On the Spot

This puzzle was spot on

Answer: 101 DALMATIANS

Explanation: It does matter what's "on the spot" here - if we're talking about the black square in the grid as a "spot." Every character above a black square (that isn't another black square or off the grid), in standard top-down order, spells out IOI DALMATIANS, letting the vowels do double-duty as numbers, the answer to the meta.

OK... this has to be the craziest rabbit hole ever... was this intentional?

Between "A Team" in 40A, Mr. T going up-right in the center of the puzzle, SMITH at 6A (John "Hannibal" Smith), and the plethora of BA instances around the grid- for B. A. Baracas... especially 11A where it starts BABA... how was this not an A-Team puzzle in some way?!? I was sure it had to be.

Removing myself from that rabbit hole was very hard!

Nice construction! Possibly the "spot = black square" aspect is enough of a leap to make this harder than a level 2? On the other hand, I just WAGged after reading the prompt, so ...

please disregard the wrong guess it was just me being silly to see if IOI was accepted

Brilliant construction!!

Took me two tries to correctly spell those dogs. Thanks Mikey and thank the Cubbies for help with the O’s.

Nice! I "intuited" the meta right away from the title and knowing it was puzzle #101. I also remembered ANITA "Darling" from my Disney days and recognized Glenn CLOSE as Cruella in the 1996 live-action version. ALMs also stood out as a "spot" of interest. Thanks, Mikey.

Lol well that was a WAG although a semi-informed one once I made the connection between "spot" and "101." Fun puzzle! I would put this closer to a 4 in difficulty if it weren't for the numeric tie-in - equating "spot" to the black squares is a level 2 leap on its own, and then needing to convince yourself IOID is the right path further ups the difficulty. But perhaps worth nothing that the numeric tie-in is only visible over on the Muggles Forum - anyone who just stumbles upon this puzzle on Crosshare may have a harder time.

Needed a little help (mostly to get me to stop looking at those B's and A's... I guess it wasn't a puzzle about rhyme schemes after all) Very SAD indeed (and fun!)

Finally got it, but only with a couple of huge shoves from a friendly muggle. Was also struck by all the Bs and As in the grid and just could not drag myself away from that.

Spelling error costed me two guesses.

I definitely wanted to guess "101 DALMATIANS" based on the puzzle's number. But, no, I told myself. That would be too obvious! The answer has to be in the puzzle somewhere... but it took me days to see it!

Man! Had this immediately, just could NOT spell Dalmatians properly... geez!

And Mikey: I did have ANITA, SMITH, and CLOSE. But I also had MARC - Marc Davis is the Disney animator who designed and animated Cruella. You probably forgot you put that in there too

Needed a hint from KayW because I was desperately trying to make the O the spot or work from the AMs int he puzzle, obviously to no avail. With a nudge towards the squares as spots I was off.

T

Yup, ALMS, the puzzle # and the title clued me in -- fun figuring out the mechanism! Who's a good constructor?! Thanks, Mikey!

Tried all the other dots but never considered the blanks. Good one!

I agree - it was SAD

Also I think it’s almost eeeerie that you ended up with 101 letters without even trying (that you know of) !

That first “incorrect” may have been an auto-correct… i know i typed -tians the first time! Whooo this one beat me up. I had all the letters above “dots” highlighted, thinking the dots/spots would be the isolated blank spaces, so I had IOIIAN forever. Thanks to BarbaraK for helping me out a little.. and even then I had to write it out before I saw the 101 instead of IOIDALMATIANS.!

Ha! I tried that days ago but dropped it because IOID is obviously not the start of anything. Needed the nudges to try it again and keep going.

Facepalm!

Took me longer than it should because the "eye-owe-eye" over the first black squares didn't register, even with it being the puzzle after your 100th...duh! My fault not yours...fun puzzle. Thanks Mikey!