XWord Muggles Forum

KayW wrote: ↑Mon Jul 08, 2019 8:44 am KAS 5 for me - I was in the same boat as TMart. And Matt Gaffney! per the write-up in crossword fiend:

https://crosswordfiend.com/2019/07/07/m ... ta-july-4/

So I take solace there. I was trying to follow all sorts of paths using those directional letters in the 11 key answers, but it never occurred to me to plot compass points at the edges of the grid. Kudos to the few, the proud who managed to find the path to the solution!

Me, too! I even made a little template of the path and held it on top of the puzzle, against a window, trying to find a spot where it would give me an answer, lol. I spent WAY too much time struggling with this. It's so hard to see a simpler approach when you have the complicated route stuck in your head.

I looked at every possible starting square in the grid to "follow the directions" from, to no avail. Such a deep rabbit hole that it took an absurd amount of time to let it go and ask, what ELSE could the directions indicate if not moving from square to square? Once I forced myself to ask that, I was done in no time.

I had the eleven directions but could not figure out what to do with them.

Matt Gaffney — DNF! Welcome to our world, Matt.

FrankieHeck wrote: ↑Mon Jul 08, 2019 8:56 am
Me, too! I even made a little template of the path and held it on top of the puzzle, against a window, trying to find a spot where it would give me an answer, lol.

I did the same thing, except I did it on the computer with an image of the filled in grid.

Seeing the directions in the theme words reminded me of the MGWCC Shell Game puzzle from last November. That actually made me think that moving in the indicated directions would not be the mechanism; Pete would remember that too and have something different for his puzzle. But I still had to try it with every possible starting square before I could let it go. And then it took a couple days to figure out just what the something different was.

BarbaraK wrote: ↑Mon Jul 08, 2019 9:45 pm

FrankieHeck wrote: ↑Mon Jul 08, 2019 8:56 am
Me, too! I even made a little template of the path and held it on top of the puzzle, against a window, trying to find a spot where it would give me an answer, lol.

I did the same thing, except I did it on the computer with an image of the filled in grid.

Seeing the directions in the theme words reminded me of the MGWCC Shell Game puzzle from last November. That actually made me think that moving in the indicated directions would not be the mechanism; Pete would remember that too and have something different for his puzzle. But I still had to try it with every possible starting square before I could let it go. And then it took a couple days to figure out just what the something different was.

I thought of Shell Game, too. Somehow the ones I don’t solve stay with me longer. But I also got nowhere with that concept.

Another thing that led me nowhere, but was good fun — I tried drawing a picture, going one inch in each direction in order. It sort of wound up looking like a kite, or maybe a soaring paper airplane. And there are songs those could lead to. But because it required stenciling back and forth for the last few steps (North South North South), which made no sense, I gave up on the concept. It was a pretty cool drawing though!

LesY wrote: ↑Mon Jul 08, 2019 9:55 pm

Another thing that led me nowhere, but was good fun — I tried drawing a picture, going one inch in each direction in order. It sort of wound up looking like a kite, or maybe a soaring paper airplane. And there are songs those could lead to. But because it required stenciling back and forth for the last few steps (North South North South), which made no sense, I gave up on the concept. It was a pretty cool drawing though!

I drew that picture too!