XWord Muggles Forum

MaineMarge wrote: ↑Sat Sep 19, 2020 7:14 am Solved. There’s nothing like a middle of the night bathroom break to clear things up.
Yet another neat trick up Patrick’s sleeve.

Before I head to shore Isaac is going to help me plant a hops vine (called bine) in the stern garden. Ever the DIY entrepreneur, he was intrigued by the idea. Some weeks are slow in his bar we know, so he can brew up something new for us.
My own is just recreational hops- they make interesting dried arrangements
527FA31D-52A3-4411-BCFE-AE1BAAC39E64.jpeg
Note the ever growing woodpile created by the resident Paul Bunyan. This is northern Maine, so that kitchen wood fire feels good this 27 degree morning.

Marge, I volunteer at a historical place near my house. My experience with a well-established hops vine there makes me shudder to this day. It was invasive, and the roots were HUGE, and tough. It should be an enthusiastic climber, though. Just be sure you have lots of space for it.

Still on the boat.

Started the meta last night after happy hour, which is probably not the ideal situation for solving, although I did get a toehold on the mechanism. In the light of day, things became quite clear, and I am safely on shore. I'll celebrate a bit later with a Sierra Nevada Okctoberfest.

On Shore! Yay! That gives me the rest of the day to prepare a nice meal for my neighbor and her family. She had minor surgery a few days ago.

CPJohnson wrote: ↑Sat Sep 19, 2020 10:59 am

Bob cruise director wrote: ↑Fri Sep 18, 2020 5:20 pm

BarbaraK wrote: ↑Fri Sep 18, 2020 5:13 pm

I don't think solve percentage is the best way to compare puzzle difficulty. Some puzzles have a defined set of possibilities, and I think that encourages guessing. And then PAGEANT is really in a category of it's own.

In raw numbers, 242 people got the correct answer to PAGEANT. Only 98 got CLUE. So I'd argue that means Toy Box/CLUE was harder.

It took me all weekend to get that one. When I was refilling the grid yet again, I realized that I didn't really know exactly what a word square was, so I googled it and read the wikipedia article. And then, those 7 four letter words, 2 with the same first letter, suddenly made sense.

I prefer to solve the crossword part of metas without google. But for the meta part, I google everything I'm not absolutely sure of and even some of what I am.

Barbara
I am not sure what is a good metric which is why I keep graphs. The problem with pure numbers is that over time we have doubled the participation so naturally the contests from the "early years" would have lower numbers. I agree with you that the ones with a low and finite number of possible answers encourage guessing.

This contest was different in that there were very few references to actors/directors, or TV shows of which I know very little but when I reach a dead end, I will google them. I can't remember when I have had to google to get the meta

Not even Rock Lobster? (3-3-17)

I was not even close enough on that one to worry about googling anything

Made it to shore. I was definitely over-complicating things.

Ashore! Thanks to some kind hints, I finished my first meta puzzle

Pour me another one, Isaac. I’m going to be here for a while.

Well, THAT felt good! I am ashore, and confident of my answer. I have had a rather aggravating dry spell where I spent a lot of time searching for the alternate answer and missed the actual answer. Last week was a classic example. I almost got off on two wrong feet (at different times) with this one and the answers would have been "ok" but there was no CLICK. Finally i did a "but what if it means" and that was the mechanism, which I STILL tried to screw up at the end (probably saying something about my "GROUP"). But, I am confidently ashore, I got Brian MacDonald's META (loved it!) and just saw that Matt's has arrived. After my EPIC whiff on his last week I am hoping to redeem but its a week three and that is a tough place to start redeeming.

Good morning Muggles

For the benefit of some of our newest muggles, a couple of things. First is that some of these metas will jump off the page to you and some will be hidden forever. I have no idea why that is and therefore if a particular contest seems easy to everyone and you are totally lost, do not be discouraged.

This is a good week because we have a lot of new muggles maybe due to the Q&A on Thursday. Our newest muggles are Pricilla, Prozach, hazmat, otlaolap, bellinghamster, and bfawcett

So far we have 9 on the ship and 114 on the shore

Minding MaineMarge's hops on the ship are
Peter
MajorDomoTom
joe
copperriver
kdubs
bfawcett
ImOnToo
Richard
and Begbie

On the crowded shore are
docison
Beth A
BarbaraK
higgysue
Cindy
Meg - our WSJ special contest winner!!!
Tom Wi
RobM
bskptkl
sanmilton
Janet
Paul D - no Dom???
geeteebee
Darryl
Chris
Tmart
kaille
Mike H
Kay
Josh
Alec
boharr
Bird Lives
laura M
TPS
tim1217
802puzzler
Wendy
spotter
Mark L
whimsy
oldjudge
Vincent
Jace54
Heidi
elementary
Al
EVJ
norrin2
howardl
Lacangah
dudeski
Jordanian
JimmyJam
cbarbee002
John77
Commodore
Fkelly
Orsys
ky-mike
C=64
dplass
Tina
Anita
Beth T
Eric P
edot
lbary
SusieG
Georgeall
HeadInHome
Jack
JoePickett
M and M
ladybird
Inca
MatthewB
CallMeShane
Tony S
Blair
Tom S
Miki
Wordsmith
Beth C
VanVeen
hazmat
ADS
Janet P
Jeff S
ricky
Andrew B
DBMiller
Moi
michaelm
John B
Big Mac
David R
Jim and Anita
Rita and George
JimJim
seans
bellinghamster
otlaolap
JRS51
Homer
Marion hauling her boat anchor Trey
Les
yungchap
Dow Jones
BeTheLight
FrankH
ladybyrd/Jennybyrd
MaineMarge
EmilyW
halseymac
Prozach
Hidden in 3D
Daniel G
Priscilla
and Gman

Good luck to all winning the mug.
And stay safe

Back on shore after a return to the grid this afternoon. Sorry that my work schedule kept me from joining many of you on Thursday. Perhaps it was recorded for payback for folks like me?

Take care -
Paul

Count me on the ship. I’m guessing this will be easy once I see the first step, but right now that’s eluding me.

A little late this week, but I have arrived at the shore party. Nice to see so many people already here!

Gman wrote: ↑Sat Sep 19, 2020 12:17 pm Made it to shore. I was definitely over-complicating things.

same, I just made it to shore myself.

cherikee wrote: ↑Sat Sep 19, 2020 1:20 pm Count me on the ship. I’m guessing this will be easy once I see the first step, but right now that’s eluding me.

wasn't for me, I had the first step and went down many empty rabbit trails until I found a good way to the beach.

MajordomoTom wrote: ↑Sat Sep 19, 2020 2:05 pm

cherikee wrote: ↑Sat Sep 19, 2020 1:20 pm Count me on the ship. I’m guessing this will be easy once I see the first step, but right now that’s eluding me.

wasn't for me, I had the first step and went down many empty rabbit trails until I found a good way to the beach.

Wasn't easy for me, either, but I'm on shore now. Needed small nudge from puzzle-working daughter.

I had a small nudge to keep doing what I'd already been doing and that (and day 2 of the migraine) (and lots of hot tea, well caffeinated) got me there.

NuYear68 wrote: ↑Sat Sep 19, 2020 1:11 pm Back on shore after a return to the grid this afternoon. Sorry that my work schedule kept me from joining many of you on Thursday. Perhaps it was recorded for payback for folks like me?

Take care -
Paul

You can view it on the WSJ site.

tigerfly222 wrote: ↑Sat Sep 19, 2020 9:19 am Checking in for the first time in many weeks! Still sunny and warm here in Barcelona.
Successfully solved this week's meta. That makes 2 in a row, a streak I am sure will be speedily broken.

I noticed you hadn't posted in a while (something about not seeing the flag of Spain must have entered my subconscious), and I was thinking about sending your mom a PM to be sure you were OK. Welcome back!

On shore. Very impressed with the construction of this one. Looked at it on Friday on AcrossLite, and got absolutely nowhere. Resolved on paper on Saturday morning and all became clear.