XWord Muggles Forum

Finally!! I basically had to be hit over the head, but I got it!

Super hard until it isn’t. Love the theme entries.

Meg wrote: ↑Thu Apr 30, 2020 11:33 am Finally!! I basically had to be hit over the head, but I got it!

Same here! Took me three nudges until I finally saw it. And the strange thing is, the inklings of the idea had occurred to me a couple of days ago.

Brian, you shouldn't think of this puzzle as a dud. Maybe not an award winner, but certainly worthy. I enjoyed laboring over it all week!

I finally got it (I think). That’s a great job Brian! Confirmed solved.

still (hic) on the boat, with Isaac.

sing with me ...

Everybody is Kung Fu fighting,
Your mind becomes fast as lightning
Although the future is a little bit frightening
(Little bit frightening)
It's the book of your life that you're writing
(Life that you're writing)

After about ten looks, I see the sports term that is illustrated. And yes, with a completely different mechanism this was very hard to see.

So what was the clue for 54-D in the original puzzle?

I thought I might have it, although the revised clue for 54D makes me think maybe not... (I don't feel a need to confirm, I'm happy to wait for the explanation.) I really liked the grid, and if the meta didn't quite work with my brain, that happens, it's generally the fault of my brain :-)

The original 54D clue just said that this entry is not the meta answer. The revised one makes it clear that you should just ignore it despite its apparent relevance.

Solution and explanation below.

Each of the 4 theme entries is intended to be the literal "illustration" of a sports phrase:

FALSE STARTS begins too soon
INFIELD FLY "pops up" over the grid
BIRDIE PUTT has "one [letter] under"
OUT OF BOUNDS goes over the boundary

As I mentioned, this puzzle was originally not a meta, but a submission to the NY Times as a regular daily puzzle (probably Thursday). The extra letters spell FIST which appeared at 54-Down and was supposed to be the revealer. However, I had worked in a little "Easter egg" in the form of a fifth sports term that was intended to be self-illustrating: BULLSEYE, forming a ring around the central square. When I remembered this puzzle, I thought that FIST was a little too straightforward to be a meta on its own, but that BULLSEYE could work as the answer. What I did not account for that using the same mechanism for the four theme entries and then completely abandoning it for the meta would throw a lot of people for a loop. Al Sisti test solved this for me and pointed that out, but I still thought that the consistency of having different sports terms "illustrated" was enough to hold it together. What I should have done is been more thoughtful about the prompt and given better guidance there. One of the thing I'm finding challenging about constructing metas is really utting yourself in the solver's shoes - it's very hard to un-know how the meta works! I'm very grateful to Al for taking an advance look at these and helping me understand the solver's experience better.

Thanks to everyone who solved and gave feedback. I'm going to post another one later today that should be much clearer, but I am not going to attempt to predict the difficulty level!

Doing this puzzle the day after doing "Pieces of Eight" helped me see the fifth theme entry.

Well played!