Ocean's Thirteen (Meta)

Fun.

But I may need to backsolve 12 of them.

This is an impressive feat of construction!

Very clever idea - MAHALO!

So.... I see KONA in Pinko Napoleon. And the overall impression of the letter formations appear to this non-speaker as extremely "Hawaiian-esque". But other than that I can't find anything specific. Are there other place names to be found?

Answer: HAWAII- the thirteen-letter Hawaiian alphabet has five vowels, seven consonants, and an ‘ known as the okina. If you didn’t know that, a Google of the twelve letters in the grid would telegraph the path.

I noticed that the grid only uses 12 letters of the alphabet and I guessed Hawaii because it only uses those letters. Place names in Hawaii only use those letters as well. I'm sure that's not the intended mechanism and I short-circuited the meta, but even knowing the answer I don't see how to backsolve.

I got it from the theme entries being limited to the 13 letters of the Hawaiian alphabet -- was there anything I missed? I noticed KONA hidden but I didn't recognize anything else like that.

I don’t know what the intended mechanism is but I guessed based on only 13 letters used and I know Hawaii uses only those letters. Saw a few Hawaiian places like Kona too. Very impressive construction!

Finally! I needed a nudge anout the Hawaiian alphabet. I was doing all kinds of things with the 27 3-letter words. Subtracting them from the themers, mixing them in etc. I tried looking at the intersecting letters of the themers. Lotsa things! Thanks for the puzzle.

Feels like I cheated... I found UKE LEI AUK POKE KONA and leapt to solution

With fewer letters in a language, would crosswords be easier to construct or harder? Easier: if it has a comparable number or words, the language can't afford for there to be as many strings of letters that don't make words. Harder: trade-offs often are that the language uses longer words, and that it relies more heavily on multi-letter units (e.g., forming syllables) as repeatable units, both of which can reduce your options. In any case, the task of using the reduced alphabet to make a crossword out of words in a different language has to be maximum difficulty!

The first thing I noticed was that the grid is 13x13 instead of the customary 15x15. Then, seeing an unusual number of Ks in the grid, I plopped it into Mechapuzzle, and the true amazingness of the construction was revealed. Still, I wasn't clued into the answer until I pondered the oddness of the long entries and found UKE and KONA. I also see KENO, but I think that's Chinese rather than Hawai'ian. Once I saw that, I googled "Hawai'ian letters" and saw the 12 that are used in the grid + '.

Saw the letter bank. Then was stuck for hours. Got a secondhand nudge to Google the letters. Is there a path I didn’t see?

Thanks Peter

Stared at this for hours, kept staring at KONA and finally just wagged Hawaii. Now that I see the rest, that is very impressive. Thanks for the puzzle, Peter!

I've been to Hawai'i and have a cousin who lives in Kona, so the letter restriction was already familiar to me. I also noticed the grid was 13x13... So, I'm thinking what place names in Hawai'i are 13 letters long? .... :D

I guess, a place "by the ocean" (and not "in the ocean") made me ponder a minute. Then I was like, Oh heck, I'm just gonna enter Hawaii and see if simple works. And it did! ;-P Hu'u hu'u mai Peter! (That's "Well done!").

Soooo, what was up with the visual inset that popped up after a Crosshare solve - derived (as I learned through research) from an October 24, 2022 Abide MMMM, "What's In Your Pocket." The mechanism involved "kangaroo words" (what?) and the answer was "half-pint list." BTW, congrats Abide on having a kangaroo word as your last name.

"half-pint lint" I meant to say

Put a lei around that dude's neck! Thanks, Peter!

Great clues for the 15-letter entries. I used Mechapuzzle, saw the Hawaiian alphabet, but then looked for a second step. I searched for 'places that use all letters in the Hawaiian alphabet." I noticed the hidden words UKE and KONA and but couldn't find one in the middle 15-letter entry. I gave up and tried Waikiki as an answer. Wrong. Nice to find out I was overthinking.

Interesting! Had never heard that… and never would have thought to google all the letters… must tuck that away as a future strategy. I early on wagged Waikiki & Waikiki Hawaii, Maui, Kona… so I was all around it just seeing those words in the long themer or anagramming some of the words… so I sensed this was Hawaii related just because of the letters being there for so many Hawaii places. Whimsy patiently led me to the right answer so I’m claiming no credit for this solve, but happy to learn something new.

Wow! I notice the "missing" letters and tried to work with those but got nothing. I saw that you did not use 12 letters and that M was the 13th letter. but that did not help. I had seen KONA on the one word but thought that was too easy so I looked for KENO and other words that sounded like Hawaiian names and there seemed to be a LOT of things that sounded like something you might hear on the islands. What I did not know until today is that the Hawaiian alphabet has 13 letters but the 13th is a ' (okina). Anyway, everything kept leading me to Hawaii so I headed for the beach.

Now I can lei my head down in peace! Thanks for the S.A.D. puzzle which I know how hard is to construct.

I was so confused why there were only 12 letters used but the puzzle title said 13. Now I know!

Was way overthinking this. Was trying to do something with the 14 Ps in the grid… amazing construction!

Remarkable construction. I needed all the nudges. I had never seen the Hawaiian alphabet identified before. I knew that Hawaiian words had an excess of vowel sounds and a shortage of consonants, but didn't know that the alphabet had only 12 letters (plus the Okina). Learned something new here.

Thanks for that final nudge and the newfound knowledge, Peter. Creative teaching method!