XWord Muggles Forum

In desperate need of post enlightenment. Really struggling this week.

BarbaraK wrote: ↑Sat Mar 20, 2021 6:32 pm Something I was absolutely sure was important turned out not to be (unless there's a connection I'm not getting.)

(Redacted until noon, ET)

Spent a lot of time in that rabbit hole myself.

Beamed up after a friendly nudge from someone who disabused me of a few rabbit hole notions of mine. I think this is the first nudge I've gotten where I've felt strongly enough about my (in)ability to get it otherwise that I didn't register solo when I submitted.

Oh - semi related aside. My wife and I are on Season 3 of The Crown. (Being 80s kids, we watched the new season first and enjoyed it so much we went back to the beginning. But anyway...) So the first episode deals with issues in the royal family's art collection. In one scene, Queen Elizabeth is talking to a group in public about the art collection and makes a reference to an art concept that ties in with the theme of the episode.

My brain: Wait, is she talking about...?

QE2: In fact, they even have a word for it.

My brain: Omigod is she about to say it?

QE2: Palimpset

My brain: !!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Royal art expert guy: Well actually, your majesty, palimpset refers to manuscripts. In the art world, we use....

The team of MaineMarge and myself are on the board. MaineMarge did all the heavy lifting at the beginning as I was going nowhere. However we were stuck on the final piece. For reasons unknown to all but meta doers, I woke up at 1:30am this morning with the missing piece, fired up the computer confirmed the answer and sent an email to MaineMarge. MaineMarge conifrmed it at 4;30 am. We are a strange group.

Bob cruise director wrote: ↑Tue Mar 23, 2021 8:32 am MaineMarge conifrmed it at 4:30 am.

Bob,

You misspeeled "conifered." if there is anyone to have conifered it, it's our wonderful, green-thumbed Marge.

Congratulations!

Yes, I asked, and Matt answered (conifermed) that we could take the next flight up. Actually I had been awake doing the MMMM (midnight Muggle meta mulling) long before I saw BCD’s message.
And it was all only thanks to Joe Ross, who generously contributes to all KickStarter requests.

Like the Maine Marge - BCD coalition, I am pine-treed thanks to a friendly reminder. OK, a nudge.

Big Mac wrote: ↑Mon Mar 22, 2021 11:05 pm In desperate need of post enlightenment. Really struggling this week.

Officially requesting last-minute nudge. Help!

Beamed up! So close for a frustratingly long time. Finally found the last little puzzle piece this morning. Hooray !

BrianMac wrote: ↑Tue Mar 23, 2021 12:10 am

BarbaraK wrote: ↑Sat Mar 20, 2021 6:32 pm Something I was absolutely sure was important turned out not to be (unless there's a connection I'm not getting.)

(Redacted until noon, ET)

Spent a lot of time in that rabbit hole myself.

Sorry everyone. I meant to send Barbara a PM, but I posted it -spoilers and all - as a response to the thread. Then I happily went to sleep for the night. Thanks to Joe for redacting my post.

Joe Ross wrote: ↑Tue Mar 23, 2021 8:41 am

Bob cruise director wrote: ↑Tue Mar 23, 2021 8:32 am MaineMarge conifrmed it at 4:30 am.

Bob,

You misspeeled "conifered." if there is anyone to have conifered it, it's our wonderful, green-thumbed Marge.

Congratulations!

I'm going to go out on a limb and suggest he is not pining about it. I mean BCD is no sap and from what I gather he does not have a rough bark. So his sin in minor and we don't have to write him up for moral turpentine. Let's remember that as our cruise director he is one of our main supports, perhaps even our lodge pole.

I immediately spotted the 14 x 14 grid, but then dismissed that as merely a function of the four long entries. A helpful nudge told me not to ignore. When I had filled in the missing row and column, I still didn’t know what I was looking for. I thought that maybe the across letters would spell the question asked, and the down letters would spell the answer. Another nudge told me to think of the added words as words, not letters.

Then finally, I remembered what I tell myself regularly: when nothing seems to be leading anywhere, look at the damn clues.
.

This was a fun solve. Started by noticing several things just a bit off, all of which did end up playing into the solve. Not just the grid size and asymmetry, which in retrospect should have been the real tip-offs, but the weird clues for EVEN (Based on fairness, what?) and APPLE, and the strange entries LISE and especially SERAH, where VISE and SYRAH would fit.

So close! Thanks to everyone who sent me messages - I couldn't quite finish the solve in time. I was way down the wrong rabbit hole prior to the nudges and emerged too late.

On to next week...

Big Mac wrote: ↑Tue Mar 23, 2021 12:29 pm So close! Thanks to everyone who sent me messages - I couldn't quite finish the solve in time. I was way down the wrong rabbit hole prior to the nudges and emerged too late.

On to next week...

I stumbled onto the adding letters on the north and west mechanism about 11:10 this morning but didn't make the connection to the clues as I spent too much time trying to decide on what letters were the correct ones. E.g., at 2D, would I need dams, hams, rams, tams, etc.
Congratulations to everyone who got this and to Matt for a fabulous construction!

Two things in particular gave me grief.

First was the fact that the two partials in the upper left (also my last two to solve) could fit with the first three letters of two other clues! I had OCEan with DAM for a while, forming ODEA, CAMS, and EMOTIONLESSNESS. Then I had ANGry with DEA, forming ADAM, NEMO, and GASTRONOMICALLY. It took me a while to realize they both needed the H to form words making the grid symmetrical.

The other part that bothered me greatly (and I truly believe that Matt is sinister sometimes) was that I couldn’t get the title to fit. What am I asking and answering? Well, there are a LOT of answers in the grid, including the obvious (I thought) YES and NOS. Throw in I DEFER, I CAN’T SAY FOR SURE, and maybe even DO IT, and I felt like there was a Magic 8-Ball somewhere to be found.

It took me a while to find the answer and realize how diabolical (and genius) the title actually was. An excellent puzzle indeed.

MikeyG wrote: ↑Mon Mar 22, 2021 6:12 pm I'm projecting this one might cap around 300 or so, maybe a bit over.

I'm a stats nerd, sorry! (He went data way!)

Which horse is your early pick for the Kentucky Derby?

Loved this one! I really wanted to do something with the "Is ___ OK?" clue since that was, unusually, the only question mark. (I know Matt has said he doesn't put in red herrings on purpose, but I have a hard time believing this wasn't intentional!)

However. then I noticed the asymmetry due to 14x14, only because I was looking for 6-letter words in the grid ("How can there be 3 of them? Ohhhhhhh.") and it was a short step from there to realizing that it was easily possible to extend the north and west sides with reasonable fill. And then I stalled out. There were 6 completely new words, but multiple words could fit; how could you know which one is intended?

I was busy over the weekend and ended up putting it aside completely until Sunday night, when I redid the grid and noticed Ice-T as the first word in a clue, which was the one new word I'd been pretty sure about! After that it was a snap. Sometimes I feel like all of the really great meta ideas have been done, but something like this comes along and proves me wrong :-)

Dang, started working on the extra top and left rows last night, but forget to come back to it this morning. Not sure I would have made the last leap anyway. Womp womp.

The biggest of all red herrings stuck in my brain for over 24 hours. There was only one clue in the entire grid that contained a question mark

24D Is _____ OK? (PEPSI).

IMO having only one question mark in the clues is fairly exceptional, and that was a fairly odd way to clue PEPSI. And that question itself can be a response to a query to waitstaff for a CocaCola. Hence, both "asked" and "answered".

But I also noticed the unusual asymmetry in the grid right off the bat. So after beating my head against 24D for way too long, and then noticing that PEAKING TOO SOON could become a much more common phrase SPEAKING TOO SOON. I eventually found the right path.

This was a fiendishly clever meta - it played more like a week 4 to me. Not that I'm complaining! It was lots of fun to solve - I got to play "constructor" for a bit creating the extra entries.