Toe the Line

Hi Wendy! Nice meta! I couldn't resist.

Thanks, Wendy! Grrreat SSSubstitute!

Great puzzle, Wendy! I clearly made it harder than necessary.

Thanks, Wendy. Enjoy the 4th.

Very nice, Wendy! Thanks for the puzzle.

Very nice! I did have to go back and reread the instructions about not getting carried away before I caught on. But in my solving travels this AM, I did learn about Queenie the waterskiing elephant and Twiggy the waterskiing squirrel, so there's always something positive. :-) Thanks, Wendy!

Thanks Wendy! A very appropriate summer solve.

Nicely done.

Very nice!

Another winner, Wendy! Based on your comment (about getting carried away), I was looking for that answer. But needed to be nudged into the metanism current. Thanks!

My first guess -- "Rip current undertow" -- was incorrect. I figured you can't have too many summer hazards. Then I limited it to just one.
(I just now looked at the nudges, and even if I'd looked at them first, I'd still have made the same mistake.)

Clever.

I still like my original, un-acceptable answer: STUBBED TOES! (there ARE five of them!). ( :

Good job, original Wendy!

full disclosure: needed the nudge since I couldn't see anything going on in the grid at first

First three nudges just confirmed what I'd seen; I had to do a bit of free association with the last nudge before the AHA moment hit me. Well done.

Regarding the title, while TOE is a homophone with the multiple TOs, I don't quite see what the phrase TOE THE LINE was supposed to lead to. I kept trying to find lines between the TOs that spelled out something (+/- "E"s). Was that phrase intended as a prompt for TOW LINE? Or something else?

That was fun, Wendy! Based on the title, I went in thinking “riptide” but then it was “rip current” . You say “tomato”, I say “tomahto”! Thank you!

I guess the title “under tow” would have been too obvious!

Thanks Wendy! A late SSSunday solve and all TOes now safely in the sand. Have a wonderful extended holiday weekend and please keep the metas coming!

I have a big backlog of regular and meta crosswords, but hadn’t tried any SSS before, so gave it a try yesterday afternoon. A quick stress-free solve! Yay! Have to say that I got another AHA just before submitting here, when I checked dictionary.com to see if the answer was one or two words! Well, maybe a HA-HA and an AHA!! I hadn’t quite made the connection to undertow. Thanks for the puzzle!

So nudge 4 got me to TOW, and that plus summer hazard got me to undertow, which got me to under TO. Is that how it was supposed to work? :)

Argh. Saw all the TOs, but foolishly was focused just on the letter below the T for some reason, didn't see anything obvious there, and moved on. What a dummy!

Red faced I admit I needed all the nudges and more. I got stuck with trying to move the words to the end of the line. and then putting TO and summer hazard together (particularly in light of the recent QB death in Florida) and coming up with UNDERTOW. Stupidly I did NOT think to look under TO. My other guess was TOENADO!

Lordamighty. I entered every variation of STUBBED TOE(S) I could think of. Then entered UNDER TOW. And then finally thought to look UNDER the TOs. Headslap!