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Solving Music: Masta Ace - Born To Roll
Hey guys; today's a collab with Ricky Billingsgate, because this was kind of an inevitable co-construction if we're being honest. This one's been in the works for a while, so it's really nice to finally have it out there. Hopefully the title doesn't give too much away :)
Go check out Ricky's puzzle blog, and follow him over on Twitter!
And of course, it's time to share the results of the "X Games" meta contest! Results and solution are below the break.
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Alright, let's get to the winner. Out of the 11 entries I received, there were 6 completely correct entries (correct meta answer, with the proper reasoning). I spun a wheel to select the winner of the 1-year Crucinova subscription, and that winner is:
🎉 Lily Geller! 🎉
(If your name also appears on the wheel, you got the meta correct too; congratulations!)
And now, the part that y'all are probably here for; here's how the meta works:
So, anyone who attempted filling this grid will have had trouble getting all of the words within, well, pretty much every section. In addition to the brutal cluing, there were just answers that didn't seem to come quickly (and if you knew the Supernatural or Pokémon references, you'll have immediately noticed that there were answers that straight-up didn't fit). A while after I initially posted the meta, I changed the applet to add a rebus button, as I thought that might help solvers... to an extent.
Looking at the northwest of the puzzle, the answers to 18- and 21-Across are ALL-IN-ONE and MAGNETON, with 2- and 3-Down being RULING and ALONE TIME. The four crossing letters can each be made into a two-letter rebus, but something's still off:
The LI and ET squares are fine, but ALL-IN-ONE's NO should be an ON in ALONE TIME, and MAGNETON's GN should be an NG in RULING. There are five of these areas in the puzzle, each with two weird rebus squares, always diagonally opposite. Several people tried looking at the rebus letters themselves, but the trick to this meta, which tripped up a lot of people, was to find the right way to notate the grid. By writing the rebuses diagonally within the squares, you can arrange them such that every across and down entry reads correctly (when I said that the applet and PUZ file wouldn't accept a properly filled grid, that's because they were physically unable to). The properly notated grid looks like this:
The rest of the meta is a little funny, in that the people who solved the meta approached it differently than I did when constructing it; I'll explain the solution as it appeared to solvers and follow up with what I'd intended.
After putting the letters in diagonally, you might notice that the letter arrangements look like Xs and Os. That's because this puzzle simulates an unfinished game of tic-tac-toe. As there are 3 Xs and 2 Os on the board, it's O's turn to play. Seeing as X has somehow managed to blunder the game, O can easily win the game by playing in the middle-right space. Well, all of the spaces are in neatly-spaced 2x2 boxes, so let's see where that O would go:
And as you can see, the winning O circles this 2x2 section, with letters that spell out (in western reading order) the meta answer: XBOX.
There were some entries with the meta answer XBOX, but with different reasoning. I figured the title "X Games" might lend itself to arriving at XBOX purely by guessing, and the quincunx of rebus boxes can also be connected with lines to make an X in a box, which is why I asked entrants to give some explanation as to how they arrived at the meta answer.
Now comes the funny bit: The Xs and Os were actually intended to be the other way around. When writing the puzzle, I'd wanted the solver to denote the diagonal letters by separating them with diagonal lines in the squares, with those lines forming the Xs and Os for the tic-tac-toe game. This results in an inverted game board that looks like this:
Solving the meta this way results in XBOX truly being the "X box": the place X plays their next move to win the game. Unfortunately for me, every single person who found the tic-tac-toe board in their entry (even those with wrong answers) assigned the Xs and Os based on the letter placements rather than by drawing lines in the squares. I got very lucky that because the lines end up on the opposite diagonals to those of the letters, the Xs and Os just flip-flop, and the meta solves as normal, albeit with an O in the X box. The lesson for me here is to be more vigilant and actually have people test solve these, rather than showing the grid off to a few people and then posting. :P
Hope everyone enjoyed the meta; I have some more meta ideas floating around that I might release here in the future, so stay tuned. Congratulations to Lily, and to all the people who found the meta solution! Have a nice week, everyone, and have fun with today's puzzle!
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