MEOW #56 Word Association

[HeadinHome]

Going to have to wait for some nudges on the meta, but I agree the grid was tough. Love the sheer audacity of 13D.

[whimsy]

Confirmed by the good doctor in his oh, so droll fashion.
Out of the word box -

[ChrisKochmanski]

The cat is free — and thinking, “Wow, I haven’t thought of that song for a looooooong time!” (Old cat.)

Good one! Thanks, Dr. Tom!

[Cinny]

Cat has escaped.

[Joe Ross]

[KayW]

These cool cats are out of the bag, man, and digging the 60s music...

Fun puzzle - thanks, Dr Tom!

[Anita]

The feline is debagged. I liked how one ambiguous element turned out not to matter! Fun puzzle.

[DrTom]

A few more cat fanciers dribbling in, no doubt everyone is consumed with the WSJCC (which I have yet to catch on to) and the MGWCC (the "solve on Christmas" part which was just made harder!):

13 Woozy
14 Abide
15 MarkWoychick
16 Whinsy
17 ChrisKochmanski
18 Cinny
19 Joe Ross
20 KayW
21 Anita

[rjy]

Needed the bag loosened a bit from the outside for this cat to escape. Fun puzzle @DrTom, always enjoy your clueing too!

[DrTom]

Well three more solvers, two who must have been waiting up for Santa and one who got the answer as a Christmas present (and I am assured this was while flying with his wife - who helped solve - so he did not get the "lump of coal" look from his significant other).

22 Hammertime
23 runart
24 rjy

[DrTom]

Were you looking for me?

Christmas Nudges

Hopefully a Christmas present you’ll really appreciate!

The title “Word Association”, for one thing, tries to move you towards associating something with the theme answer word or words

I suppose you could associate any number of things, but for this I want you to associate only a number

BIG So, If one of the theme clues had been “Why did the pair of robbers say they knocked over the bank?” and the answer had been “FOR THE MONEY”, you would probably immediately think of 2 FOR THE MONEY. Or if the clue had been “A week's worth of the absolute worst things” and the answer had been DEADLY SINS you would think of 7 DEADLY SINS. That is what you have to do to solve the puzzle.

Merry Christmas Muggles!

[Ergcat]

We Think the cats out of the bag…. With help from nudges aka Christmas gifts! Fun meta to do on Christmas Day with my daughter ( Regfish7)!

[Bird Lives]

The cat peeped out of the bag on first glancing at the title and prompt. Right church, wrong bag. It took much nudging to achieve full feline freedom.

[CPJohnson]

Got it....needed the nudges. Thanks, DrTom!

[SewYoung]

Cat may be out of the bag. Awaiting confirmation.

[SewYoung]

Cat may be out of the bag. Awaiting confirmation.

Confirmed

[DrTom]

Well all you intrepid cat releasers, 29 of you freed Mittens, and he is eternally grateful (purring like the little machine he is!).

The last rush to release had these unbaggers:
25 Bird Lives
26 Ergcat
27 CPJohnson
28 Sewyoung
29 bhamren

So, on to the reveal for those who are interested.

[DrTom]

The title of the Meta gives you a hint towards the mechanism and the answer!

Word Association usually is taken to mean something that you say when I say something else, so SALT/PEPPER, NIGHT/DAY. But it can also mean something you associate with a word and for meta solvers what better than a number! All the starred theme answers have a number that is commonly associated with them. So, STATES, HOURS, etc



As we have all learned from doing this, when you get a number, you are supposed to pick that square to get a letter, and you can see from the above that if you do that you get WINDY, a well-known song (as the song says "everyone knows its Windy") from the 60's.

There was even another "nudge" in the title as mentioned because WINDY was performed by The Association, as a matter of fact it was one of their biggest hits, making #1 on three different charts.

I will apologize for THREE TIME LOSER - apparently that is not as common a term as I thought. It is so in my parlance, perhaps a generational thing, that it never occurred to me that it would be many folks' sticking point and one many found only with a backsolve. I tried to clue it to give a hint since the clue says a "clock that loses 10 seconds every 8 hours" - essentially a three-time (a day) loser.

Thanks to all who gave it a shot!

[Laura M]

I will apologize for THREE TIME LOSER - apparently that is not as common a term as I thought. It is so in my parlance, perhaps a generational thing, that it never occurred to me that it would be many folks' sticking point and one many found only with a backsolve. I tried to clue it to give a hint since the clue says a "clock that loses 10 seconds every 8 hours" - essentially a three time (a day) loser.

Ha! I was unfamiliar with the phrase, but guessed at TWO-TIME LOSER (and Google backed me up to some extent) which just happened to work also! The 3x/day clue went right over my head :-)

[whimsy]

I fumbled a little with LOSER, decided on a Two-Time version and got the correct answer anyway.
Sometimes close enough works good enough!

Edit a minute later -
(I see we're attuned today, Laura!)