Fourth Wheel

Nice!.Took me a while even after solving to discern the exact mechanism that excludes extra "fourth wheels" (have to be third letters). Thanks!

My solve was complicated by the 4-letter words that can be formed by adding a letter in the first position (eg. ENT25AHumanoid tree created by Tolkien[---] -> SENT42DDistributed, as gala invitations[----], EAT45AChow down[---] -> SEAT78AWhere the usher escorts you at a wedding[----], TOE73ASomething you can stub or tap[---] -> OTOE37AOklahoma Indian[----] and ONE76A"A Chorus Line" finale[---] -> TONE71A"I don't like your ___"[----]). But once I got all the 3-letter words laid out in order it didn't take me too long! Fun puzzle, Wendy. :-)

Fun one. Thanks, Wendy.

Thanks, raccoon and opossum lover. That was a good challenge!

I missed HOPE64DIt springs eternal[----] for HOE1AWeeding implement[---] and used OTOE37AOklahoma Indian[----] for TOE73ASomething you can stub or tap[---] and TONE71A"I don't like your ___"[----] for ONE76A"A Chorus Line" finale[---]. That gave me LUSOOTE which anagrammed to LOSE OUT. I should have been more critical of that. I now see that the "third wheel" made the fourth letter. Fun stuff.

Nice one. Had the general idea, seeing all the 3 and 4 letter words in the grid, but the nudges helped focus my thinking. Thanks for the puzzle!

A +10 from me. Thanks for the fun puzzle, Wendy. Great stuff!

Fun! One of my go-to methods when trying to solve metas. Thanks for the puzzle!

Nice! I had the right idea, but nudge implying that 3rd letter is added helped me. Thank you for the puzzle!

very cute... as a usual fifth wheel i latched on to the metanism easily... i'll have to try and remember the methods you geniuses jump to so easily

this puzzle was phenomen-phenomen-phenomenal

I guess I'll have to change my name to Supertramp because I "Took the long way home". I started out noticing all of the three letter words that had VERY similar 4 letter counterparts...and that is where the train started to derail. I guess I should have been suspicious when I got one of them OTOE37AOklahoma Indian[----] and TONE71A"I don't like your ___"[----] that could have gone either way, but I tacked that up to perhaps an error in proofing (silly me, whose puzzle was this, proofing error, NOT LIKELY). Had I looked I probably would have seen more like SEAT78AWhere the usher escorts you at a wedding[----] and SENT42DDistributed, as gala invitations[----], and I HOPE64DIt springs eternal[----] I would have gone..."hey, wait a minute there are some with the new letter in exactly the same position!" Unfortunately I needed the nudges to tell me that. I still struggled because I was doing it in an Excel spreadsheet, not the Grid and I jsut took the letters and ran them through an anagram solver that, unfortunately only returns single words. Finally I did it by sight and got ONE76A"A Chorus Line" finale[---] PLUS which of course made all kinds of sense, but when Crosshare told me "WRONG" the old PLUS ONE76A"A Chorus Line" finale[---] on an invite came to mind. Nice mechanism and nice fill.

Very tidy now that I can see that the fourth letter is added to the space between the second and third letter of the three letter starters, which also restores the symmetry that I wasn't finding originally. I got distracted by words formed by additions to the first position: OTOE37AOklahoma Indian[----], SENT42DDistributed, as gala invitations[----], SEAT78AWhere the usher escorts you at a wedding[----]. Well done.

I got hung up on looking for “wheels” akin to the Pandora’s boxes from a few weeks back. Went back to basics and suddenly a list appeared. OSLUNEP didn’t look quite right, but aha - in order of the three letter words, voila! Thank you WW!

I was just SURE the “wheel” referred to O’s!! In one progression, you kept adding an O to the mix of letters until you had 4… like tOe, OtOe, OtOOle… so was I supposed to come up with a word that added to all these letters without scrambling them, and including at least one more O/wheel? Hmm… now that’s a challenge for a bunch of muggles… anyone? Well of course that’s not the meta, because it would need to be way more than 7 letters… so how about that odd clue “go ON and ON, often in mONotONe”? FOUR on’s? Now that is suspicious. There are a ton of ONs in the grid… why? Also there are a lot of ONEs… and several clues contain “one,” “one’s,” “once.” And the on/one entries in the grid are almost always in a cluster with T’s. Is there a configuration that is repeated 7 times, and in each there’s a fourth letter hanging out in the same position in the configuration? Sent all this to Wendy, showing her the math, and she kindly told me to stop thinking so hard… just look for 3’s that get a fourth, and always in the same position. (Which is kind of what I was doing, but way too fancy.) Fun challenge, and I got several good meta ideas along the way!

Very nice! Though I didn’t immediately catch on to the “same position” aspect and initially submitted the ridiculous answer of TOPLESS!

Needed today's nudge, which I shall blame on the beer festival I went to yesterday (even though, ahem, I worked on the puzzle for quite a bit before that). :) I was hung up on looking for quartets initially, and then the table image had me looking for letters surrounding a central letter, etc. Very fun stuff in the end, thanks!

I don't think I've ever tried this mechanism! Needed all the hints to apply it correctly.

Took me a long time to see it even with today's hint! Thanks for the puzzle, Wendy!

Whew! You had me quite stymied for some time, Wendy, and I really needed that second story, but that was fine since I do like quirkiness! Couldn't discover the order mechanism and had to brute force the answer from the letters; anagram solver wasn't going to work since it was a 7-letter answer, not 7-letter word. Even afterwards, I had a tough time back-solving for the order. But wow! The 3-letter words were all symmetric and you doubled back to them to provide the order! So intricate and just a dandy puzzle! Thanks a bunch!

Just thought to look at the second nudge, which I hadn't looked at before. It certainly would have made my life easier if I had...

I really like how you phrased your nudges as anecdotes, it was quite refreshing and entertaining.

Thanks, Wendy!

Enjoyed this, thanks Wendy!

Loved the puzzle, still completely confused about the meta! (I should make that into a keyboard macro because I feel like I say that often.)

Thank you!