Here's another puzzle I constructed last year but didn't bother to write an introduction for at the time. Talk about lying down on the job! No matter. I'm sure my being wide of the mark then won't prevent you from having a whale of a time with this puzzle now! The answer to the meta is a 15-letter phrase. Answer & explanation: https://www.xword-muggles.com/viewtopic.php?p=185306#p185306
Check out "The MOAT Mini Pack of Marching Bands" here: https://www.ephesusscroll.com/about/interest4.html. US$5 gets you 7 Marching Bands which, hard enough on their own, now contain metas too. And once again there's a mega-meta!
Oh my! Not what I expected, but clever, I guess....
Morendil 🤓10:00 · 2024-11-12T23:43:08.300Z
Phew. Light bulb finally went on.
KayW 🤓4:33 · 2024-11-13T01:29:55.767Z
Without the nudges, I found all the idioms and IN NOTE LITERALLY. First I tried BETWEEN THE LINES (which is 15-letters and could be something "literally in a note"). Then I tried IN NOTE LITERALLY. Then I read the nudges and slapped my forehead. Good one, Ben!!!
I parsed the letters correctly and looked for a fifteen-letter phrase that was already on the screen. The long clue for IDIOM, a clue that was obviously a key to the solution, ended with "at the drop of a hat." Fifteen letters. True, it was not "in note" but rather in clue, but it seemed to work.
Well THAT was diabolical! You are right, the "15 letter" was misleading. I think "The meta answer is 15 characters long" would not have been too much of a tip off, but hey it is not my puzzle. But in the end, every cloud had a silver lining; I gave it the old college try even if I banged about like a bull in a china shop.
It would have to be "The meta is 16 characters long" (for a meta answer of "16 CHARACTERS LONG"). But, as you say, that would have been too much of a tip off. Plus, I really liked the fact that the letters derived from the grid also gave you a 15-letter phrase: IN NOTE LITERALLY.
HeadinHome 3:52 · 2024-11-13T03:36:07.457Z
Oh for Pete’s sake. Starin’ right at it. I needed the nudge about what the “note” referred to .. have never used a puz file.
This never occurred to me! I'm going to chalk this one up to my lack of test solvers!!
lbray53 3s · 2024-11-13T15:06:55.339Z
Like Bird Lives, I picked up on 37A. The "at the drop of a hat" seemed like an extraneous note added to the end of the clue. I submitted that and of course it was wrong. But then, that phrase had 15 letters but was an idiom, so not literal. What does the phrase mean literally?
"Do it immediately" has 15 letters. NOPE.
Well, a quick search yielded that "at the drop of a hat" was how races were started, so I submitted:
The start of a race. NOPE
When a race starts. NOPE
I also struggled accepting 15 as a letter.
I think my answers were defensible at least.
But hey! No skin off my nose. (another 15-letter phrase by the way)
hoover 2s · 2024-11-14T06:21:25.928Z
That's because in Strine, "15" is not a letter, but two.
The start of a race. NOPE When a race starts. NOPE