XWord Muggles Forum

This week's Washington Post is a meta

https://www.washingtonpost.com/crosswor ... -birnholz/

Not too hard, but several steps to get to the final answer.

It's not a contest, so no submission deadline and no prizes. You can read the answer on Crossword Fiend.

Hey, two threads on this puzzle! Same comment as on the other thread: That was fun!

Simultaneous threads!

Time-consuming, as there are lots of moving parts to keep track of, but there are lots of pretty explicit hints to make it easy.

Simultaneous is right! 12:40pm. Great minds ...

Here’s the constructor’s write up (lengthy) of the solution.

https://www.washingtonpost.com/magazine ... ssword-55/

Quite a puzzle! So many moving parts! Fun one.

This one belongs in the Meta Hall of Fame!

Very impressive!

Got part 1, then part 2 but darned if I can move to part 3 and a solution....I'm going to invest a bit more time but WOW what an effort from Mr. Birnholz

What a fantastic puzzle to round off the year :O

This puzzle was way beyond my tiny disorderly brain and so rather than seek about 10,000 nudges, I bailed.

But now I think I may need a nudge just to follow the explanation of the solution!

Great puzzle, Evan! I’m thankful I stuck with it. Can’t imagine how much effort it took to construct.

Wow, what a masterpiece I cannot even begin to fathom how he managed to constructed it! There were more turns than in the Minoan Maze. I had the mechanism early on but getting from the lumber to the building was almost more than this little head could take. I know some have said that there were enough clues to make it easy, but I disagree. To me this is best summed up by:

Took a while to complete all the steps, trying my patience, but fortunately the author helpfully provided enough instructions in the grid answers to guide my way. Very well constructed puzzle.

Woof! That took some contortions and permutations, but I made it through!

The 5x5 grid is reminiscent of PGW's Puzzle #64, Inspiration Point (https://pgwcc.files.wordpress.com/2020/ ... cted_a.pdf, available only as a PDF), although the solving mechanism is quite different.

Wow! Fun to unravel, but I kept forgetting which color highlighter I was using at a particular time.

I must confess that one was beyond me. I did the huge grid and quickly found the members of each quintet in the answers.
But then came the problem of how to enter the first letters of the "members" into the matrix so they would make meaningful columns. I tried in alpha order; in order of appearance in the clues (Across first, Down second); in strict numerical order.
Then I tried to find the letters hidden in the answers and really thought I was onto something when I found that guESTS' Sleeping spot corresponded to one of my columns (in order of appearance in the clues: Erie, Smell, Thumb, Southern, Scary). I even debated skipping my Zoom yoga class to search for others and though I didn't, you can imagine what I was thinking of when the instructor asked us to "set an intention" for the evening's practice.

Wow great puzzle. It was super fun working through all the different steps.

I just found about the puzzle in Joon’s write up of MGWCC. This meta was a work of art and so much fun. I loved every part of it, but most of all the answer. Glad I didn’t see Wendy’s lament before I did it.

I finally got back to this, having done the grid days ago. I’d say this puzzle is surely in the running for an Orca.

oldjudge wrote: ↑Tue Dec 29, 2020 3:59 pm I just found about the puzzle in Joon’s write up of MGWCC. This meta was a work of art and so much fun. I loved every part of it, but most of all the answer. Glad I didn’t see Wendy’s lament before I did it.

Funny, it did not occur to me until reading your comment just how well the answer fit. I was so glad to have gotten SOMETHING that I did not relate it to the answer. Now a real coup de grace would have been for the answer to appear across the top of the 5x5