Nudges, in order of increasing blatancy:
1. There is a hint in 70 A: Sound heard in the poem as you stand on the shore looking at your treasure map for the "X location" = SURF.
2. The reference to the poem will only make sense after solving. If the grid is your treasure map, and there are no Xs in the grid, how might you form one?
3. The grid diagonals form an X.
4. Unless you are a big E.A.P. fan, you will probably need to use Google to identify the name of the poem.
"Treasure Map" by benchen71
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benchen71
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Nudges, in order of increasing blatancy:
1.
2.
3.
4.
1.
2.
3.
4.
Check out "The MOAT MEOW Mashup Pack" here. US$10 for 14 metas that don't always abide by the "rules" of the game: asymmetry, 2-letter words, uncrossed letters, who knows. And this time there's a mega-meta! 
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ajk
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OK, got there with nudge 2, don't think I'd have seen it in a million years (just because it plays on a weakness). Ironically, though, I did try the opposite of the correct path. 
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KayW
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Nudged across the MOAT. 
I was so far off-base on this one...
Impressive construction, Ben. Thanks!
Contest Crosswords Combating Cancer (CCCC) is a bundle of 16 metapuzzles created to help raise money for cancer-related charities. It is available at CrosswordsForCancer.com.
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benchen71
- Posts: 2497
- Joined: Thu Jul 22, 2021 8:50 pm
- Location: Melbourne, Australia
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An update for you:
DCBilly
ajk
Laura M
Jaclyn
KayW
BMW
Salty
Johnny Luau
Tom Wilson
We're up to 47 now. Final update before the answer reveal Monday morning, Australia time.
DCBilly
ajk
Laura M
Jaclyn
KayW
BMW
Salty
Johnny Luau
Tom Wilson
We're up to 47 now. Final update before the answer reveal Monday morning, Australia time.
Check out "The MOAT MEOW Mashup Pack" here. US$10 for 14 metas that don't always abide by the "rules" of the game: asymmetry, 2-letter words, uncrossed letters, who knows. And this time there's a mega-meta!
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benchen71
- Posts: 2497
- Joined: Thu Jul 22, 2021 8:50 pm
- Location: Melbourne, Australia
- Contact:
Three more solvers, bringing us to a nice round 50:
CPJohnson
Spid4567
Mr Tex
CPJohnson
Spid4567
Mr Tex
Check out "The MOAT MEOW Mashup Pack" here. US$10 for 14 metas that don't always abide by the "rules" of the game: asymmetry, 2-letter words, uncrossed letters, who knows. And this time there's a mega-meta!
-
benchen71
- Posts: 2497
- Joined: Thu Jul 22, 2021 8:50 pm
- Location: Melbourne, Australia
- Contact:
Here's the solution to "Treasure Map":
My thanks to @Abide for assistance with the title for this puzzle. I originally called this puzzle "Cross-Purposes" (after considering and rejecting "Nested Messages"). Peter suggested "Treasure Map" and incorporating a hint in the clue for SURF.
This was an extremely difficult puzzle to clue. I first came up with the crossing message (the two halfs of which share a middle letter). Then I identified a poem fragment that was exactly 78 letters long. That was hard enough; but then the trickiest part was cluing everything to be 1) gettable, 2) not obviously strange (did I manage to do this?), while 3) incorporating a specific character to be the last character. I was not ashamed to use the clue bank on Crosshare: if I found a clue that already had the correct final letter, I used it as is or tweaked it slightly. If not, it was a combination of thesaurus / onelook.com / Google, and quite a bit of artistic licence! Some of the longer clues might have struck you as strange: for example, why quote Joan Jett and then mention her MTV special? But I loved it when it fitted perfectly: like, 35 D "Kind of camera (abbr.)" and 22 A "Surname of 26 A". All in all, I enjoyed constructing this one; hope you enjoyed the solving process!
My thanks to @Abide for assistance with the title for this puzzle. I originally called this puzzle "Cross-Purposes" (after considering and rejecting "Nested Messages"). Peter suggested "Treasure Map" and incorporating a hint in the clue for SURF.
This was an extremely difficult puzzle to clue. I first came up with the crossing message (the two halfs of which share a middle letter). Then I identified a poem fragment that was exactly 78 letters long. That was hard enough; but then the trickiest part was cluing everything to be 1) gettable, 2) not obviously strange (did I manage to do this?), while 3) incorporating a specific character to be the last character. I was not ashamed to use the clue bank on Crosshare: if I found a clue that already had the correct final letter, I used it as is or tweaked it slightly. If not, it was a combination of thesaurus / onelook.com / Google, and quite a bit of artistic licence! Some of the longer clues might have struck you as strange: for example, why quote Joan Jett and then mention her MTV special? But I loved it when it fitted perfectly: like, 35 D "Kind of camera (abbr.)" and 22 A "Surname of 26 A". All in all, I enjoyed constructing this one; hope you enjoyed the solving process!
Check out "The MOAT MEOW Mashup Pack" here. US$10 for 14 metas that don't always abide by the "rules" of the game: asymmetry, 2-letter words, uncrossed letters, who knows. And this time there's a mega-meta!