XWord Muggles Forum

Hello, solvers! There's a new contest crossword on Fill Me In. I think this one was nearly impossible in its early drafts, but we hope it got easier with a few edits and hints. I'll rate it 3.4 bananas on a scale of 5 bananas. (Bananas has nothing to do with the puzzle, it's just a 1-to-5 scale we made up.)

The puzzle is called "Follow the Directions." The solution to the puzzle is an anagram of an entry in the grid.

The crossword can be downloaded from here. You're welcome to solve, you're even welcome to join in the chatter about the puzzle -- but if you want to be eligible for a prize, you have to listen to the podcast for this week's password. The podcast can be found here (via Apple Podcasts), or just search for it wherever you enjoy podcasts.

Thanks for joining us on this relatively new adventure of contest crosswords. Feel free to contact me at brian@bemoresmarter.com if you have any suggestions, questions, comments, or ideas.

I submitted my guess. Fun one!

I have an answer. I have to listen to the podcast for the password.

Beth Tyrpin wrote: ↑Tue May 05, 2020 3:36 pm I have an answer. I have to listen to the podcast for the password.

Confession time: I have never listened to any of the podcast that comes after the password. But I do listen to most of what comes before. My strategy has been to load up the puzzle and listen to the podcast as I work on it.

FrankieHeck wrote: ↑Tue May 05, 2020 3:47 pm Confession time: I have never listened to any of the podcast that comes after the password.

But hey! There's never much podcast left after that, right? Plus by then I've usually filled in the grid and I'm eager to get to solving...

I like to think I make up for it by watching you guys solve cryptics every Wednesday

Fun one, indeed! Thanks, Brian.

Excellent puzzle, Brian! Enjoyed the Robyn Weintraub interview and need to check out the Wednesday cryptic solves.

LesY wrote: ↑Wed May 06, 2020 7:35 am Excellent puzzle, Brian! Enjoyed the Robyn Weintraub interview and need to check out the Wednesday cryptic solves.

I've learned a lot from their cryptic solves! I think it's 7:30 pm (East Coast time) on Wednesdays on Twitch, and I think the channel is called nextdoorcomics.

Aha. Well played.

I love Brian's musical theater references, and this one hit home for me twice. 42D is a word I've only ever heard said aloud in a song from Camelot, which was the show I was doing at the beginning of March, right before the world shut down. And then 31D is from the show that I would have been doing at the end of this month.

Both of the shows were at small local high schools that don't have enough student musicians to fill their pit orchestras so they ask some community musicians to come play with them. And these are my husband's and my favorite gigs; we've been playing with these two schools for several years and love working with the kids and the great shows the directors always choose.

This is also about as far from what Brian does, playing piano for pit orchestras on Broadway, as a word find is from a week 5 meta. He's my 39D which I guess makes me one of his crazed 2Ds.

As for the meta, I was a bit leery when I saw that the prompt. Anagrams are not my favorite thing - to put it mildly. But fortunately, this was within the realm of even my very limited anagramming ability.

Ashore. Nice one!

I'm glad you enjoy the Musical Theater stuff ... it is my regular bread-and-butter career, so it's hard to resist when the opportunities come up. I also learned 42D from Camelot (which I first did at age 12, and that word has stuck with me). I'm glad you do shows as well. Community theater is awesome. That's where I got my start as a show pianist. Age 13, production of ANNIE in Maine. First paying gig as a pianist.

Thanks for doing the puzzles, too! I'm glad you're enjoying them!

Will a link to the solution be poster here? Thank you/

boharr wrote: ↑Sun May 10, 2020 10:53 am Will a link to the solution be poster here? Thank you/

Brian has been posting the solution here after the deadline and after it is announced on the podcast. These contests run two weeks, so the deadline is not til next Sunday (the 18th) and the official answer will probably be posted on the 20th.

Well I just have to say how much I like your METAs. particularly when you have to jam in a clue and will make an apologetic, and funny, remark about it. I also delight in them because I am often able to GET them. I don't listen to the podcasts because I am jut not a podcast person, don't know why because I'll listen to a lecture, a sermon, a tale of woe but podcasts always find me checking the timer bar to see how much is left. I know, I know I'm an oddball, but you get no score for pointing out the obvious!

At any rate I enjoy them even if you did leave out FEE, FOO and FUM!

boharr wrote: ↑Wed May 20, 2020 7:51 pm Is there a solution to 242?

The answer is TACO.

The instructional down answers describe the preparation of the ingredients, which are hidden anagrammed in the long across entries.
SHRED the CHEESE
GRIND the BEEF
DICE the ONION
CHOP the TOMATO

The three *ed clues at the bottom hide the TORTILLA

This makes a taco, which is an anagram of 18A COAT.

Boy, I could not have been further off if I tried! I did not interpret the directions to mean that “what you had to do to a part of a crossing entry” also meant that the part was an anagram as well. So, I had the SHRED GRIND DICE CHOP, and almost every one crossed an entry that had something I could do with the action term, so:
SHRED SHEET
GRIND COFFEE
DICE DILL
CHOP ??

Ah but it says the contest answer is an anagram of an entry in the grid, and to complete my ACTION – OBJECT foursome I see that the crossing entry contains an ANAGRAM of TOMATO. That was my answer at least. I should have caught on that it was WAY too simple to be the right mechanism.

I never looked for an anagram in the other crossing entries (my bad), but even if I had I am not sure I would have seen the last big clue, the TOR TIL LA because I didn’t see anything that would refer to that, it wasn’t an ACTION/OBJECT PAIR. Congratulations to all who got this.

Oh wow! I didn't see TORTILLA - that makes this one even more awesome!

DrTom wrote: ↑Thu May 21, 2020 11:20 am Follow Directions.jpg
Boy, I could not have been further off if I tried! I did not interpret the directions to mean that “what you had to do to a part of a crossing entry” also meant that the part was an anagram as well. So, I had the SHRED GRIND DICE CHOP, and almost every one crossed an entry that had something I could do with the action term, so:
SHRED SHEET
GRIND COFFEE
DICE DILL
CHOP ??

Ah but it says the contest answer is an anagram of an entry in the grid, and to complete my ACTION – OBJECT foursome I see that the crossing entry contains an ANAGRAM of TOMATO. That was my answer at least. I should have caught on that it was WAY too simple to be the right mechanism.

I never looked for an anagram in the other crossing entries (my bad), but even if I had I am not sure I would have seen the last big clue, the TOR TIL LA because I didn’t see anything that would refer to that, it wasn’t an ACTION/OBJECT PAIR. Congratulations to all who got this.

That grind/coffee was a nasty little red herring. And I looked at shred/sheet too.

The tortilla was the last piece I found. With the 4 ingredients, I thought of taco, and when I saw coat in the grid I felt pretty confident. But I held off submitting because those three starred clues at the bottom had to mean something. I had their answers written in a column, and they weren’t telling me anything that way. It wasn’t til I went back and highlighted them in the grid that I saw what they were hiding.