Page 2 of 2
Re: "Treasure Map" by benchen71
Posted: Thu May 02, 2024 11:52 am
by ajk
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.
Re: "Treasure Map" by benchen71
Posted: Thu May 02, 2024 5:33 pm
by KayW
Nudged across the MOAT.
I was so far off-base on this one...
Impressive construction, Ben. Thanks!
Re: "Treasure Map" by benchen71
Posted: Sat May 04, 2024 12:51 am
by benchen71
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.
Re: "Treasure Map" by benchen71
Posted: Sun May 05, 2024 6:41 pm
by benchen71
Three more solvers, bringing us to a nice round 50:
CPJohnson
Spid4567
Mr Tex
Re: "Treasure Map" by benchen71
Posted: Sun May 05, 2024 6:44 pm
by benchen71
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!