XWord Muggles Forum

Awaiting confirmation, but if I'm right, I find the wording of the prompt ambiguous, though pleasurably so.

Wendy Walker wrote: ↑Wed Feb 17, 2021 2:02 pm Thanks to your hints, Chris, I am now singing "When the moon is in the seventh house." No need to take the puzzle clipboard to Date Night tonight! We missed you on the Zoom call last night.

Wanted to join, but once a month I have a Finance Committee zoom call re a charity board I'm on. I clearly have a problem with priorities!

cbarbee002 wrote: ↑Wed Feb 17, 2021 3:13 pm

Wendy Walker wrote: ↑Wed Feb 17, 2021 2:02 pm Thanks to your hints, Chris, I am now singing "When the moon is in the seventh house." No need to take the puzzle clipboard to Date Night tonight! We missed you on the Zoom call last night.

Wanted to join, but once a month I have a Finance Committee zoom call re a charity board I'm on.

Chris
No problem. I will just send you the bill for my car battery that died when I printed out your meta

Bob

Confirmed off the couch, with nudges (again). Nice puzzle, but I guess not in my "wheel"house :-)

More springing off the couch - - and, I am remiss in not mentioning the first person off the couch, Al Sisti, who was the test solver.

Dow Jones
CP Johnson
Tom Wilson
bhamren
Seadub
Scott Medvetz
Beth Tyrpin
MaineMarge
LauraM
Bird Lives
Wendy Walker

Off the couch with the nudges.
And my final extraction method was wrong but worked for 4/5 and was so promising. Got it with a backsolve.

Off the couch after a little supplemental nudge. Thanks, Chris!

BTW, in addition to this puzzle teaching me some new words, 40A reminded me of how long it's been since I lived in an inspection state. My first nasty encounter with inspections was in PA (home of our puzzle author) where I went to college and bought my first car, a 10-year-old Volvo with plenty of rust. It failed its first inspection because of rust holes in the body, so I had to pay someone to slap some body putty and primer on the holes sufficient for it to pass. I resented that at the time. I've lived in non-inspection states for 40+ years, but every time I see a vehicle with nonfunctioning brake lights I wonder if some sort of minimal inspection system should be in place.

Late night (okay, early morning) leaderboard update:

joequavis
Dannyvee
Abide
Alvibu67

eagle1279 wrote: ↑Wed Feb 17, 2021 11:13 pm BTW, in addition to this puzzle teaching me some new words, 40A reminded me of how long it's been since I lived in an inspection state. My first nasty encounter with inspections was in PA (home of our puzzle author) where I went to college and bought my first car, a 10-year-old Volvo with plenty of rust. It failed its first inspection because of rust holes in the body, so I had to pay someone to slap some body putty and primer on the holes sufficient for it to pass. I resented that at the time. I've lived in non-inspection states for 40+ years, but every time I see a vehicle with nonfunctioning brake lights I wonder if some sort of minimal inspection system should be in place.

Annual inspections are a pain (and I'm sure that the auto-shops have a huge lobby in Harrisburg), but I'm with you - - there needs to be a minimum standard out there!

cbarbee002 wrote: ↑Thu Feb 18, 2021 12:47 am

eagle1279 wrote: ↑Wed Feb 17, 2021 11:13 pm BTW, in addition to this puzzle teaching me some new words, 40A reminded me of how long it's been since I lived in an inspection state. My first nasty encounter with inspections was in PA (home of our puzzle author) where I went to college and bought my first car, a 10-year-old Volvo with plenty of rust. It failed its first inspection because of rust holes in the body, so I had to pay someone to slap some body putty and primer on the holes sufficient for it to pass. I resented that at the time. I've lived in non-inspection states for 40+ years, but every time I see a vehicle with nonfunctioning brake lights I wonder if some sort of minimal inspection system should be in place.

Annual inspections are a pain (and I'm sure that the auto-shops have a huge lobby in Harrisburg), but I'm with you - - there needs to be a minimum standard out there!

I'm from New York, and I had no idea that it was a state-by-state decision whether or not to require inspections. (if New York didn't require inspections, I still might have my 1966 Mustang convertible that I had to take off the road because it wouldn't pass inspection. And that was in the era when you could, um, buy a present for an inspector. They were so picky! Just because every time I went over a bump my directional signal would go on, my rear view mirror would turn 90 degrees and my trunk would pop open...Geesh!)

Officially off the couch, but needed the first spoiler to confirm the direction that I was heading.

Off the couch. Needed the second nudge, even though I shouldn't have.

Finally off the couch. Thanks Chris!

Off the couch...

Great puzzle!

Off the couch, finally. Successfully resisted looking up the second nudge - the first just confirmed what I had already realized early on.

We talk about the meta "AHA moment" - but this one was more of a "DUH moment": I just was making things WAY too complicated! Good puzzle.

Everyone has solved the WSJ meta, so nothing more to do than post latest "Off The Couchers"!

R Pardoe
Cindy N
Dave C
hcbirker
jh seeman
ReB

Haven't checked with the master mechanic yet, but after using both nudges, here I come, limping into the repair station in my rattletrap, muffler dragging.......(out of the bucket seat, I guess.)

Prob last update before noontime tomorrow (everyone poring over MGWCC at this point . . ).

Frank H
Jeremy Smith
dudeski
Whimsy
Naptown Kid
Barbara K
Hidden in 3D

Nearly 50 solves!

Ok, Solution Sunday.

This meta was meant to be a respite from the more difficult puzzle from last week and I think that overall, most found it more solvable. I fear that my "nudge" about the usefulness of graph paper unfortunately pushed some solvers to a more complex approach than was intended.

In any event, the title of the puzzle was "Wheel Alignment". Looking through the clues / answers, there are five "wheel/tire" related clues. Taking the five answers to those clues and "aligning" them (as in the picture below) yields gibberish, except for the third column, which spells LUBED.

I did get quite a few comments about not ever having been aligned (apart from being at a chiropractor) - - i.e. it's the car that gets aligned. That said, several admitted to having been lubed at some point. I also know (because you've told me) that I haven't been adhering to the general rule of involving the long (generally) across answers in the solution process. I hear you. Still crawling, hoping to be a toddler soon. Happy Sunday, and stay safe!

Thanks to all who completed (just shy of 50 solvers)!