12. Out of Sight

[MikeyG]

PDF and PUZ

Meta solvers of the world, unite! A super shout-out to @madhatter5 on this one, who gladly test-solved, even though I have yet to crack a MEOW (I hear they're purr-fect). I love puzzles a lot, but my reading goal (I'm striving for 75 books this year and ideally 100 books in '22) does preclude some of my bandwidth! As always, thanks for solving!

Frankie got this one before this post was even typed up, haha, but Josh and I agreed that this is about a level 3 or 3.5 or so. Best of luck!

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This meta is solved after you find the two-word answer to the mystery question.

Deadline: November 12 at 11 pm Eastern

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Leaderboard of Destiny

1. Frankie (1st for the second time in a row!!)
2. Tom Wilson
3. Meg
4. oldjudge
5. RPardoe
6. boharr
7. DJB
8. LuckyGuest
9. benchen71
10. Hector
11. ChrisKochmanski
12. DannyVee
13. Matt A
14. Darth
15. scatter
16. hoover
17. lbray53
18. whimsy
19. HeadInHome

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Mikey G

[madhatter5]

75 books this year???

I mean, I think I read three.

[oldjudge]

Nice puzzle Mikey, and sorry to hear the answer to that question.

[MikeyG]

Nice puzzle Mikey, and sorry to hear the answer to that question.

[RPardoe]

Solved and submitted

[boharr]

Got it and sent it.

[FrankieHeck]

Frankie got this one before this post was even typed up

Oops! Now you know I've spent the last three weeks refreshing your page

Just kidding...I've also been reading. Just checked my Goodreads, and I'm up to 73 books this year! Though that includes some short and/or YA books, like the entire Series of Unfortunate Events.

Thank you so much for the generous prize, your Goodreads recommendations, and your fun puzzles!

[ChrisKochmanski]

Fun!

Poor Mikey, though — I believe he’ll be waiting some time on the Cubs. That looks like a complete tanking to me.

Myself, I’m through The Tower Treasure and The House on the Cliff, now cracking open The Secret of the Old Mill. I’m just hoping to make it to The Missing Chums!

[Darth]

A busy weekend... Late to the game, but glad to join the ranks of Destiny! A super fun meta -- thank you, Mikey G!

[MikeyG]

Poor Mikey, though — I believe he’ll be waiting some time on the Cubs. That looks like a complete tanking to me.

Don't remind me, bahahaha.

[hoover]

Solved and submitted.

I don't know how many books I've read this year because I don't feel the need to let everybody know about it on Goodreads. Probably not 75, but certainly more than three, probably closer to 25. I read two in three days a couple weeks ago. But this reminds me that if I'm going to buy my mom some more books for Christmas, I need to get on it while there's still time to ship across the country.

@ChrisKochmanski - That reminds me, two of the books I read this year were The Hidden Staircase and The Clue of the Broken Locket, which I picked up at a library discard sale and read before dropping off at the Little Free Library down the street. I'll read anything.

[Al Sisti]

Fun!

Poor Mikey, though — I believe he’ll be waiting some time on the Cubs. That looks like a complete tanking to me.

Myself, I’m through The Tower Treasure and The House on the Cliff, now cracking open The Secret of the Old Mill. I’m just hoping to make it to The Missing Chums!

You could do worse... this is a shot of (part of) my library. The paintings were done by a friend of mine.

[hoover]

Fun!

Poor Mikey, though — I believe he’ll be waiting some time on the Cubs. That looks like a complete tanking to me.

Myself, I’m through The Tower Treasure and The House on the Cliff, now cracking open The Secret of the Old Mill. I’m just hoping to make it to The Missing Chums!

You could do worse... this is a shot of (part of) my library. The paintings were done by a friend of mine.

Resized_20211103_013852 (002).jpeg

Jelly. My brother and I shared a partial set cobbled together from both the blue editions and the yellow ones. But we didn't have nearly this many. I think I stole all of his anyway, along with half of his Hot Wheels and Matchbox cars. Shhh... don't tell him I still have the HW and MB!

[lbray53]

Nice puzzle. I misunderstood a clue in the puzzle which made my journey longer and some of your comments puzzling.

Oh and I have not read many books in recent years. HOWEVER, I listened to hundreds of them during the last 13 years of my career when I was driving over 40,000 miles annually. Most notable was "Pride and Prejudice" which I had skipped reading in high school and was chastised by my English teacher after the exam on that book. Listening to it removed some of my guilt, but also made be glad that I had not wasted my time on it in high school. I know it is a classic but it was really a slog for me.

[whimsy]

Well, what d'ya know; I finally pun-ted --

[HeadinHome]

Submitted on the site but don’t know if it’s correct. Clever way to get to a meta answer, if so. Ditto the condolences on the answer (would be maybe my last choice?)

[MikeyG]

Submitted on the site but don’t know if it’s correct. Clever way to get to a meta answer, if so. Ditto the condolences on the answer (would be maybe my last choice?)

You're on the leaderboard! The condolences have been hilarious, haha.

[MikeyG]

November solution: ACTUARIAL SCIENCE or WOW I'M SORRY I WOULD HAVE MAJORED IN LITERALLY ANY OTHER THING

Correct answers: 19

Winner: @benchen71



Five of the correct answers definitely had part of them "out of sight" - missing from the grid!

EVER --> WHATEVER

SAIL --> WASSAIL

WHAM --> WHAMMY (for what it's worth, @madhatter5 thought this was a genuine mistake on my part while he was test solving - I love '80s game show pop culture too much to get that wrong!!).

BOARD --> COLLEGE BOARD

DRUM --> DRUM MAJOR

When the missing words are strung together, we get "What was my college major?"

Of course, since there's absolutely no way you would know that (I don't think so!) ahead of time, there were a few other semi-but-not-really-that-subtle clues in the grid that indicated that you quite literally needed to go OFF THE GRID to find out ALL ABOUT ME. So you got the answer out of (my) site! There, amidst my rambling who-knows-what I put there, I have placed the answer: ACTUARIAL SCIENCE, which I actually did enjoy! I figured out later what I really liked was the learning process more than anything and went into teaching shortly thereafter, which I've been doing for over a decade now and love. (I would've loved if my actual major was something like "optometry" to fit the meta, but I can't make up my past, haha).

Thanks to all of you for solving, and I will see you with a rather full stomach toward the end of this month for the December meta!

Mikey G

[benchen71]

Thanks for the gift card, @MikeyG! It's always nice when the random numbers fall your way once in a while.