Nonverbal Communication

Such a cool mechanism!!

I love it! This is the first challenging meta I was able to solve too.

Great one!

This is one of the best metas I've ever seen. Bravo! Jazz Hands

For a minute there I thought you were going to spell out a word in the ASL alphabet, since = "V" and = "Y". Perhaps a mechanism for a future puzzle :)

Wonderful. But, you mean SHAKirA has nothing to do with it?

Finally!! I had the first step and just couldn’t find those numbers!

Clever! I'm surprised, but happy, I got it so quickly.

Holy cow I finally got a meta correct

That was fun to solve!

Fantastic mechanism. Great progression from "Aha!" to "Well, now what do I do with that insight?" to "What if... Eureka!"

Solved, but I'm not sure what the mechanism is. I'll have to go back and study this some more.

Great mechanism, Will! I only used the first of your posted hints (thanks for posting them coded in ROT13 so I wasn't tempted to look at more of them right away).

Loved it!

Nice one

wow that was a toughie. I needed the hint that confined me to the 4 long across answers, because I was convinced we were working with 8 clues/entries that referred to some kind of nonverbal signal… these four correct ones but also BLINKAT, OOHOOH, ACNE (clue’s phrase “look on …face”), and LYINGBACK… as these are all non-verbals you could read as communication. For each I was going for the part of the body you use to do it: thumb, hand, head, fingers, eyes, etc… came up with 8 letters but no word of course (close!). Once I got to the 4 words I generally knew what was a next (early on I had already sketched those gestures and numbered the fingers in case that was it)… but would not have looked to the other word in the row without hint 3! Great challenge!

Yes, this will go in the "Will's Greatest Hits" file! (Used first nudge to get there)

ricky described it well

Got the hints but really only needed the last one. Very creative!

Very fun! I figured out the first part of the mechanism pretty quickly but couldn’t find the correct place to pull the letters from, so I needed hint 3. I’m still not sure — was there a clue/angle “pointing” to the target words?

Very cool! I needed the third clue to finally crack this one. But I'm still don't see how you drive that middle "S" from TESLA. Is that the digit a hitchhiker raises when a car blows by him?

Very clever and a nice "aha" moment! I think I had the same concern as another commenter, in that I figured out the theme words and knew what to do with them; but I didn't find any bridge to the final words to use without arbitrarily guessing things until I hit upon the right set. Was there some way to determine that final step? I'm sure I missed it :).

Got the first step immediately. And then......... did the other puzzle..... So cool!

Moving to the adjacent clue is just not where my brain goes. I had cute little hands drawn on my puzzle with the fingers numbered and just got stuck there. Thanks for the nudges.

Wow, on my first try!

I got the first two steps on my own, but wouldn’t have figured it out without hint #3. Excellent puzzle Will!

Nice one!

neat :)

High five!

Very creative!

Wow! That was tough. Got stuck on Shaka sign for "Hang Loose" which was hidden in Shakira. Then had to regroup. Thanks for the entertainment!

This is one I wouldn't have gotten in a million years without the hints, because I had no idea what the I Love You and Hang Loose signs were. Pre-hints, I was trying to find a heart emoji or the word "heart" in the grid, and did some work around the two instants of the letter V that are conspicuously close.

Will's hints literally shoved me through the door but I still had a legit aha moment and a smile. That's quite impressive.

Like most others here, I needed the second nudge - as I didn't know there were non-verbal gestures for HANG LOOSE and wasn't even familiar with the phrase PEACE OUT much less know that it had a hand gesture. I had to look up the ASL sign for I LOVE YOU. (I of course knew the thumb sign for HITCHHIKING as I'm from a generation where that was still a mode of transport.)

Once I realized that the signs were all hand signs involving different fingers, my first thought was to use the positions to generate binary numbesr, but that wasn't getting me anywhere. So then I thought of the fingers as grid entry positions on the theme words, but that didn't work either.

I puzzled over the third nudge, and came back at bedtime for another look, and realizing the other grid entry on each theme entry line was five letter long, I just for the heck of it decided to apply the finger positions to these words and BINGO! That's two nights in a row that I've had late night AHA moments.

Very ingenious, and I know that I would never have come close to solving the meta without the nudges.

I had Step One early on. Rabbit Hole #1 was HITCH HIKE linked with TOM at 69A -- Tom Thumb. Then I tried the finger number applied to the entry itself and wound up with a lot of Hs. Finally, with a "nudge" that was more like a what Messi does to a soccer ball from midfield I arrived here.

Strong work, Will.

High five, Will! And thanks for the hint collection... #1 was enough to point the way.

Thanks for providing the hints -- I had everything but what to index into. Great puzzle. One rabbit hole was the fact that the number of words in each entry matched the number of fingers.

Initially thought the extraction on the left side would be the opposite from the right side, to match chirality of hands... :P

wow! very cool. I saw the first step but needed that third hint on the website to get the answer.

Did you know the HANG LOOSE signal is called the SHAKA? As in SHAKirA without the ir? (Don't go down that rabbit hole.)

I know I missed the deadline. I was on vacation the week that this came out and am just know getting caught up on all of the metas that I missed.

Great puzzle. I needed all of the hints to solve it but it was still fun and had an aha moment.

I’m late to the party but this was so cool