XWord Muggles Forum

MGWCC #703 — Saturday, November 20th, 2021 — “Deciphering Contest”

THIS WEEK’S INSTRUCTIONS:

Happy T. Hanks-Giving, everyone! This week’s contest answer is three Tom Hanks movies whose titles total 23 letters.

NOTE: Due to the late post, the deadline for entering this week’s contest is Wednesday, November 24th at noon ET.

Solve well, and be not led astray by words intended to deceive.


Join MGWCC.


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Joe Ross: NOTE for those who are newer to this site or who wish to try: I PM a link to the Excel form for MGWCContests to subscribers. If you wish to be included in the PM's BCC: list, please PM me & give me your MGWCC posting name, if different than your muggle name.

Argh! So close... I just have one question that keeps me from submitting.

this was not a movie but, appropriately, Tom Hanks was on one show of The Love Boat in 1980

Be careful. I got the mechanism, extracted the key hint, but apparently misinterpreted the final step.
My answer was deemed incorrect. Bummer.

I guess my failure to view all 81 Tom Hanks movies hurt me here.

I believe I have it but am afraid to submit … what to do.. what to do…

Oh what the heck… it’s just a silly crossword contest record at stake. I’ve submitted. We shall see.

Edit: big fail. That’ll teach me to have guts and live large. Better to cower in the corner and wait for others to stick their necks out first, apparently. See sad post below.

I’m 99% sure I have it but am trying to be certain before submitting.

markhr wrote: ↑Sat Nov 20, 2021 3:31 pm Be careful. I got the mechanism, extracted the key hint, but apparently misinterpreted the final step.
My answer was deemed incorrect. Bummer.

I guess my failure to view all 81 Tom Hanks movies hurt me here.

DOH! Welp, I submitted what I felt like was an elegant and witty answer, and it does not pass muster apparently. So much for the streak.

HOWEVER, I wonder if maybe he will accept this answer if enough people submit it, since it does work so perfectly! (Assembling protest poster materials…)

Don't have time to do the puzzle but just want to say the theme is really clever.

I have three Tom Hanks movie titles that seem to pay off on what I’ve found from the puzzle. But I’m holding off on submitting too. Must think about this. I very well might be missing something …

UPDATE: Oh, what the heck, I’ll go for it. Who cares about the streak, right?

UPDATE UPDATE: Kee-rect! Phew! That was suspenseful!

I'm 100% on his WSJ puzzle this week, but this one has me lost in space. I really hope that his Polar Express isn't part of this.

MajordomoTom wrote: ↑Sat Nov 20, 2021 6:59 pm I'm 100% on his WSJ puzzle this week, but this one has me lost in space. I really hope that his Polar Express isn't part of this.

You have to "Believe."

Also 100% on the WSJ meta, but I can’t even figure out how to get started on this one yet.

I got the right answer by following an incorrect path to two of the movies, I now have learned. The correct path -- very hard to see IMO -- will yield that satisfying click.

I'm always amazed at the way Matt sees the world, like just the idea of noting the week and coming up with a T. Hanks-Giving puzzle, never mind the actual mechanism which is amazing.

I figured out what was going on and got three movies. But I noticed on the leaderboard that almost 20% of submissions were wrong, including some from very good solvers. So what if my answer is in the 20%, not the 80%. Decided to sleep on it. But after looking through the movie list again today, I've just gone ahead and submitted. Fingers crossed, awaiting leaderboard update.

BarbaraK wrote: ↑Sun Nov 21, 2021 6:35 pm I figured out what was going on and got three movies. But I noticed on the leaderboard that almost 20% of submissions were wrong, including some from very good solvers. So what if my answer is in the 20%, not the 80%. Decided to sleep on it. But after looking through the movie list again today, I've just gone ahead and submitted. Fingers crossed, awaiting leaderboard update.

I see that @BarbaraK succeeded at # 46 on the leaderboard, congratulations! I went through a similar period of maybe thinking that I had a solution, then sleeping on it, then throwing caution to the winds and submitting, and I also succeeded, at #49.

Toby wrote: ↑Sun Nov 21, 2021 10:56 am I got the right answer by following an incorrect path to two of the movies, I now have learned. The correct path -- very hard to see IMO -- will yield that satisfying click.

With all due respect to @Toby, I slept on my answer precisely because I did not feel a satisfying click. That lack of click is what made me doubt myself. After a while I convinced myself that my answer had to be right and so submitted, but I've been in that position before and submitted the wrong answer, so I have a lot of sympathy for those who submitted wrong answers. The short leaderboard and lack of postings suggest that this one is a lot harder than Matt intended.

Beamed up with some help from a kind fellow muggle. I'm not sure I would have gotten all of them correctly if not for the assist - I'll say I nearly made the same guess as some of the others who fell just short and would argue there's a real case to be made there.

With much help, I made it to the ship. I don't show up on the manifest yet, but it's confirmed. I still have questions, though...

Solved with some help from a fellow muggle. I needed to be steered back onto the correct path. All makes sense now.

HeadinHome wrote: ↑Sat Nov 20, 2021 4:41 pm HOWEVER, I wonder if maybe he will accept this answer if enough people submit it, since it does work so perfectly! (Assembling protest poster materials…)

Would offer to contribute to the cause, but that would require having the first clue about how to assemble even an incorrect answer.

I can think of an easy way to assemble an odds on incorrect answer. There are several ways to combine the titles of three Tom Hanks films to amount to 23 total letters. Not a ton, but several. It is worrisome to hear that many who got this right still weren't sure about their three answers before submitting, and had to sleep on it. I guess anytime Matt is looking for THREE things in the solution, the chances of one of them being wrong is much higher than if he were just looking for one.

Have tried a whole bunch of things to decipher this puzzle, but nothing so far. I may end up just submitting one of my 23 letter sols and see if I can win the T-Hanks-giving lottery.