XWord Muggles Forum

Shameless self-promotion, haha. This was the third meta I created back in...late '20 or early '21:



(You should figure out the answer pretty easily from the highlights!)

When I got to SLEIGHING, I thought, "Okay, three consecutive letters" - and then I saw CRABCAKES, and I was like, "Oh, I think I used that before." It still took me another 10 minutes or so before I realized, "Oh, this also is phone-related."

I was thinking letters next to the three consecutive, reversing the three consecutive, etc. The fact that there were five combinations and, with the phone link, that got me to ZIP codes after that.

The answer (I'll still play coy even though it's past the deadline) wasn't exactly one that I've seen a lot in crosswords, though the letter combination makes sense. When I think of common crossword cities, I gravitate toward AMES, ORONO, UTICA, and the like. So that (plus the multiple ZIP codes for the city in question) still gave me a trickle of uncertainty, but I still took a tiny chance and got the beam.

@Andrew Bradburn makes an interesting comment earlier on click and even prompt to some extent. If the answer to a meta is, say, PARIS, you obviously have to gravitate somewhere between "The answer to the meta is the capital of France" and, to a lesser extent, "The answer to the meta is a capitalized word."

In my hypothetical PARIS example, I might have to see the puzzle in question to see how I would gauge the prompt. I notice that occasionally on Jeopardy!, little qualifiers like "4-letter" or "2-word" will be in a clue, perhaps to solidify a click that the answer they want is the answer they're looking for.

It was like the other day in Jeopardy!, the final Jeopardy! was "The Wild West." So I wagered very little, and then the answer tends to be pretty adjacent to presidential trivia. So I'm like, "Well, if the category were 'Presidential Journals,' I might have wagered more!"

I'm just waffling now. Another fun puzzle from the Gaffney, and I'm on vacation for Week 4, so I'll already start getting prepared! Hope we're having a good holiday season so far!

Mikey G

I saw the phone keypad connection but was fixated on phone numbers. I looked at the missing numbers 579, area code for Quebec...so close.

I have a friend who lives in Toledo. If I had paid closer attention when addressing holiday cards I might've seen it (Edit: he's in 43620, so wouldn't have helped, oh well!).

Two-way, so if you look at the board one way, I'm last, but if you look at it the other way, I'm first.
Anyway, I needed a nudge that was more like what Jalen Hurts gets on the quarterback sneak. If I were being ethical, I wouldn't have submitted at all, but I didn't want my streak of 2 to be reset to zero.

That's an exceptional reveal, Tamara @BrennerTJ.

Beautiful. Concise. Fully descriptive.

Did anyone else get sucked down the rabbit-hole that each of the 5 main grid entries has a long "A" sound?* The fact that the puzzle title also had a long "A" sound "sealed the deal" for me, further pushing me away from the true path. It took me until yesterday afternoon to clear my head, start from scratch, and find the right answer.

Still, I have to admit it was a very clever puzzle. Nice one, Matt!

* Well, Wikipedia tells me that José Altuve doesn't technically have a long "A" sound -- more of the "eh" sound (like "meh")? I know almost no Spanish, so I'm not sure.

Here's my chance to put in a plug for "Toledo," a wonderful song by Burt Bacharach and Elvis Costello. Actually their whole album, "Painted From Memory," is pretty amazing.

"Did anyone else get sucked down the rabbit-hole that...."

My question: Did anyone else glide across the tiniest indentation and just enter the first city they could think of that had three consecutive letters in it (mine was Barstow-- which I think I have seen crosswords more frequently than I've seen Toledo) and shrug "Meh, doesn't seem deep enough but it's not like my streak is worth saving and I've got christmas prep this weekend"?