I know this looks like a Benchen71 take-over. But don't worry: MEOW programming from other contributors will continue next week! ;-) Until then... I remember as a child enjoying those "spot the difference" cartoons that would appear on the comics and crossword pages of some newspapers. This meta is the exact opposite of those cartoons. The answer to the meta is an 8-letter word. Answer & explanation: https://www.xword-muggles.com/viewtopic.php?p=145609#p145609
Check out "The MOAT Mini Pack of Marching Bands" here: https://www.ephesusscroll.com/about/interest4.html. US$5 gets you 7 Marching Bands which, hard enough on their own, now contain metas too. And once again there's a mega-meta!
Cute. A pretty easy one I got when I was 7/18th of the way through the grid. Which is a lot different than Saturdays Pun of a Kind or this weeks MOAT which I'm still pondering but feel a vague sense of ... something.
I was a little worried there could be some ambiguity of direction but the third letter confirmed I was on a consistent path
Hector 2s · 2023-10-19T03:30:02.474Z
Not a constructor, but these eemed like clean little grids given the constraint that they have to agree pair-wise in one letter and no others
I knew what I had to do, just not how to do it. I figured I was looking to "Spot the Similarities" and would be looking for a constant...who knew I'd be looking for a CONSTANT. At first I tried to find letters at the same place and CON came easily but the next one the S was on the bottom and on the top so I abandoned it; silly in retrospect but then aren't those things always. Great work Ben, heck now I'll have to up my game to keep the MEOW the same caliber.
HeadinHome 🤓1:22 · 2023-10-19T23:24:38.076Z
Had tried this technique but in a circle (around the perimeter) — figuring the center might be left out or that leaving out the center would have something to do with the answer. Thanks for the nudges!
KayW 🤓4:19 · 2023-10-20T00:20:21.778Z
Needed nudge #4 to cross the moat... I had SO many similarities across the various sectors. I thought the patterns were going to paint either characters or braille or something LOL. Very clever Ben, Thanks!
Cindy Heisler 3s · 2023-10-20T00:22:09.016Z
I thought it would be "spot the same", but I was trying to come up with pairs of words that could be synonyms. Duh!! Very clever mechanism that I wish I had spotted on my own without nudges. Thanks, Ben.
I understood what to do in a general way (I've done plenty of "Spot the Difference" puzzles), BUT... when I see 9 squares and need to find 2 things to compare to get 8 letters, my mind doesn't work that way. haha Anyway, it was a unique conception. Good idea, Ben.
ReB 4s · 2023-10-20T21:47:29.859Z
I was looking the eight same-letter pairs from the onset, but there was no evident way to sort out among the mulitple mechanism that one could utilize to find these pairs. Needed the fourth nudge, as the correct mechanism was not one I had considered.
Needed all the nudges, was just on the wrong wavelength on this one. Fun idea, thanks.
whimsy 10:10 · 2023-10-21T22:16:19.454Z
Definitely needed nudges! But excellent and innovative work, Ben!
lbray53 3s · 2023-10-22T10:55:07.970Z
I was stuck on finding common letters in common places between the eight 4x4's around the permimeter and the center 4x4. I found six of those but it ended there. I thought I had tried everything. I even had all the dupes highlighted between adjacent 4x4's. It never occurred to me pair position three with four and position six with seven.