MGWCC crossword (untimed)
meta DNF rate it not that long
Hi Folks! Matt here doing a quick blog post on last week’s guest meta. joon (does one capitalize ‘joon’ at the beginning of a sentence? Grammarians haven’t reached a consensus) is out this week so let’s take a look:
Ben himself provided the image, which tells the story. Tell us your story of how you solved it, how you liked it, and which of these 4 food item is your favorite. And thank you, Ben!
–Matt
Good Lord. And there I am on the leaderboard. Sheesh, feels weird to get one when I barely got anywhere with the meta. I literally got the 4 reversed meat types in the first step, stalled, completely stumped for a day, and threw out chicken as another meat. Very clever meta! Well done, Ben. Just wish I’d really figured it out.
I did not submit an entry as I was looking for an alternate clue that could be answered as chicken (or, really, turkey, duck, goose or buffalo) and never found one.
Perhaps when the answer is an implied one, the Peter Gordon/Fireball phrasing of “is suggested by” should be used?
+1
I am really not a fan of the word “implied” up there, as that is quite subjective.
If I’m supposed to make a leap, how do I know whether to leap to the most literal answer of chicken or to the punchline answer of buffalo, which is the type of quirky leap you see all the time in puzzles?
I had Mike’s same problem. And I agree with the Fireball phrasing, although mainly I would have changed the instructions somehow from “animal” to eliminate all those other possible answers
I also stalled at the choice between chicken, turkey, or buffalo. I ruled out buffalo, since buffalo wings don’t actually come from one, like beef comes from a cow, mutton from a sheep, pork from a pig, veal from a calf. But I’m with Michael – I wanted there to be a word like DUD to make the answer definitively turkey, or like YELLOW to make it chicken (which I ultimately submitted.) Otherwise, I enjoyed this one.
Shouldn’t a puzzle have a unique solution? All the animals mentioned above have edible wings. Plus skate wings (fish are animals, no?).
I submitted “squab” as a protest vote. It too was not accepted.
I submitted crow. I did have chicken in the back of my mind given wing. However, we do eat crow in a metaphorical sense. I think crow should be accepted as well.
Crow is also part of the clues.
How does calf get you to wrist?
Anyway, you missed a meat in the grid, coming off upwards from the R in RYE for RAT. Before you rail against that, it’s sold in meat markets in southeast Asia, and even in Australia, I understand.
So, we have the letters V, M, P, R, and B, which hints at Vampire Bat
Calf as in your lower leg.
Clue related to ‘Body part’
Why the eight odd clue lines that had “ex” at the beginning? Intentional red herring?
I really wanted rabbit because of the “good luck” in there. As in, rabbit’s foot. But couldn’t make it work so I bailed.
Small nitpick: Macs run on MacOS. iPhones run on iOS.
I liked the initial steps, but the ending just sank it for me. I couldn’t decide between chicken or turkey, and didn’t see any reason why I should have to. For that matter, there were (as others have pointed out) duck, goose, etc. also on the table, heh.
A good meta needs a solid link to the answer, not just “what bird am I thinking of”.
Knowing it had to be wrong, I submitted FLY because it is an animal (not an edible one, admittedly) that is actually _clued_ by the word WING.
Did anyone submit “buffalo”?
I had it as well did not submit. Buffalo or chicken – wouldn’t either work?