Explanation: Nine of the clues for entries contain three triplets of the Olympic medals: gold (THEM, RUE, IAN), silver (CARP, KTTUNSTALL, SHEL), and bronze (TALL, EPOCH, RUNS); taking their initial letters spells out TRICKSTER, which is...wait a minute. That's not the name of an Olympic event! What gives, Mikey G? Yes, YOU are a trickster, but that doesn't fit the meta prompt! Another fake answer?! Let me rethink this...hmmm...
Well, if you actually take the letters of the entries that correspond to the placement of the metals: gold = 1, silver = 2, bronze = 3, you will keep the TRI from TRICKSTER but then will get ATH from the silver entries and LON from the bronze entries. These concatenate to form TRIATHLON, an answer that actually fits the prompt and, thus, is our meta answer. (RUE and IAN being down was just for them to fit in the grid; for either the trick answer or the actual answer, top-down order still works!)
Great puzzle didn’t see the alt answer until your explanation
Cindy Heisler 2s · 2024-07-28T12:08:16.288Z
After falling for trickster and several wrong guesses, I finally found the correct path. Thanks, Mikey.
Eric Porter 10s · 2024-07-28T02:02:57.223Z
I saw 'trickster', then thought of the method to get 'triathlon'... but for some reason I gave up without writing out all 9 letters. Then I looked at the Olympic sports and saw it. Thanks!
ELSavage 🤓4:40 · 2024-07-28T02:35:14.502Z
Great puzzle! My first pass was incomplete (wait, that's the wrong kind of football for the Olympics), so I ended up doing some backsolving that totally avoided the red herring - other than 39D, which did dissuade me from trying to stay symmetrical.
Stupid me, I entered this yesterday and misspelled it both times! I finally went back and thought, "OK, what might Mikey do?". I looked at words with some designation of first and second and third (though there were no thirds), I wondered if I could turn it into TRACKSTAR, I looked for anagrams all to no avail, then I thought "what if the medal told the position of the word!!!" and got TRIATHLON. "But I did that already!" and then looked back to see that I had tried to make it TRIATHALON. NIce to have finally crossed the finish line, but I guess I am just part of the peloton and won't wear the yellow jersey (I know, I know, different event but...)
Thanks Mikey
Steve M 27:02 · 2024-07-28T21:13:01.941Z
Nice Olympic themed meta to kick off the games! Thanks!
Guess I’m on to your tricks, I went straight to the answer.
Another numerical coincidence? Sept. 4, 1994 – At the 103rd IOC Session in Paris, triathlon was officially included on the Olympic Program starting with the Sydney Olympic Games of 2000.
Yep, if you're onto my tricks, I'm fine with that! That might be the wildest numeric coincidence of all - completely unintended!!
JHSeeman 4s · 2024-07-28T19:56:17.391Z
Wow....the puzzle maker is the king of Tricksters.....Great puzzle/Meta
Dave C 3s · 2024-07-29T02:34:11.306Z
Was stuck on trying to figure out what sport trickster implies when the lightbulb went on. Agree with others that this is impressive construction to have both words spelled out.