Oxygenation (Meta)

Wild first guess, Ben! (I saw BLO ODF and LOW under the letter sequence ART in the bottom half of the grid.... ) I'll take another look later to see if I can determine the actual metanism.

Wow yes that grid was google and crunchy. My meta answer was a bit of a guess too. Initially I filled in all the Os (chemical symbol for oxygen) and noticed they were all in the bottom of the grid. When I did that I noticed that ART was nearby each one, and a Y near those… almost “artery” .. and highlighted those ARTs. Then went looking for veins and saw VE in 3 places in the top of the grid, and an N in their vicinity. To get from VE to the N you pass an L, an F, and a W (circling those letters suggested FLOW to me). Went back to the bottom and saw that the letters separating each ART from its Y were O, F, W. So - at the top I had LFW and at the bottom I had OFL. Okay, so “flow?” Blood Flow? Tried that and it took (surprise!) .. but I’ll stay tuned to see how the rest works. Didn’t even notice the letters for blood flow beneath all the ARTs, as Darth did.

Also it didn’t hurt that “sanguine current” was in the middle.

Very clever.

Wow... I guessed it correctly, but I only got it because of the picture attached and the heart at the center. I had it completely wrong, I thought the END/FINISH and DEPART/LEAVE pair was something, and convinced myself the grid was resembling some kind bloodflow with ventricles and atriums and so on.

Completely blown away by the actual mechanism. I see why you had to use some screwy clues/answer pairs, but after trying my hand at construction recently, I am just beginning to understand your pain. Very nifty!

Guessed Blood Stream yesterday because of SANGUINE and CURRENTS; close but no cigar, and of course not seeing/appreciating the mechanism. Needed the nudges to zero in on that, and even then, didn't appreciate the "oxygenation" concept or why only the lower half gave me the answer until I read Hector's explanation. Yeah, wild grid, but perhaps worth the answer, because it was a fun challenge once I got the nudges. Thanks, Ben! (For the puzzle and for what you must have gone through to make it as good as you could!

Definitely need all the nudges. Well, not the fifth one, because I misunderstood it. My original guess at the mechanism was trying to add O2 in places, but that didn't work (and separate investigation suggests it would be tough to find options for that method). Never would have connected SANGUINE and CURRENTS. Saw the ERYs when prompted, but not the ARTs (the fact that the ERYs are on three different rows prevented me from understanding nudge 5 until after I saw the ARTs). Saw a couple of LEEs and LEAs up top, but once I knew I was looking for sets of 3 I just stared until I saw the first ART / ERY, and it was quick after that. Would have been cool if both additions were OO after passing through the heart, but options would be limited there. Interesting idea. I tend to be less excited about trading crunchy grids for complex metas sometimes, but I appreciate the effort this must have taken. Thanks. :)

Wow -- pretty impressive construction. Would never have gotten it without some help. Thanks for the puzzle, Ben!

Came back to say — how did I not see the FULL mechanism?? I saw the first half of the words (VE and ART) in each set, and the single last letter of those words below the rightmost letter, but not the fully other HALF of the word! Duh. Still enough to get me to the right answer, but sheesh. I am as amazed that you could pull this off as I am that I didn’t even see the full words despite seeing most of it.

Guessed BLOOD FLOW based on SANGUINE and CURRENTS. Now to figure out the mechanism!

Needed all the nudges but that was really cool!

WOW! That is a beautiful construction, Ben! And explains the need for some rather odd fill. Love how the arterial contents are Oxygenated. A meta and a biology lesson all in one fun package,

Needed all the nudges and yes, that does explain the unusual fill. I was trying to figure out where I could insert OO, i.e. O₂. Even after viewing the first few nudges, I saw a bunch of ART in both the top half and the bottom half. I had to read all the nudges to figure out that only the ARTs paired with ERY were important.

So I got blood flow from the bottom 3 entries… but after solving seeing the VEINs above with all the O’s missing turned this from a decent puzzle to a bit of a mindblower construction wise.

Yeah, pretty crunchy fill, but I’d rather see you take a chance on a really cool idea, especially in a venue like this.