The One That Got Away

I bounced around like a pinball on this one before I slowed it down, took a few more sips of coffee and matched my chicken scratch to the theme. Beautifully done, Cap'n!

Nice one! Appreciate the symmetry.

So good!

Oh.... dang... Somehow in looking for words begining with P I skipped PEER. (which did bug me as a homophone for PEER).

So PI-ONE-ER is leader and BAR-ONE-T (and not B-ONE-ART) is title holder. And there is is symmetry. Very good.

Cool! You gave just enough to chew on.

But I haven't backsolved completely.

I figure LEADER = HEAD is ????

And WHARF = PIER is ?????

And I figure SCRIMSHAW = nothing is B-ONE-ART was a total accident?

Took me a while to get this ONE!

Thanks for the warmup to Tuesday's MMMM!

I cannot tell a lie - one for the ages, Cap'n Rick! Didn't realize until seeing the comments below, but now do appreciate the symmetry as well.

Dang it took two hands (and one nudge) to handle this one. Here's the thing, I knew almost from the start that it would be a fish story and the pictures leave no doubt about what that story is, and yet..... I got so hung up on BEGONE being GETAMOVEON and PIER being PIER ONE (ah I can smell the cinnamon candles and see the wicker furniture now) that I spent an inordinate amount of time looking for a clue that said "Emporium of everything you don't need, you'll use once and dust forever" = WORLDMARKET so I could use PIER ONE. I got caught in the "OK, the first two you add the ONE to the end so the rest must be like that. Others that seemed to fit were IOU ONE, ANO ONE, NUDGES ONE. Heck I even tried for OBI ONE (Star Wars of course) and then immediately rabbit-holed to WAN right down the middle...did a Star Wars sidebar for 10 minutes (was there a Mothra the Hut?). As per usual highly enjoyable, well constructed and great clues (raise your hand if you are the one person in the world that did not laugh at 35A - I don't know when, but I'm stealing that!!!). Thanks Rick

After getting nowhere on this one for a good while, and distracting myself with other puzzles, I came back to it 30 or so minutes ago, and it all came together quickly. Love how that happens. Good one, Cap’n!

MAN that was some work! Rabbit trails: there are SEVEN blanks in the clue list (!) so that ate up some time; there is WAY in WAYNENEWTON (as in aWAY) and at least six places you could insert WAY to make a word (ANYway, RAHway (the city), GETAway(MOVEON)… I think I came up with six; did OREGON’s G get away, leaving ONEOR?… .
Finally hit me that ONE is the thing to get away, and I think the first one that popped out was the ANYONE/WHOEVER PAIR. Once you have the key, opening all the doors is so fun! (I had ALE and RED also in the running: o’neALE (Shaq? you here? oh wait.. no E on the end), and REDone (either the guy in Star Wars, or “redone” as in refurbished).
Brilliant puzzle.. thanks for the fun!

Oh - one other distracting shiny object: TWERK right there in the middle, and another dance in wayNENEwton. If there had been a third or fourth, I would still be looking…

Haha. Submitted after finding 2 entries to confirm that I might be on the right track. Ok. 2 down, 5 to go...

Very clever!

Loved this one, even though it took me forever to get the final letters. Had the answer submitted and verified long before! Did require a nudge to be sure I was on the right track. I got stuck on some of the same entries as others. Thanks!

Great puzzle, Cap'n Rick - wish I'd thought of it, but even if I had, I couldn't have executed it so well

I explored a couple of rabbit holes before finally seeing the obvious. Fun puzzle. Nicely done, Cap'n.

This one took a while... We were stuck with 4 letters although it turns out one was not right. We did try back solving for what turned out to be the answer. The nudges this morning helped us stick with it a while longer. Very nicely crafted! Thanks so much for the puzzle.

Wow, that was a challenge. Cap'n Rick. Well crafted!

Great puzzle - really well constructed and challenging. I got stuck on literally finding FISH, assuming we needed to insert a letter in words. I found ROOTROuT (trout), ESTRAyDA (ray), CoDE (cod), BASsH (bass), EeLIE (eel). But it went nowhere. I eventually figured out the correct metanism. Anyone else go the FISH route?

I had the right idea ( sorta) early on ( knew it had to do with letters ONE) but still needed the nudges to set me straight!!! Good one! Thanks , Cap’n!

Great puzzle, Cap'n Rick! I had a bit of trouble getting all the letters for the final answer, so my word was too short. I sorted it out eventually, proving that for this meta answer -- and fish tale tellers everywhere - size does matter! : )

Well done. I actually figured out the mechanism early on that ONE was being dropped from seven grid answers and then to look for synonyms when I saw begONE and anyONE and then saw EXIT and WHOEVER. I also from that surmised that WHOPPPER was the probable answer but wanted to prove it.

Unfortunately, since the first two entries had ONE at the end, I got fixated that the other grid entries also had have ONE at the end, which led me to trying PIER ONE and STAGE ONE and OBI ONE, but they led to a dead end.

It took a couple of nudges for me to expand my horizon to look for ONE somewhere in the grid entries - not necessarily at the end, and then everything quickly fell into place along the lines I had expected all along.

Very nice!

(Didn’t need nudges, just didn’t get to it until today.)