XWord Muggles Forum

I will join in asking for a nudge. Thanks,

I don’t want a nudge, but I’d love to brainstorm with someone else who is at step 1 (and a half). I have some ideas, one which must be right, but I’m hitting wall after wall after wall. PM me if you wanna exchange ideas.

I can’t think of a good nudge to offer, but if anyone wants to PM me the ideas you’re working with, I’ll be happy to tell you what to forget about and where to keep looking.

As one with an extensive (~4-year) record of struggling with week 3+ MGWCC metas, just a post to inspire those still working that if I can get it so can you.

For those struggling, take BarbaraK's offer!

I will gratefully accept an 11th hour nudge if anyone is feeling generous this evening

will help steer you (aka, nudge).

Like BarbaraK, send me what you're doing and I'll either say "keep going" or "you need to rethink your whole life". Or something like that.

Well I tried about 20 different things after Step 1. I guess the twenty-first thing I didn't will be the answer. Oh well. Hopefully my brain will figure things out till noon tomorrow.

I would appreciate a nudge; I am at step 1 like the rest of y'all. I have a lot to lose with this one, unfortunately, and I have sunk tens of hours into it without success.

Edit: I've got it, thanks for the nudge.

Well THAT was brutal. I had probably 60% but needed a push (or two) to make the last step work. I've got more tales of woe for later but for now I am awaiting confirmation, though I am pretty sure what I submitted is correct.

EDIT: Lucky me, made it just before the update - confirmed!

I'll take the post step 1 nudge as well please if anyone would be so kind. I'd rather solve with a bit of help than not solve at all.

Edit: Received a nudge and working on that for now.

I've seen NFL refs give 15-yard penalties for hits that were less vigorous, shall we say, than some nudges coming my way. But after going through the concussion protocol, I'm off the couch. This one was quite a struggle, and it's given me more sympathy with Queen Victoria.

If the answer is AMUSED per comments on Crossword Fiend, holy shit I got it right by purely guessing! I think this is the first time this happened to me. Wow. Good job brain, I don't know what you were doing there but good job.

So I was struggling with this and could not find where to start. I had all kinds of ideas, but none that paid off. During all of this I got a call from my friend Montgomery who was asking how he could tell the expiration date on a can of Crisco. I explained to him that, starting at the left and moving right the first two numbers are the year it was made, if you count three from the left you get the day it was made, next three the plant code and the last set is the military time for when it was packed. Another line shows the date it is Best By and – hey wait a minute, what if I count from the line the Greek letter is on? Voila!

So you can see that the solution was entirely On account of Monte’s Crisco!

OUCH!!!

Obviously none of that is true but it shows the lengths I will go to to make a bad pun…

OK, the TRUE (but infinitely more boring) story. I struggled mightily with this one because I chased soo many rabbits.
Six letter entries – OK, well it seems too easy to just pick the starting letter from an answer with 6 letters but wait, ALLMINE is 7 letters BUT it is made from only 6, that has to be it. Letters AATTR? Well he said ANAGRAMS in the puzzle so when I’m done I’ll feel like a rose scented essential oil – unlikely.
OK then ALL 6 letter entries – RSIDAMAMTUTRT – When I’m done I’ll feel like a town in Afghanistan? Well I am feeling bombed out and destroyed but.
Well then maybe it is words that are all letters! Yep there are 6 (RCA, ESL, ASPCA, EPA, GOAT, ATM) that HAS to be it. When I’m done I’ll feel like a rage (East Indian cereal grass? Well a cereal killer maybe, but I Keep off the Grass.
What about words that SOUND like letters: AIL, DOH (I live in the South remember) but few after that.

However during that soundex experience I saw a word that sounded like a GREEK letter THETALK – just a second here there are others and darned if there are not 6 of them. OK, “got you Mr. Rabbit, wow what an easy solution after all of that, Matt is slipping for a week three… oh crap ABDTIO – nada, nothing, zilch.

OK, use the Greek letter position in the Greek alphabet to find a letter in the numbered square, of COURSE, he loves that convention…SARHEM? OK, though I DO feel like Matt sometimes keeps us for his amusement, feeling like I’m in HAREMS is a stretch.

There I sat for the next few days pondering how to get the word from what I had. I did have a WAG locked and loaded for 11:45 Tuesday but I wanted to get it the right way. Truth is I never would have had it not been for a nudge from a kind Muggle. They said to rethink my positioning and also commented that I had solved the “In Bed by Nine” puzzle didn’t I? Odd thing to say, I mean there you took your cue from a known starting point of 6 Zs and counted…OMG.

It still took a couple of tries because I was counting from the entry (OITAAA, darn if there were a D instead of a T I’d say that I felt like Harry Bellafonte!). But finally it became clear that there were just the two words on the line and they were consistently on opposite sides, if I had to start with the letter containing word then why switch sides? So AMUSED (the D was the hardest), and interestingly enough my WAG because early on I had SIDAMTUR and was sure it was just because I wasn’t seeing the right path and that AMUSD was there and I would probably feel either AMUSED or AMAZED.
So Matt, another clever puzzle, though I cannot say I like this mechanism all that much and it would have been nice to have some “Hey look at me clue” like “The North and the South – ALTERNATESIDES”. But even though I did not solve it without help any solve is a good solve.

AMUSED was my WAG immediately after reading the title & meta clue, but I didn't have the... fortitudicles to attempt the entry. It took a very long time & a lot of incorrect dead-ends before confirming my initial guess.

I just read the posts on Crossword Fiend and am still as confused as I always was. I did see some (but not all) of the Greek letters, but did not make the leap to the answer.

I got this one after many false starts, such as all the six-letter entries in the grid. My first step (using Joe Ross' excellent excel template) was to highlight all the six-letter entries:
I then googled Ralph Omega

And several hours later, OMEGA finally clicked, as did the other Greek letters in the grid. My first and lengthiest rabbit hole on that front was to find "near anagrams" of all the letters in the grid... ala 53 across.

ALPHA/PRAHA (I mean, PRAHA?! Really???)
BETA/BEAN
DELTA/ECLAT
THETA... ATEAM/OATES (both of these are 2 letters off both THETA and OMEGA)
IOTA/TITO (or ALTO)
OMEGA... and here I spent a long time trying to convince myself that COMAE/RHINOE could be plausible entries, as COMAE would make a match for OMEGA.

A confirmation question to someone who already solved finally put a stake thru the heart of the anagram monster, and I eventually moved on to the numbers and the answer.

Whew!! That was one tough week 3! Was I AMUSED? Well, yes. Ultimately.

Well my AM was USED on this puzzle this morning but it didn't happen this week.

Several, many, beaucoup rabbit holes. Fun ones included Amazon right above com (AMAZON(DOT)COM?). Delta Airlines kept popping into my head (OOPS!). "III" being a strange entry and including "Letters" in the clue. "Income Gap" containing "Meg" like Ryan, yet OMEGA never even occurring to me. I think I found every possible path other than the right one. It's been that kind of Fall 2020 in terms of metas. I need a bounce back to finish the year