Let's Go Orienteering (Meta)

Uni eatery, perhaps

Across

1A
Uni eatery, perhaps
4A
Netflix miniseries based on Deborah Feldman's 2012 memoir
9A
Tweety's "taw"
12A
Singer-songwriter McKenna with three "Best Country Song" Grammys
13A
Christmas songs
14A
Vaper's item
16A
Spanish miss (abbr.)
17A
Funereal piece
18A
Effortlessness
19A
Overturned
21A
"My hands ___" ("No can do")
23A
Auto
24A
"___ bin ein Berliner"
25A
Book supplements
29A
Eyes closely
33A
Order for steak that might bleed onto your plate when you cut into it (mmmm...)
34A
Australian women's national basketball team (with "The")
36A
Zion locale?
37A
"Stardust" character played by Kate Magowan
38A
Sign this and your lips are sealed (abbr.)
39A
"It's ___-win situation!"
40A
Sounds like a crow
42A
Try a new hue
44A
No way am I wading through all the terms and conditions of this 38 across! (abbr.)
45A
Shield volcano on Hawai'i's Big Island
47A
The A of LAPD
49A
Australia-only-release AC/DC album (and track on "High Voltage")
50A
Matthew McConaughey title role
51A
Telling-off
55A
Cleaner (US English)
59A
"La ___ Bonita" (Madonna song)
60A
Yens
62A
"My bad!"
63A
Cartoon character inspired by Esther Jones (with "Betty")
64A
The Belt's most important port location (for all "The Expanse" fans out there!)
65A
Aussie pickups
66A
City roads (abbr.)
67A
Chicken Joe line in "Surf's Up": "Cody. I know ___. I can feel it in my nuggets!"
68A
Harry, to Charles; or Archie, to Harry

Down

1D
Company with an "inc." in their name
2D
Commedia dell'___
3D
Bride-to-be
4D
Cook one's steak 33 across
5D
(From Wikipedia) Small (commonly <2 mm in diameter), spheroidal, 'coated' (layered) sedimentary grain
6D
German determiner
7D
Eldest Prozorov sister
8D
BMW SUVs
9D
Sheer, informally
10D
Amazonian superfood
11D
"Word to the ___: never sign something without reading it first"
12D
Baton Rouge sch.
15D
HS equivalency test (for Australian solvers: House of Representatives member, ___ Kearney)
20D
"Beast" of an actor, ___ Stevens
22D
Field of pedagogy focused on learning through play (abbr.)
25D
Amazed, astonished
26D
Okoye portrayer, ___ Gurira
27D
Speak slowly
28D
Sleep disturber
29D
Costa del Sol attraction
30D
Drag one's feet
31D
Vowels required to spell 28 down and 47 across (for US solvers: cable network founded in 1984)
32D
Richest family in America for more than a century
35D
Sum up some numbers
41D
Provincial governors in the ancient Persian empire (cf. 20 down 3:2)
42D
Alter, as a photograph
43D
As a group
44D
Boring, like a long 38 across
46D
"I only have one card left!"
48D
Flexed bicep, perhaps?
51D
Barbecue offering (and I'm hungry again!)
52D
Those, in Spanish
53D
Conspire
54D
Liberate
55D
Ridicule
56D
Dorothy's dog
57D
Unwrap, as a present
58D
Blog feed letters
61D
Test for college srs.

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Neo 🤓15:54 · 10 months ago

i saw "der" at the top middle which i thought was supposed to be red written upwards so i put north at first

benchen71 constructor · 10 months ago
A definite red herring! Totally unintentional, I assure you.

benchen71 constructor · 10 months ago

So who here spotted the NEEDLE in the middle of the grid? I have a feeling a few people just spammed directions until they landed on the right one!

hoover 3s · 10 months ago
I spotted the needle! But I mixed up the head and the tail.
- benchen71 constructor · 10 months ago
  I was going with the longer end pointing North. Plus it had an N at that end. :-)
  - hoover 3s · 10 months ago
    D'oh! My thinking was, well, the N is down there and the word runs from down there to up there, so up there must be north.
    - woozy 🤓15:03 · 10 months ago
      Yeah. I kind of assumed the same and didn't realize how circular and self confirming non valid that reasoning is until said out loud.
JM 13:02 · 10 months ago
It took a while! Woulda been funny if you had worked HAYSTACK into the grid.
Neo 🤓15:54 · 10 months ago
ohh i totally thought i was looking for the word red to show the red end of the needle so the “red” in “redye” is in the bottom left which gives the same answer

hoover 3s · 10 months ago

Ohhhhh... I couldn't tell which end was the head, so my first guess was off by 180°.

My red herring looks like this:

 4D UNDERDO refers to 33A RARE
31D AANDE   refers to 28D APNEA and 47A ANGELES
41D SATRAPS refers to 20D DAN
44A TLDR    refers to 38A NDA
44D TEDIOUS refers to 38A NDA

And then I got caught up in all the permutations of AND that were present in the above list.

benchen71 constructor · 10 months ago
I can see your point. That's a lot of cross-references for one puzzle.

markhr 30:47 · 10 months ago

I finally spotted the needle but thought it was pointing upper right. Then I saw the starting N and the letters RED indicating a downward left direction. Was the actual hint TURN NEEDLE TADA? At any rate, very clever.

Darth 19:14 · 10 months ago

Hey Ben, I put myself standing in the forest and saw the grid from a bird's eye view looking down among four trees ++++ so I had no clear "facing" direction. I had Googled "orienteering" because it was unfamiliar, and I learned about control points and then I thought maybe "double O" (as in OOID, BOOP, REPROOF, and OOPS) best represented the two concentric circles (symbol) on the orienteering map. I also saw ADD and ADDENDA (add-END-A?) so then thought I needed to END up with an A (maybe it was the closest to the triangle symbol on the map?) and UPENDED also seemed significant. (I wasn't sure how to interpret UNDERDO but ADD, UP and UNDER all seemed directional). I also tried removing the NSEW in words since it seemed there was some reason to have "vanishing" points, but doing so seemed truly "pointless" :D Anyway, for me to move "out" of the forest (the four + "trees") meant to head in one of the diagonals. But which one? I didn't spot NEEDLE but I did see DAMN and HEEL... and so I solved by random guessing. End of story. Now where's XWord Rabbit when you need him??? Lol

woozy 🤓15:03 · 10 months ago
Heh.... I did all of those too! I did see the needle but I figured like the E-GRID in 17A it was boggle and first. The more I thought it was relevant I eventually figured out why the sport is called "orienteering" rather than "scavenger hunt". I was pretty convinced the needle was pointing in the direction of the word. (Although if it we pointing north that mean the word has to read down to up which... things don't do.... but then every other direction but N/S needles would point in word direction)
- Darth 19:14 · 10 months ago
  Good scavenger hunting detective skills, woozy. Yes, I came across GRID at one point thinking adding A's and E's to known words might be a thing. I also found the SOS and SOS (by the word BOOP there) that form a little triangular sail shape like the orange one in the picture. ;)

Hector 3s · 10 months ago

Directions spammer here. I could swear NEEDLE wasn't there the first hundred times I looked

LarsCaine 🤓20:23 · 10 months ago
Same here!

Berto 1s · 10 months ago

I was totally stuck on NDA referencing “sign” and word to the WISE having every compass point but North and referencing “sign”. And with all the cross-referencing to NDA, it HAD to be relevant. But then I stuck a pin it it, or more precisely a needle, and oriented to the correct direction!

woozy 🤓15:03 · 10 months ago

I had never heard of orienteering. When I wikied it, I figured the key aspect was finding the control points and it didn't occur to me orienting yourself to a compass was a concern. I kept trying to figure what to control points could be. All the ND and references to the vowels A and E seemed to be intentional. I had red the first marker was a triangle and last a double circle and I thought that was more universal and mandatory a require than it was so I was concentrating on the A in LAPD and all the words with double O's.

Tyrpmom 2s · 10 months ago

I saw the needle! I then made some wrong guesses. Then I read a tutorial on using a compass.

HeadinHome 🤓1:13 · 10 months ago

Okay, now that the nudge showed me there’s a needle, I guessed all the corner directions (still not sure which end of the needle is north)… but I still like my original guess: There are FOUR WORDS missing out of the grid (the 4 directions), so of course the direction I am facing is FORWARDS! (OR FOREWARD? FOUR WORDS?). Or, because I am clearly looking at a MAP here (I didn’t think of a compass, just a map), I am likely looking DOWN. Also, if you take the center letter of each of the edge words (UODOX, etc.) and go counter-clockwise (N, W, S & E) you get DUEE… DUE EAST? A particularly good guess, given the title (ORIENTeering).
I Don’t think I’ve ever submitted so many clever answers that failed. This was a good exercise in brain wracking. Thanks Ben!

LarsCaine 🤓20:23 · 10 months ago

I was obsessed with 35D (ADD) and 38A (NDA) equaling 25A (ADDENDA) minus the E (for East?) I spent way too much time trying to get words to fit in the blank plus signs.

Meg 6s · 10 months ago
Me, too!

Pair O Ducks 7:24 · 10 months ago

I was 100% convinced the black squares were important -- either the grid corners being NW, NE... or the four compass-shaped plus signs in the grid needing to take letters for cardinal directions. With such a unique grid shape, I just couldn't shake it. Spent a lot of time reading up on orienteering maps and looking for symbols, too: shapes, colors, topographical information. Then, after seeing your nudges this morning, I first tried NE/SW as well as spelled out, before looking up how to read a compass and learning you need to turn it (I'm sure my dad taught me that once upon a time, but I digress) and then still tried NW before SE. So, in spite of my many incorrect guesses, it wasn't totally just spamming the options, I really did have an intention behind each of them (even if they weren't any good!) :)

lbray53 3s · 10 months ago

I found NEEDLE easily enough. And right above it on the diagonal was TURN. AND at the end of turn, if you turned, was ONCE. I spun that little ditty for quite some time. I could never get any further though.

Abide 20:50 · 10 months ago

I’m an Eagle Scout and still don’t understand this. The needle is pointing SW or NE https://physics.aps.org/assets/65362efb-5e48-451b-9b83-ca95d7615288/e53_1.png Why is the answer SE?

Hector 3s · 10 months ago
Two ways to think about it. The needle is pointing back-left of you as you look down on the grid, so magnetic north is back-left and forward must be southeast. A marked compass does that calculation for you: you rotate the compass face with the directional markings around the magnetically stationary needle so that the head of the needle points to the marking NORTH. If you do that here, then the markings EAST and SOUTH are forward-left and forward-right of you, so you're facing southeast. Very clever meta. I'm not sure what the invisibility of the directions is meant to suggest -- maybe that they're independent of the grid and so can rotate independently of NEEDLE?
- Abide 20:50 · 10 months ago
  And I had to use my picture to grasp that
- Abide 20:50 · 10 months ago
  A week 4 meta needs a week 4 explanation. Thanks Mr P!
- benchen71 constructor · 10 months ago
  I hid the directions to make their locations stand out. But that it also suggests they can rotate is also a great observation!

Laura M 🤓14:02 · 10 months ago

I don't know how to read a compass lol...

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