XWord Muggles Forum

Happy Wednesday! Yep, just your luck that I have the MEOW as well this week. With any luck this will be a much simpler puzzle, though of course that is what I thought about "Household Names". I will warn you that the themer answers are NOT symmetric, but the clues should pretty much make them stand out. If they do not I have a general nudge ready for Thursday. Still, I hope that you can get home from this version. As always, I will be available for PMs.

The answer to the meta is something that will be tested

Tom

Mine SWEEPER PDF

MINE SWEEPER PUZ

MINE SWEEPER spreadsheet

We can apparently post again

HOORAY

No pictures though, at least until we figure out if it was a space or a technical issue.

T

Cat's out. I really liked this one. Thanks, DrTom!

Cat is free.

Oh, forgot to post, I think the cat was freed last night.

Cat is out of the bag - nice clueing and mechanism, Dr. Tom - thank you!

OK, well we are back in business. There may be more people who solved and because of the glitch did not PM or post, but here is the count that I have officially:

1 Mme
2 Meg
3 boharr
4 johnaldape
5 dudeski
6 DowJones
7 woozy
8 Cinny
9 benchen71
10 MarkWoychick
11 Tom.Runner
12 hoover
13 MaineMarge
14 Dave C
15 CPJohnson
16 woozy

Cat is out of the bag. Such fun cluing on the meta. Nice job, Dr. Tom!

Cat's gone.
Good puzzle!

Two more people have joined the board, and cats are running free all over:

1 Mme
2 Meg
3 boharr
4 johnaldape
5 dudeski
6 DowJones
7 woozy
8 Cinny
9 benchen71
10 MarkWoychick
11 Tom.Runner
12 hoover
13 MaineMarge
14 Dave C
15 CPJohnson
16 woozy
17 edestlin
18 schmeel

DrTom wrote: ↑Tue Jul 26, 2022 10:35 pm Happy Wednesday! Yep, just your luck that I have the MEOW as well this week. With any luck this will be a much simpler puzzle, though of course that is what I thought about "Household Names". I will warn you that the themer answers are NOT symmetric, but the clues should pretty much make them stand out. If they do not I have a general nudge ready for Thursday. Still, I hope that you can get home from this version. As always, I will be available for PMs.

The answer to the meta is something that will be tested

Tom

Mine SWEEPER PDF

MINE SWEEPER PUZ

MINE SWEEPER spreadsheet

I consistently get errors trying to open the pdf and puz files on my phone. Is there a Crosshare version for which I don't need to download anything?

Still sitting on this one… any chance nudges will be offered before we roll into this week’s MEOW? I realize it’s been an odd week with the server gods frowning on our little corner of the interwebs…

Thanks for a fun puzzle!

Two more people to add to the solvers before the reveal (which probably nobody needs but hey, I made the graphic so I'll use it). With all of the craziness I never put up nudges, forgive my oversight. The last three solvers were:
19 SJMcK
20 LindaPRMaven
21 KayW

Well if my one puzzle made me a household name for the wrong reasons, Minesweeper got a LOT better reviews! I'd like to believe that it was only because of the technical glitches that it did not have HUNDREDS of solvers!

The concept was pretty straightforward. The title hinted towards mines, ores or metals, and within the grid there were masterfully hidden (OK, OK, if you are doing the write-up it is "hidden", but when I am doing it is is "masterfully hidden") 6 metals. Although the theme answers were neither symmetrical or otherwise denoted, I had included in each theme answer a pointer to what you should be looking for. Here is the GRID:
For the GOLD the clue mentioned "precious commodity"
For ZINC, "galvanized" (zinc is what they galvanize iron or steel with)
For TIN, I ruminated on this for a while but in the end thought that "whistle" would be a good pointer. I almost did "star" but that really only works if you were a fan of the old westerns.
For COPPER I threw in a double clue nudge, "often used by the police or big brass". I figured if the police/coppers thing wasn't enough then the fact that brass is a copper and zinc alloy should do it. I even toyed with "and seen in many Fan mags" to do another tie in but that was a bridge too far.
IRON was a favorite because it was certainly easy enough to put "hard" into it, but for this Avengers fan the chance to sneak in Tony Stark - Iron Man - was just too much of a perk to ignore.
Finally SILVER. I started the meta with the misconception that Tom Seaver was Tom SIEVER because I knew there was a ballplayer with that name (I lived near Detroit for a while and although Ed Siever was a little before my time, I had heard the name). At any rate it gave me a chance for a shout out to Motor City and the ability to sneak "sterling" into the clue.

I hope you enjoyed solving it as much as I enjoyed making it. I apologize for a "stinky" clue at 29D which I should have clued "Chaotic Tower". Someone pointed out to me, and they were absolutely correct, that Gibberish is BABBLE not BABEL. I'll simply say that I must have been speaking in tongues.

So once again, thank you to all who solved this, thank you for all the kind comments, and I hope to see you all again soon either here or on the MMM.

Tom

Post-reveal solver here, enjoyed this one, @DrTom! I got stuck in the Minesweeper computer game rabbit hole and could not turn tail. Chagrined I wasn’t able to get this nudge-free… in hind-sight those six clues do stand out a bit from your usual crisp and pithy clueing… should have seen there was something else going on.