"Math Ed" by benchen71

[benchen71]

Nudges are imminent, but here are the additions to the solvers list first:


C64
ReB
Pandora's Blocks Weekly Meta Crossword
bereolos
Jeremy Smith
Qmark
dplass

bringing us to 29. Let's see if the nudges can add a few more...

[benchen71]

Nudges, in order of increasing blatancy:

1. Given the puzzle title, and the fact that we are looking for a song title, 44 down is clearly important.

2. There are also a few clues that cross-reference one another. This is intentional.

3. These four clues together make a shape.

4. 7 down, 38 and 40 across can be read as instructions (with "to").

5. Clue numbers are involved. You will also almost certainly need Google (unless you are a huge 44 down fan!)

[whimsy]

Thanks for # 4, Ben. It allowed me to salvage something from my past week of flubbing!

[KayW]

(with nudge #4) Thanks Ben! Happy Muggleversary and many many more

[Dow Jones]

Nudged across the moat. Impressive meta, Ben. You have a real gift (crosswords and metas). Thanks for sharing it with us.

[woozy]

Okay.... I figured all of those nudges on Tues. but couldn't get anywhere with them.

Still can't. (I was even going to make a Lagrange joke but figured that might be giving too much away if that actually was the mechanism)

Oh... wait... the was a single word in nudge 4 that I hadn't considered.... Oh! Would you look at that! It's spells... Something that isn't anything to do with his songs...... Oh wait.... is ?

[MikeyG]

This is probably not a thing, but I call myself "half-nudged" if I look at nudges slowly and don't reveal anything new but rather if they use some self-confirmation. That's what nudges 1 through 4 did, and I think I've made at least 6 guesses, haha. We'll see what my near-future holds!

[CromsFury]

Castle Stormed!

[benchen71]

Monday morning here in Australia, and it's time for the answer reveal. But first, a solver update:

hashbrown
whimsy
Ergcat
molly dunkum
Spid4567
CromsFury

Total: 35

[Abide]

Did not pick up on Nudge 3.
Even cooler!

[benchen71]

Here's the solution to "Math Ed":

This was a fun puzzle to construct. Getting the letters of TRACK SIX into the grid in addition to the theme answers and hints was definitely challenging.

[MikeyG]

Tried so hard on this one to add four random perfect squares together but never thought to add 4 to the squares. Clever - and definitely seemed like that'd be a tight construction! Nicely done!

[woozy]

Tried so hard on this one to add four random perfect squares together but never thought to add 4 to the squares. Clever - and definitely seemed like that'd be a tight construction! Nicely done!

Me too!

But as a math teacher you are probably aware of the sum of 4 squares conjecture that *every* number is the sum of 4 squares... which I have to admit throw me for a loop... "So.... *any* number then?"

(Of course the sum of four squares allows 0 = 0 squared to be one of the squares....)

[HeadinHome]

Man am I awful at math.. or more to the point, CARELESS at arithmetics. I thought of using all the perfect squares in the puzzle and adding 4 well before any nudges came out, but I neglected to do the #1 (jumped right to 4), and I erroneously circled 56 as the perfect square after 49 (so its +4 was 60, an N). This gave me RACKS IN… which google says is a song by some artist called Juice WRLD… so you can imagine my indignant snort when RACKS IN was not accepted.

If I’m ever on a team of code breakers with any of you people, I may be quite helpful in lateral thinking and conceptual acuity, but someone gotta check my math. Every. Time.

[lbray53]

I was on vacation so I just got to this today. I had to go to Nudge #4, and frankly, due to the backlog of metas that I have, I went to those fairly quickly.

I was at least able to solve and did not realize that the solution had been published until I scrolled down.

So, I crossed the MOAT and walked into the castle because the gate had already been crashed by those who preceded me. I was onto the PERFECT SQUARES but did not figure out to ADD FOUR until I saw the hints.