintet" so I thought that ThreebyFiveCard was one of 5.

Finally saw the answer in the 5 letter changes.

[Twilly57]

The ‘N’ beneath the ‘QUEE’ had me chasing after scrambled face cards. And the upside down ‘ACE’ in PECAN… Then I saw ‘SEVE(R)’ and quit chasing rabbits. Fun Puzzle.

[Ben B]

Ok I see it now! I was able to solve by finding the five card values in the grid but did not understand the long hint and had no idea what deck marking was. I learned something new today and also reminded of something I already knew: Matt makes incredible puzzles!