Complete The Square (Meta)

Terrific meta, thanks, Ben!

Had the benefit of nudges from Ben’s earlier distribution in his pre-release pack, so no victory lap here for being first. Needed every nudge… the Euler reference made me think mathematical squares, and the number of ONEs (and TENS) in the grid pointed that direction too, not to mention the tilted square-like arrangement of black squares in the center. Stuck in those rabbit-holes for quite a bit…

Very cool! Definitely needed the nudges!

How does "die hard" relate to square? I’ve definitely missed something

Cool! Though I needed the spoilers. Thanks, Ben!

Thanks Ben!

Needed the hints there, but a really fun meta; thanks!

Needed the second round of nudges, this was an earlier rabbit hole but I couldn't entirely make it work (partially backsolved it in the end). Great puzzle as always, but some play nicer with my brain than others!

Well I needed a final direction correction because I was trying to go GRID order and getting nowhere. Ben told me to go clockwise and that did it - sheesh Tom, inflexible or what? Not as hard as I thought it would be once I got HONEST and ALIGN. I never did get the Mx as to how I was supposed to get the words, but now I see. Even with that I had to stretch to see the square connection. But hey they are all fair and...well would you look at that. Another puzzle that I was able to solve through dumb luck and brute force (I tried every combination of word that fit the "hole", quite a littered cheat sheet) thanks for the challenge Ben.

Brilliant puzzle. I understood filling the 8 black squares to complete the outer square, but COMPLETE indicated to me that ALL the letters had to break up into real words. Once I left that idea, it all fell into place

Needed the nudges but fun once I got them. Thanks!

I had all of the words right except for fit and align. All fell into place after I got those. Great puzzle! Thanks, Ben.

Got the Aha after looking at the first nudge (which is funny, because I had assumed both of those hints since completing the grid). Fun one - I had to guess the final answer with two letters left, and then verified the synonyms the new letters implied.

I should mention my rabbit hole, which makes it not so "funny" why the first nudge helped me so much. I noticed a lot of two-word phrases in the grid, and also some vaguely math related ones. I thought maybe some kind of "completing the square" transformations had to be done on entries. Such as adding the same letter to one or both words in the phrase and then rearranging. I even got "math related" by adding an R to "Death Metal." I was not happy with the prospect of such a challenging meta.

The nudge helped me take the title literally, complete a square. Funny how I felt so intimidated by the solution for which there was never any indication it was the right solve. I think that will be a big hurdle in my progress on metas: figuring out how to clear my mind and letting go of rabbit holes, especially discouraging ones.

I had composed a PM to you and was just about to send it to you when I looked at the second nudge again and saw that there were eight black squares along the outer perimeter (which is the largest square). Plus I had already seen that I could generate STR for the first three of these*, so then it just fell to me to prove that the remaining squares completed to STRAIGHT, which was my backsolve guess. Which worked, and miraculously I finally saw that all the new words were synonyms of SQUARE, which had eluded me for days.

Nicely constructed. Your title made me recall algebra class where we learned to complete the square before we learned the Pythagorean Theorem, which is just a condensation of that method. (Just as I later determined on my own years later that the brute force algorithm for extracting a square root to x-number of places is just a condensation of a binomial expansion.)

*Though I still don't see that MATCH is a synonym, which threw me off track early on. I won't get into the rabbit holes that ensured...