Welcome to Phil's Crossword Corner (PCC)! Philip Chow (aka Phil) is an auditor at NYC Dept of Parks and Recreation who makes crossword puzzles for fun in his free time. A new meta puzzle posts every other Saturday weekend on Crosshare.
Phil’s metas will usually include immediate nudges, a great tool for new solvers. You can reach him at pchow13@gmail.com
Finally getting around to posting my old puzzles here on this forum.
Please see below for PCC#16 - "Hunter x Hunter" originally posted on Crosshare 11/20/23
[Level 3] Meta prompt: The answer to the meta is what you might exclaim after solving a meta
[NOTE: Level 5 for most solvers... miscalculated this one whoops ]
Note: the level is the intended difficulty I had in mind when I designed the puzzle, but may play differently since every solver has their own area of expertise... what one person may find easy, another may find difficult.
Have fun and keep in mind if you're ever lost at sea, google is your best friend (actually, I don't know if you'd get internet service in the middle of the ocean)
-Phil
NOTE: The PDF and Crosshare version has emojis which the PUZ file does not support. If you're using the PUZ file to solve please refer to PDF or the image file below to take note of the emojis as they are part of the puzzle!
Nudges below:
Hint #1: Ten entries have emojis
Hint #2: The central Across entry 40-Across is important. Note that the title is an example of one
Hint #3: Combine the nudges from 21-Across and 38-Down
Hint #4: You will need to alphabetize the anime titles, not the individual grid entries themselves, for example: "Cowboy Bebop" comes before "Fullmetal Alchemist"
Hint #5: The first words (not first letters) of the relevant clues in anime title order will ask you a question
Solution below - SPOILER ALERT:
Answer explanation: Answer explanation: The theme of the puzzle is ANIME and you had to find anime titles and put them in ABC order (as hinted by 21A): "COWBOY BEBOP, FULLMETAL ALCHEMIST, MYHERO ACADEMIA, NARUTO, NOGAME NOLIFE, ONEPIECE"... Reading the first word (not letter as hinted by 38D) from these entries gives us "What's the US version of the series Detective Conan called?"... The anime "Detective Conan" is known as "Case Closed" in the US... and so the meta answer is "Case Closed!"
Constructor notes: I've been wanting to do an anime puzzle for a while and my initial version of this puzzle did not include emojis... you had to hunt for the anime titles themselves (hence the word "hunter" in the puzzle's title... note that "Hunter x Hunter" is an example of another anime)... however, I figured that would be extremely unfair and not fun for anyone not familiar with this subject and I didn't want you to have to google every single entry in the puzzle or scour long lists of anime online... the additional comments on the clues for EUREKA and SIETE are due to this earlier version... I did not know about the anime "Eureka Seven" when I initially designed the puzzle, so added the additional notes to safeguard against this... There is another anime called "The Seven Deadly Sins" so wanted to discount the SIETE since it references deadly sins in the clue
"Detective Conan" is my favorite anime to watch and I highly recommend it if you like mysteries. "No Game No Life" is a close second I was really sad when they discontinued it after two seasons.
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