I've had this one sitting in my "possible metas" notebook for a while now. Today, I just felt like I needed to create a meta and this one was the next on the list. It's definitely a "week 3", but I've tried to make the cluing fun and the meta should also be fun once you get going. The answer to the meta is a 7-letter word. Answer & explanation: https://xword-muggles.com/viewtopic.php?p=161228#p161228
Check out "The MOAT Mini Pack of Marching Bands" here: https://www.ephesusscroll.com/about/interest4.html. US$5 gets you 7 Marching Bands which, hard enough on their own, now contain metas too. And once again there's a mega-meta!
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This is a contest/meta puzzle. To submit your answer, first finish solving the grid (or reveal it if you get stuck or solved offline).
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Comments
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That was the seed idea for this one: if you have to anagram at the end then you must have done something wrong. I wanted to construct a counter example!
Delightful! Some were subtle. A few were obvious but about 5 were subtle enough I needed scratch paper and needed to count. Some really great ones there. Introduce and reduction is astonishing.
/me wonders how many solvers made that same, wrong, first submission (raises hand).
Very much fun, thank you!
KayW 🤓7:03 · about 1 year ago
Fantastic meta Ben - and either you or I employed it on the submission button LOL. (My money is on me, but that would be a fiendish twist - to have the submission mechanism periodically tell people they are wrong when they are correct) TRAGEDY was my second guess, er, submission. I was told it was incorrect I must have MESSED UP my typing. I then went on to try TORNADO as a GYRATED TRAGEDY Hail Mary third pass which was also wrong. Finally I checked with another muggle who told me TRAGEDY was indeed correct... anyhoo that's MY messed up solving tale. Much fun!
KayW 🤓7:03 · about 1 year ago
EDIT: Now I realized what happened. I just went back to MMM (which I haven't solved yet) and I see I was submitting my MOAT entries on THAT puzzle. Now - THAT'S MESSED UP! LOL. It helps to enter the submissions for the correct puzzle. It could have been funnier only if one of those entries had been right! Thanks again!
Laura M 🤓10:24 · about 1 year ago
Oops, I should have figured on the final one! Some nice anagrams I never would have thought of: echidna/chained, reduction/introduce.
I was wondering what the entry point to the entry would be for solvers. For me, it would have been echidna because who on earth would want to chain up one of these delightful creatures!
HeadinHome 🤓1:28 · about 1 year ago
Submitted gyrated first, of course… yay for second chances (took a second to get its anagram). Loved “All the Light we Cannot See,” BTW. Haven’t read any of the others. Also, echidnas are adorable!! (and should never be chained, goes without saying)
I submitted "gyrated." then looked for a clue with "tragedy," and finding none, settled for it as the answer. A fairly quick solve though my grid still has a couple of holes.
whimsy 13:26 · about 1 year ago
Took me a while to notice what I needed to! Thanks, Ben!
Oh, and those vicious little echidnas might need to be chained up after all :-)
I thought the Greta clue would stand out. I'd really hoping she would have won an Oscar for directing by now!
MatthewL 🤓9:17 · about 1 year ago
Finally got it. Didn't really need the nudges, as I had the right idea, but they did prod me to try again, and I finally saw it. And then, of course submitted GYRATED first. Doh! Thanks for the puzzle, Ben.
Guilty as well. I was doing words that sounded like ERR (TEAR), words with ERR, words ALMOST with ERR (EAR), words whose ending sounded like ERR (RAGER) but I was obviously in error.
Very nice final twist, and you would think, of anyone, I would have gone that was first. I did not, I gyrated (like I had a gear loose) and was dancing wildly about when Crosshare told me I was wrong. I really should have seen the anagrams without the nudges. I am not a big fan of cryptics, but I do like anagrams and my subconscious knew they were there, if only from the odd wording. Nice one from our Aussie wonder (who makes us desirous anew)