Welcome to Phil's Crossword Corner (PCC)! Philip Chow (aka Phil) is an auditor at NYC Dept of Parks and Recreation who makes crossword puzzles for fun in his free time. A new meta puzzle posts every other Saturday weekend on Crosshare.
Phil’s metas will usually include immediate nudges, a great tool for new solvers. You can reach him at pchow13@gmail.com
Finally getting around to posting my old puzzles here on this forum.
Please see below for PCC#18 - "You Have Died of Dysentery" originally posted on Crosshare 12/03/23
[Level 3.5] Meta prompt: The answer to the meta is a four-letter word for something you might encounter on your journey to the Willamette Valley
Note: the level is the intended difficulty I had in mind when I designed the puzzle, but may play differently since every solver has their own area of expertise... what one person may find easy, another may find difficult.
Have fun and keep in mind if you're ever lost at sea, google is your best friend (actually, I don't know if you'd get internet service in the middle of the ocean)
-Phil
Hint #1: The meta will be easier if you've played the computer game "Oregon Trail"... if not, then lean heavily on the google machine
Hint #2: 68-Across "I'll be crossing you in style"... but what are we crossing?
Hint #3: We are crossing rivers, the four rivers that appear in the game "Oregon Trail" in order are: Kansas River, Big Blue River, Green River, and Snake River
Hint #4: In the game, when you cross a river, you have several options to choose from such as taking a ferry, or hiring a Native American guide
Hint #5: Find the letters of intersection between the entries with the river names in them and the entries with the crossing methods in them
Solution below - SPOILER ALERT:
Answer explanation: Answer explanation: The title of the puzzle and the meta prompt are about the educational computer game "Oregon Trail" that you may or may not have played when you were a kid in school... If you did, I hope the nostalgia factor is strong and brings back delightful memories. The clue for 68A hints at "crossing rivers in style " and that we will have to do this four times in the puzzle.
The four rivers that you cross in the game are in order: Kansas River, Big Blue River, Green River, and Snake River. These rivers all begin the four longest across entries: 17A, 26A, 47A, 59A. The next step of the puzzle is to identify the different river crossing methods in the game. You can take a ferry across, ford the river, caulk the wagon and float across, or hire an Indian tour guide... you can also wait and see if conditions improve (hinted by 1A) but this option isn't actually crossing the river.
FERRY crosses KANSASSTATEFLAG at "F"... FORD crosses BIGBLUEOX at "O"... HIRE crosses GREENHORN at "R"... and CAULK crosses SNAKEINTHEGRASSS at "K"... making our meta answer FORK (as in fork in the road). In the game there are some decision points where the trail splits and you need to decide which route to take.
An inelegance that I was not too thrilled about this puzzle is that the river crossing option of "hiring a tour guide" is ONLY available for the SNAKE river in the game... but here I have it crossing GREEN river. The other thing I'm not too thrilled about is you have to dig pretty deep to find the "hire" option when you do Google searches... it's not on the Wikipedia page and Googling "Oregon Trail river crossing options" only lists ford, caulk, ferry but also takes you to "Oregon Trail (Apple Arcade)" which differs from the classic computer game... these two websites include the "hire" option: https://www.died-of-dysentery.com/stori ... ivers.html and https://gamefaqs.gamespot.com/mac/56487 ... faqs/30964
Constructor Notes: "Oregon Trail" was originally released on Dec 3, 1971. The 1971 version of the game is purely text-based strategy with no graphics... The 1985 version of the game is the one that added graphics and is the most well-known entry in the "Oregon Trail series"... you can play it here: https://oregontrail.ws/games/the-oregon-trail/
" and that we will have to do this four times in the puzzle.