This is the crossword puzzle thread

i was too late on the first one and i didn't spend much time on it but i was thinking too hard and it went right over my head anyway. last one was sorta fun tho.

Didn't get this last one which many people apparently found pretty easy, although thankfully I didn't spend too much time on it. Still not quite on his wavelength. Also haven't quite accustomed myself to the amount that you might need Google and Wikipedia for the meta.

working retail at christmas, didn't even have a chance to look at it

Nowhere on the muller meta-meta, sent in for the hint but it didn't help.

ditto

Feel like the hint was no hint at all. Have had some half-baked ideas but either they don't seem to lead anywhere or they lead to too many ramifications to chase down - how much time are we supposed to spend on this? Would try harder if more people had solved it pre-hint. Of course we don't know yet how many the hint helped.

yeah i was already sort of going for what the hint suggested anyway since they kind of lend themselves to that interpretation

Yeah, exactly, was hoping the hint would be more about what the answer might be rather than elaborating on the cryptic instructions in a useless way.

/sourgrapes

i didn't get gaffney's last meta either

From last year? I didn't get it either but it was reasonably hard. This new one is easy as one would expect for Week One.

OK, I just sent in my joke answer since time is running out

Looks like FOUR people got it

Muller meta meta of course

looking at gaffney's leader list...

459.	Tom C.	01/06 - 22:04
460.	Regina C. 01/06 - 22:05
461.	Jim C.	01/06 - 22:06
462.	Mike C.	01/06 - 22:06
463.	John C.	01/06 - 22:07
464.	Gladys C. 01/06 - 22:07

Noticed that crew a few weeks ago.

Do U See?

any luck with gaffney? was gonna say i'm stuck but i literally just had an idea that i'm going with. uh nevermind.

Nope

well, if i'm right, it helps to internalize every part of the meta hint

the six-letter company one? p sure i got it

You probably got it, plenty of others did.

help me understand this clue + answer from this week's Inkwell puzzle (SPOILER i guess):

12D Getting it on demand = HARDER

oh i get it, duh. it's a 'getting it on' demand. i kept separating the phrase into 'getting it' 'on demand'.

Me too! I just did that this morning and was baffled.

glad it's not just me!

ugh latest gaffney is something about chess and i hate it

oh NO

i'm going to spend all weekend trying to figure out how to chess move the circle spots and it'll be completely wrong

yup this is driving me crazy, if we all put "C." at the end of our names can we work together

ha.

There was some kind of Fireball contest this week that I completely forgot to do.

Anyone going to ACPT this year? I am, but I am not feeling it yet.

i'll probably do crosswords LA again

seriously stumped on the gaffney meta

Haven't really tried the meta but I guess I still have a day and a half.

i have a juicy lead and nothing to do with it. i think. i can share my notes if someone else wants to try, i'm probably not getting it

AHAHA

i spent hours on this and got nowhere, went down rabbit holes and wrote on papers that looked like the shack in a beautiful mind, and then gave up and guessed elton john because "daniel", and "gravity" reminded me of rocketman, and he wore a lot of rings. couldn't figure out virgin but apparently he feuded with madonna last year.

and it ends up being right. i'm a sham.

i thought first that RAMA I and CROWN being in the center of the board (along with "CENTER OF GRAVITY" cluing us in) meant that the middle "M" was like a king and you had to get him in checkmate by moving the circle-knights, which was ridiculous ("checkmate" being "the last word")

and then i found that if you take the circled letters and look at the letters surrounding them via the knight moves suggested by the black block formations (2 left 1 up, 2 left 1 down, 2 right 1 up, 2 right 1 down) you get words: OASIS, SAND, SNOW, STIR, ONO, AEIO. well not the last one but i thought the lack of a U could also be a clue. ONO being so close to VIRGIN made me think they were connected (Two Virgins) but i couldn't make any more connections. desperately i applied this key to every single letter in the puzzle and wrote down any words that came up, hoping to find something hidden.

(i hate this puzzle)

wait elton totally crossed my mind too!!! wtf

I just watched the Goodbye Yellow Brick Road episode of Classic Albums and had no idea it was Elton John. Maybe if Dee Murray had been in the grid

I have actually been trying to learn to play chess properly recently and didn't want the puzzle to confuse me so I didn't try too hard.

i had attempted some kind of cryptic reading of the grid (i.e. "SCREWRINGS...uh...GRINS?") but that fell apart with 40-y/o virgin and "jack" not really having any meaning i could ascribe to it

One month until Brooklyn

Will Shortz is a a cratedigger! Well, sort of: http://www.brendanemmettquigley.com/2013/03/flashback-monday-and-q-a-with-will-shortz.html

Missed you guys this weekend. John, I finally bought the Penguin Classics book off of Ben T, after trying to finagle a freebie from here or there for the past year.

Oh, cool.

I'll make it back to ACPT one of these years -- crosswords aren't an especially big part of my life right now. I used to enjoy doing the print version of the AVClub puzzle on the train and haven't yet managed to incorporate its online-only successor into my weekly routine. Cancelled the NYT puzzle subscription, too. So the only one I actually still do regularly is Ink Well.

To be honest, the thing I regret most about skipping the tournament this year is missing the opportunity to kibitz about Learned League with fellow participants.

Any notable run-ins, K? And how'd you do?

I came in in the mid-70s, and got on the Solving Perfection list, but I think I may have had a mistake that I forget to fix and that they didn't catch. It was impossible to tell from the scan. I felt a little guilty so I emailed them to check but I haven't heard back.

No big run-ins. I don't go to the events on Friday and Saturday nights since I live in town so I don't really know everybody, although since I've been going for four years and to Lollapuzzoola for the past two- where it is a lot more relaxed as you might imagine- so some people sort of recognize me. I actually got off the train at the same time as the champ on Saturday morning but I didn't talk to him then out of some kind of superstition, not to rattle him or be rattled in return, before the contest had started. Later I saw him after the second puzzle and explained this to him and he laughed and said something about how now we could be sure that this wasn't going to be that fateful day when we turned over the page and looked at it and said "Oh, no, I forgot how to solve a puzzle."

I don't know much I like solving the things right now, probably could be doing better things in my spare time, feels almost like a compulsion, but I feel like I started doing it and I've gotta stick with it a while longer.

One thing I noticed this time was that it was much more interesting to do a post-mortem of solving a puzzle in that context with somebody where you could get into the nitty gritty of how you or they had a mistake or a tough time in one spot but then managed to fix it. Reading the blogs can be pretty useful but sometimes it ends up "I didn't know this- how do they expect me to know it!- but I knew THAT from doing a bundle of xwords." Although I guess that is pretty much the same thing as overhearing somebody else's conversation and not participating in it.

11 correct answers on the gaffney meta so far

Couldn't even finish the grid this week!