XWord Muggles Forum

By Jove, Ben finally woke up, smelled the coffee, and wrote I had indeed gotten the meta this morning!
So I’ve let Lewis the cat out of the bag, and he is now getting a long overdue drink of nice cold water. Finally!!!

The cat I'm sure was as glad to get out of the bag quickly as I was...

Cat's out of the bag...nice one, Ben!

OOOF - that was a big, twisty bag but she’s out and proud of herself! Fun challenge… and we challenge you back: finish that thesis! ( :

Kitty has left the building, uuh bag. Nice one that I fortunately saw pretty clearly, otherwise I would still be looking by WSJ puzzle time. Thanks Ben for a very Black and White answer!

Out the ba_g. Feel like I was tied up in a Dave Matthews band song, but finally figured out the space between.

We're nearly at the 24 hour mark. Here's who has successfully got that pesky cat out of the bag:

Hector
Dow Jones
SeamusOL
DIS
MaineMarge
Meg
boharr
Pair O Ducks
whimsy
woozy
heidi
ajk
Cindy Heisler
markhr
Laura M
BarbaraK
rjy
hoover
PuzNewbie
DrTom
ChrisKochmanski
KayW
Mwoychick
ReB
Adam Simon Levine
Qmark
HeadinHome
Berto

28 to get us going!

Cat's gone.
It took me some time to see it. Solved the grid on my lunchbreak yesterday (and 58A?). Solved the meta on today's. (Oh, 58A!)
Thanks for the puzzle!

@MaineMarge Helped the cat and me get out of the bag. I got step 1 easily yesterday but was too hot to think and needed expert help.

Awaiting confirmation

Cat has been loosed, but I needed a nudge (or two), to get me there. Very clever one, Ben!

Benchen71 is "betchin'" (old S. Cal term for totally rad/cool) and while I'm not good at metas, I like Ben's puzzles -- as I do all of the Muggles -- but when I took a look at this grid I almost pashed on it...

dsbened wrote: ↑Thu Jul 13, 2023 5:57 pm Benchen71 is "betchin'" (old S. Cal term for totally rad/cool) and while I'm not good at metas, I like Ben's puzzles -- as I do all of the Muggles -- but when I took a look at this grid I almost pashed on it...

Glad you liked it. @madhatter5 is known for doing fun things with grids, so I tried my best to emulate something he might have come up with for this puzzle!

8 more solvers!

Schmeel
boharr
CPJohnson
Alex Sisti
Bob cruise director
MatthewL
merlinnimue
Abide

That's 36. And it looks like I forgot to post nudges this morning, so here they are now...

Nudges, in order of increasing blatancy:

1. You might have noticed that the answers to some clues don't seem to fit into the grid. Hey, those clues all occur in the mini-grids containing a black square!

2. You'll need to put letters onto those black squares. (If you're solving on Crosshare you'll have to do it in your head!)

3. Did you notice that the letter in the black square can be ignored and the resulting 3-letters are still words?

4. Find a white square in the mini-grids without a black square that can be similarly ignored.

Ah, indeed the nudge 3/4 nuance is what I missed. Very nice.

Solver updated for you:

LindaPRmaven
JM
Tyrpmom
Flora Wynn
Carolyn
Darrell

We're up to 42. One last update before the answer reveal tomorrow morning...

Just two more solvers bringing us up to 44:

Mr Tex
Johnny Luau

Answer reveal momentarily...

Here's the solution to "Black And White":


I really tried to channel my inner @madhatter5 with this one.

That's very clever.

benchen71 wrote: ↑Thu Jul 13, 2023 6:50 pm

dsbened wrote: ↑Thu Jul 13, 2023 5:57 pm Benchen71 is "betchin'" (old S. Cal term for totally rad/cool) and while I'm not good at metas, I like Ben's puzzles -- as I do all of the Muggles -- but when I took a look at this grid I almost "pashed" on it...

Glad you liked it. @madhatter5 is known for doing fun things with grids, so I tried my best to emulate something he might have come up with for this puzzle!

But I don't understand 58A's clue: "An Eastender 58 across with these", and the answer is "Ears". Is that a typo in the PDF?