Heart Of Gold (Meta)

Yikes! After 20 minutes of desperately trying to figure out what to do with all the new words, I typed in what looked like gibberish and it was accepted! Hey, I learned a new word; I'm done for the day. Can I go home now? :)

Like Hoover, I was perplexed as well and learned a new word (probably a few new words). Nice one, Ben.

Cool. I like the nice visual representation of the answer found in the grid. Thanks, Ben.

A truly crackpot scheme!

huh?

Twenty minutes of staring and grasping at straws ("Hey, the clue 'stink' and '_____ inu' are composed entirely of letters that are found; no to just find six more clues like that. 'Gust', 'guts', 'sting'...") and and anagrammer not giving me in any single word (although GISU KIT was intriguing)..... I finally decided to google on "kintsugi" and see if that'd give anything.....

Yeah, same -- kept thinking, "well that's gibberish, there must be some other step." But hey -- learned something new today! Thanks for the puzzle, Ben.

It’s good to learn new words. Thanks, Ben.

Golden joinery. How perfect.

I so much didn't think this was a word that I didn't even try looking it up at first! Probably an hour into trying to figure out other alternatives I was like fine let's try this... (lol sob) Nice construction!

Very appropriate answer for the metanism and fun to solve. Thanks, Ben! I first came across the term about a year ago at an intriguing museum exhibit near me: https://imss.org/kintsugi-healing-through-japanese-art/ but I confess it took me a few minutes to recognize/remember the term (haha with the help of google)

I also learned something new today!

Yay, I loved how the generous (dare I say easy?) clue/answer structure offset the difficulty of the answer being a word out of our normal language. And also the grid image - who knew that gold could serve as glue?

Had only ever heard of this once but googling kintsugi brought up repairing ceramics with gold so I knew it could not be coincidence. Toughie Ben, but fun.

Finally… that 6th nudge was what I needed!! I had previously been trying to anagram those letters… never thought to “google” the word! very clever way you “demonstrated” the “joining with gold “ in the grid! Thanks, Ben!

I actually have a friend who does this art, but I completely blanked on the name, even though I had started to spell it out on my scratch sheet. (Wrote “K-I-N-T-S-U…” and thought NAH that’s not a word!). . Such a great puzzle! A hot mess going in (trying to figure out all the weird clues and numbers) but it came together brilliantly, and the answer should have been more of an AHA if my memory were a little better.

I first tried taking the 8 letters and putting AU somewhere in the heart of it to make a 10 letter word -- I then intended to be able to lop off a letter at each end leaving me with an 8 letter one. Guess what? Didn't work! I really needed the last nudge to just go ahead and do the basic thing. And I didn't even notice the way the "themer" words fell into place with the two cracks running through until I went back and looked for the imagery in the grid spoken of -- EVEN though there were a couple of arrows pointing to them! Thanks for this dazzler, Ben!

I was so sure it was going to be “AU-to-fill”… but no. Gah. Nice one, Ben!

I had the right idea early on, but it didn't make any sense, so I wandered down other paths before being inspired to look again. And now the 6th nudge makes sense.