XWord Muggles Forum

Fun one, MIkeyG! Laughed out loud at the clue for 60D.

Finally got it. Nice one! Always enjoy the puns.

Well I got punished but survived long enough to Little Joe the answer (LANDON the answer for the pun weary). Fun as usual, but oh my I struggled with the grid. Enjoyable Mike!!

Oh, I remembered that I had a suitable "cold" cartoon about ice, it almost slipped my mind....

Finally got around to finishing this one. Excellent job, @MikeyG!

Me posting the explanation right after the deadline? Who am I?!?!

1. Puzzle #46 recap

Puzzle #46 answer: PENGUIN

Correct entries: 48



I believe @HeadinHome alluded to how classic this mechanism is, and it's probably one of my favorites.

The mechanism may or may not have a name but probably can be stated as, "Notice something in the grid. These somethings will give you new entries. Find the clues that also satisfy these entries. Take the initial letters of those clues."

I can't remember the first time I saw this in a MGWCC but thought it was pretty neat. I'm also trying to think of different meta-nisms, but I have a feeling that at least one more of these 500 meta puzzles I make will involve that!

Per the title, seven of the words in the grid can be preceded by COLD to get a new phrase or word:

COLD FRONT
COLD MOUNTAIN
COLD CASE
COLD SHOULDER
COLDPLAY
COLD REMEDY (a bit contrived - I don't really like to allude to sickness in my grids, but this was more about health!)
COLD CUTS

I may have changed ONE/PAN to ORE/PAR to avoid the COLD ONE confusion, which was unintentional, but a) enough people were getting it and b) you could use a COLD ONE after some of my puzzles!

The clues that fit these:

5-A: They're often sliced (COLD CUTS): PIES
7-D: British pop-rock group (COLDPLAY): ELO
28-A: CBS drama that premiered in 2003 (COLD CASE): NCIS (this was a serendipitous find!)
35-A: Oscar-winning Civil War film (COLD MOUNTAIN): GLORY (2023 Oscar nominations just announced!)
40-A: It might travel through the air (COLD FRONT): UFO
46-A: Snub (COLD SHOULDER): IGNORE (I'm very big on tenses agreeing, but "cold shoulder" can be used as a verb - even if not, "snub" can play double duty as a noun for COLD SHOULDER and a verb for IGNORE).
48-D: Type of medicine (COLD REMEDY): NYQUIL (I'm told my lectures on polynomial functions put you to sleep just as effectively).

Put them together, and you've got PENGUIN, an animal that definitely knows what it's like to give the cold shoulder!

This meta was actually inspired backward, where I had the final answer but needed to think of the mechanism that would get us there. This is from an early December discussion on the MGWCC:

woozy wrote: ↑Sun Dec 04, 2022 12:57 pm I'm going to start guessing "Penguin" as the answer to every puzzle from now on. I'll probably be wrong most times but the one time it's correct I'll beat the slowpokes in not wasting any time reading the title or the prompt.

Thanks, @woozy!

And thank YOU for solving!

Note: Meta #47 will be delayed a week until February 4, still a Saturday, still at 1 PM ET!

See you then, and have a puzzling end to your month!

Mikey G

MikeyG wrote: ↑Tue Jan 24, 2023 1:22 pm Me posting the explanation right after the deadline? Who am I?!?!



This meta was actually inspired backward, where I had the final answer but needed to think of the mechanism that would get us there. This is from an early December discussion on the MGWCC:

woozy wrote: ↑Sun Dec 04, 2022 12:57 pm I'm going to start guessing "Penguin" as the answer to every puzzle from now on. I'll probably be wrong most times but the one time it's correct I'll beat the slowpokes in not wasting any time reading the title or the prompt.

Thanks, @woozy!

And thank YOU for solving!

OMG. I totally forgot about that. And I came *nowhere* close to being first when it happened.