XWord Muggles Forum

Models by which all others are periodically measured

The answer to the meta is a number

I'm hoping this one may weaken my reputation of being gnarly. .... Oh, well...., the answer is a bit of a twist in that it's not really the "answer" but... well, you'll figure it out. I guess that counts as "gnarly".
Still it should be relatively painless. One nice thing about this is you won't need to figure out all themers to get the answer.

https://crosshare.org/crosswords/vHWQ59 ... y-measured

OK, not gnarly. Woozy's puzzles are some kind of an adventure in solving.

On the board!

This is a lot of fun! Grid is very smooth and I hardly had to look up anything -- just a little checking along the way.
I feel as though I got the trick pretty quickly and it's mostly panning out, but Crosshare's not liking what I tell it -- I imagine I'm just not translating it or the instructions quite right.
Will check with the constructor --
I can say super job on this, woozy! Even if I'm not quite there yet!

15 minutes later -
OK -- Never mind! Now I've hit the nail on the head!

Excellent puzzle (albeit with a couple of minor issues). I had to reveal the answer, but that was mostly on me!

EDIT: Okay that was a bit of an over reaction. Unfortunately this puzzle has a basic error. It's still solvable but.... well, it's in error.

I think this is the nicest woozy grid I've seen so far! Rotationally symmetric, no 2LW, and the two or three entries I might have had to look up I was able to get using the crossing lights. (Clever readers will realize I have made no such statement about the meta.)

EDIT: Upon rereading this an hour or two after posting it, I think I was too obtuse with my parenthetical, which was intended to convey that I had absolutely no clue about the metanism, unlike the grid, which I found fairly smooth sailing. No slight on the metanism was intended (since I had no clue to it at the time).

hoover wrote: ↑Tue Sep 13, 2022 11:37 pm I think this is the nicest woozy grid I've seen so far! Rotationally symmetric, no 2LW, and the two or three entries I might have had to look up I was able to get using the crossing lights. (Clever readers will realize I have made no such statement about the meta.)

Spoke too soon. I'm pulling on a starter thread that I found.

... Hey, that worked! Color me duly impressed with this construction!

Here's a fix for the puzzle.

https://crosshare.org/crosswords/yvxpaQ ... y-measured

Unfortunately I had to lose a square of rotational symmetry. But at least the meta works now. (Still use the first puzzle to submit any answers)

ARRGH VERY FRUSTRATING

I think here is finally a version that doesn't have the fatal meta-flaw, does have rotational symmetry and doesn't think that OLSO is some sort of word

https://crosshare.org/crosswords/co57aB ... y-measured

REVEAL:

The intended answer was that as the puzzle was supposed to contain the entries

6D (CARBON) COPIES
10D (NEON) LIGHTS
13D (ALUMINUM) SIDINGS
14A (SILICON) VALLEY
26A (IRON) FIST
28D WOODEN (NICKLE)
47D (SILVER) WARE
50A (TIN) EAR

which are each two word phrases involving elements where the elements name is omitted but the clue number entry is their chemical number.

As per 36A This meta's title is "Models by which all others are periodically measured" and the as per the clue for 36A the "Answer" to that is (GOLD) STANDARDS. The chemical number for gold is 79. Which is the solution.

THE SOLUTION IS 79 or SEVENTY-NINE.

UNFORTUNATELY.... somehow in finishing up my grid correction I let my lettering off by one[*] and the entries for SIDINGS and VALLEY got slid from 13D and 14A to 14D and 15 A.

I released a corrected version weds where this were corrected and 47D was replaced with (SILVER) FOX).

........

The difficult in creating this grid is the that changing a minor aspect of the grid such as adding a blank will renumber *all* the entries and if I had a requirement the number for the entry that is TONGUE must be 47 and can not be any other number same for 50 and EAR and was very hard to make corrects to a grid "oh this is too long I need a blank here". I had inch by inch gotten the grid shape 90 percent but I just couldn't get it so that 47A could be tongue. Final figured though I could get 49D to be FOX. But I didn't like that as specific enough. But I realized I could make it WARE which was prosaic and unpoetic but unambiguous. It would involve adding a square 12 but would fix itself the very next line by removing the 15 and all other numbers would seem to stay the same.

*dope-slap*