#32 - "Hodgepodge"

Creative and challenging meta crosswords (currently on hiatus) from: www.pgwcc.net
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Al Sisti
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#41

Post by Al Sisti »

damefox wrote: Tue Oct 22, 2019 10:18 am
Al Sisti wrote: Mon Oct 21, 2019 5:42 pm
damefox wrote: Mon Oct 21, 2019 4:59 pm Wow, so many people wanted to pay it forward. Thanks guys! I'm pretty sure I got it.

I have to say, I think there's a fine line between "meta crossword" and "inside joke the constructor has with himself." Without the hint, this puzzle is very much in the latter category. With the hint, IMHO, it's still only straddling that very fine line.
I hear what you're saying, but in looking at my notes from the beginning, I had written down two... well, let's just call them "things" until tomorrow... that should have kicked me towards the trick, but for some reason I got away from them. Looking back, knowing now what I know, and now knowing what I didn't know I knew then (still with me??), I really believe he gave us enough to solve it. Maybe a MGWCC Week 5 difficulty, but definitely solvable.

Much easier to comment now that the solution is out, so I don't have to do back-flips to avoid spoilers. I should rephrase "inside joke the constructor has with himself" to "inside joke the constructor has with himself and everyone who's been solving these puzzles since week 1." Maybe not impossible to figure out if you're new to PGWCC, but I think people who were already familiar with past mechanisms definitely had a leg up. I started at week 28, so nothing that hearkened back to older weeks stood out to me (maybe I should've recognized KURTWEILL at 31, but that wasn't enough). I won't dispute that it's a very well-constructed puzzle and extremely impressive that he was able to fit all of that in there, but I think it's a little bit of a bummer for new solvers that it doesn't stand alone.
I do agree with that (and would have said it in my first reply to you, except that it probably would have been construed as a spoiler).
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Al Sisti
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#42

Post by Al Sisti »

And now that we're done, I can say that I could've kicked myself for not following through on a couple observations: I did write down MANN(IX) in my notebook; pairing it as an alternative answer to "TV Show with detectives" (then completely dropped it in favor of a different TV show), and I saw AMOUNT and thought "Wow, Peter just did a whole meta like this, as in "ARARAT" is an A-MOUNT... but I also dropped that when I said "That can't be it; he can't be repeteing...repeating yet, can he?
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Cindy
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#43

Post by Cindy »

And I am a fix it and forget it kind of girl. Once I complete a meta I throw it in the trash both literally and figuratively. I would never have noticed that these came from previous puzzles without the hint.
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ChrisKochmanski
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#44

Post by ChrisKochmanski »

Cindy wrote: Tue Oct 22, 2019 2:01 pm And I am a fix it and forget it kind of girl. Once I complete a meta I throw it in the trash both literally and figuratively. I would never have noticed that these came from previous puzzles without the hint.
Me too. I tend to forget puzzles quickly. But once hinted that the "archive" URL would point to the path, I quickly noticed the LL in KURTWEILL for what it was. And the solution flowed steadily from there. Of course, that was the just-previous puzzle, so it remained fairly fresh in memory.

Peter's own assessment of this puzzle is pretty much exactly as I see it. I wouldn't want all metas to be like this one, or even for many to be like it, but I applaud Peter for trying different things. These are, after all, JUST PUZZLES. I think it's OK if we don't always solve them quickly -- or even at all.
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