Funny about that: I clued the ORA clue like that without knowing ANA was coming up...and then quickly scanned and said, "Okay, perfect."
merlinnimue 🤓5:07 · almost 2 years ago
nice one as usual... spotted the metanism early on but couldn't pin down the exact phrase (i tried double-edged and edge-trimmed first)... then i ran down another rabbit hole seeing other possibilities for the edges (like zone/cruz or sin/bans & din/band)... i feel like theres a recent trend in puzzles that are *suggestive* of the meta instead of pinning it exactly, which makes it harder for a dumdum like me, but i guess i just gotta get good (or at least mediocre, fingers crossed)
Yeah, this was a bit different in that regard; I think Wendy Walker (from Muggles) has distinguished them as visual metas and...I forget the other term but metas that directly spell the answer out. Thanks for solving!
Merriam-Webster has the noun as two words and the adjective as hyphenated. So technically correct but maybe unnecessarily devious. (My second submission was “There’s no friggin edge ”)
This really was a masterful construction! I'm a bit miffed that I didn't consider that an 11-letter adjective could be a compound hyphen and I needed Ben to give me a nudge to my question "So it's just word play and this point, right, I need to find a pun-ish adjective that means something about cutting edges or something like that, right?"
A very very ingenuous construction.
Berto 🤓3:00 · over 1 year ago
I needed some gentle pushing through this one, found the metanism, but only after being told the answer was hyphenated did it come to me (immediately). Guess that will be the final nudge thrown out?! Reminded me of Look Both Ways! Thanks Mikey!
I was torn about putting "hyphenated" in the prompt. Probably should have in retrospect. Yeah, this was made before that one but always fun when the connections come into play like that!!
Laura M 🤓7:32 · over 1 year ago
I thought my first guess of "educational" (edge-ucational) wasn't too bad! But I needed nudge #7 to finally get to the correct adjective. None of the 11-letter word lists I was looking at included hyphens...
Great puzzle! I initially had a zillion surplus Es around the edges but it took a bit to notice other letters that fit patterns. The hardest part of the puzzle may have been not realizing that cuttingedge has ever been thought of as one word! LOL. It's a perfect answer, though, given the metanism.
whimsy 🤓8:51 · over 1 year ago
Same here. I had only Es -- 22 of them -- and was trying to imagine what that depicted -- a picket fence? Only with the nudge about a 4 letter word, over and over, could I work it out. Glad I did because it was quite the puzzle! Thanks, Mikey!
Well that was (1) difficult (2) brilliant. You have no idea how many different combos of E??E I had (lots will ALMOST work). Then I had a mental block because I could not make the three row parts work out until I realized that making the E the last in the row and first in the column satisfied it (as I say. mental block). Even when I had it I submitted the wrong answer because I was sure that it would be, like the puzzle itself, cutting edge. Obviously LEADING edge was better, but cutting edge describes it to a T. I'm not even going to guess how long this took to make. I have an idea how you did it but I am sure I would not have had the patience to. My constructor AND solver hats are both tipped to you sir!
This one did take a bit! I made it earlier this year. Would've liked a bit cleaner fill in the middle of the grid, but some of that was necessary to accommodate things like PRESSON(E) and CLEMENT(E), I think. Thank you for your kind words!!
Tyrpmom 2s · over 1 year ago
Geesh that was a struggle, but I love the answer.
ReB 3s · over 1 year ago
Brilliant to be able to surround the entire puzzle with the same repeated word. Was close to finding edge after the second set of nudges, knew the first and letter letter had to be E, but couldn't quite find the other two letters. Nudge eight forced me to find the correct positioning of the word, and then I realized that it had to be EDGE, which of course made total sense in retrospect. Not many candidates for an 11-letter adjective after that, and CUTTING seemed the most appropriate beginning based on the title.
Yeah, when you have "EDGE" at the end, and you realize they are disappearing and that I was "cutting" them...that's pretty much what you need!
Qmark 3s · over 1 year ago
Thanks Mikey! I had the metanism of the missing letters around the outside but got stuck trying to use "ET"s everywhere...which of course kept me stuck in a rabbit hole. Need the second set of nudges (not the 3rd) to let me know it was the same 4 letter word in all places to help me find the path to the finish line.