Explanation: Per the central entry and the title, exclamation marks will be central to this meta - note the 9 of them in the center entry's clue as well, solidifying the prompt. Nine of the entries' clues contain entities that should include an exclamation mark: SPOOF ("Airplane!"), DIANA ("Stop! In the Name of Love"), SEARCH (Yahoo!), CRUST (Yum! Brands, Inc.), SOMEONE ("Help!"), REVERSE (Uno Attack!), BRITISH (Westward Ho!), WILLA ("O Pioneers!"), DOUBLE ("Jeopardy!"). Per the title, the fifth letters of these entries spell FACTORIAL, fitting since 5! ("5 factorial") is equal to 5 x 4 x 3 x 2 x 1 = 120, our puzzle's number!
Meg 2s · 2024-12-28T01:45:57.489Z
That was a fun solve!!
JM 12:18 · 2024-12-28T15:28:30.049Z
I got a bang out of it!
whimsy 18:20 · 2024-12-29T16:11:32.049Z
Dave C 3s · 2024-12-28T16:02:53.326Z
It took longer than it should have, but it was a good one.
boharr 3s · 2024-12-28T14:03:42.076Z
Counting those tiny exclamation points took a magnifying glass!!!!!!!!! Thanks, Mikey.
whimsy 18:20 · 2024-12-29T16:10:59.197Z
Ditto -- and since I couldn't discern, I was originally a few (fill in the blank) short (of a whatever.)
Being a math guy and knowing that your themes are often puzzle number related helped me get this one quickly.
120 is both a factorial and triangular (1 * 2 * 3 * 4 * 5 = 1+2+3+...14+15), as are 1 and 6. Apparently it is an open question whether there are any larger numbers with this property.
Ahhhhhh, that is awesome - I love things like that! What an epic factoid (factorial factoid)!!
HeadinHome 🤓1:50 · 2024-12-29T01:54:00.559Z
Don’t even need the math headache… enjoyed the puzzle without following that part of the explanation (just need to be able to count and spell!!!!!!!!!). ( : I wasted a lot of time trying to reverse things, since that clue was so flag-wavy. Each of the 9 sections (NW, N, NE, etc and the center) of the puzzle has a vowel-consonant-same vowel pattern somewhere in it. OLO, EWE, ANA, EVE, ACA, etc. Figured those were “reversible” so something was to be done with that. Needed the published nudge about the exclamation points. First one I thought of was O Pioneers! (Then it made sense why that weird stuff about Yum foods was there for 32A… that was highlighted from the beginning).
The REVERSE addendum was a last-minute thing that I found - I saw some Uno Attack! games don't use the "!," and I was like, "You know what, might as well put that in." But I can see how that can be rabbit hole! I love the book "O Pioneers!" - surprisingly, my mom - who loved Wilder's "Little House" books - didn't enjoy it as much as I did! Yeah, the Yum! brands thing should've definitely raised an eyebrow or three. Glad you enjoyed it, even sans math!
Carolyn 3s · 2024-12-29T05:26:58.126Z
That was very cool!
whimsy 18:20 · 2024-12-29T16:06:01.232Z
Punctuation and math! Mikey does it all!
whimsy 18:20 · 2024-12-29T16:16:48.231Z
I'm not up on my factorials, but I did notice that 5 gazinta 120 (two-thousand) and twenty-four times, which possibly amounts to the same thing.