Law of the Excluded Middle (Meta)

Oh, very clever. I spent too long looking at the excluded middle.

I finally saw it! lol Nice one, Ben! :D

I must ‘fess… Had to look up the law. Although not totally necessary for the solve, nice to be educated! Thanks Ben!

Nice one! I started out taking note of the letters that went into the space until I decided I didn't like them there and erased them. That made G--R E---Y pop right out.

Great puzzle! This theme sounds similar to a fallacy we learned in logic class, the “either/or” fallacy… either you agree with x, or you believe y. Also called false dilemma, or black-and-white thinking. (Examples I hear are often so blatant I sometimes wonder if anyone studies logic any more!)

Hiding in plain sight. Very nice!

Always nice to learn something new. It took me a while to see, since I was concentrating on the middle letters. Nice "aha" moment! Thanks, Ben!

Fun puzzle. I struggled for a bit. I was making a MT out of a MOAT.

Well done! One thing that was tricky for me was that to complete the grid, you had to fill in the correct "missing" letters, but those Across answers were unchecked (no second option to fill in). So for a while, silly me couldn't figure out ACTOR because I was overthinking the clue terribly! :)

Well done! ACTUALLY, however, 37A expresses the principle of bivalence, not excluded middle. Adjusts glasses

In addition, your banner image is not an instance of excluded middle, as logicians use the term. You want: p or not-p. The formula you have is sometimes called non-contradiction (but that term is also used for the different but related principle that no claim is both true and false).

Nice one. Was complaining to another muggle that I couldn't see what to do, and literally typed out "GR? EY?" and then, of course, immediately saw it. Hiding in plain sight indeed. Thanks for the puzzle, Ben!

Excellent!

I tried the letters in the middle first… then I excluded them! Very clever, Ben! Thank you!

Wow that was fun - thanks Ben!

Very nice!

Cool meta, but wow that grid was a workout! So many entries were new to me, and not knowing where the "extra" letters would go made it super tough to get a toehold. Thank goodness for autocheck — and glad I stuck it out to enjoy the clever aha at the end! Thanks, Ben!

Hah... as others did, I also stared at the middles too long before noticing the outer pieces!

Fun, after I got over the "WHAT?" factor. I can safely say I am bivalent, though not ambivalent....

Thanks Ben

Have I got a (mistaken) solve story! I took the letters missing from the grid -- but I messed up what to use from the NW corner so I had AR (instead of EA), SSA, CTO, MM. I entered them into an anagram solver with two ??s, looking for something to go in the middle of ARSSA__CTOMM! I got the word ACHROMATISMS -- vaguely meaning stuff without color. When I remembered the Ebony and Ivory, I went with the answer of Grey and tacked on the Area just because of the expression. A one letter goof-up led me to a fifty cent word that led me to the right answer!

Thanks for this interesting and nearly double-duty puzzle, Ben!

Nice meta.

Super puzzle Ben! ...and being from Canada, I support your spelling of grey 100%.

Enjoyable puzzle - I can see how difficult it was to construct. Started today, but it turned out to be a very straight path to the answer for me with no rabbit holes, no nudges needed. You never know when you start. Thanks.

lol I swear I tried that mechanism a couple of days ago and it didn't work. I think I spent too much time trying to do stuff with the extra letters, rather than ignoring them. But even after the nudge to ignore them I somehow couldn't make it work until just now, which it popped out instantly. Ah well. :) Fun one, thanks.

this was fun! i'm so ashamed of having to use the fourth nudge... i overcomplicated things by trying to manipulate the MIDDLE letters... and the gray/grey spelling threw me off hahaha