P&A Issue 30 Log
I'm semi-miraculously up earlier than necessary for P&A Issue 31, which gives me some time to post my log of Issue 30.
projectylnpl 9:52 am
Getting ready...
projectylnpl 10:09 am
Noticed while printing - giftgivers are cluing traditional anniversary gifts. Minnie PEARL, Rin TIN TIN, etc. Going to get all of those before solving.
projectylnpl 10:12 am
Heh, Emeriled.
projectylnpl 10:12 am
Huh. Either there's a different Ron or I have two Woods.
projectylnpl 10:13 am
Ah, right, Silver.
projectylnpl 10:16 am
Okay, 5th lines up with what's clearly identified as the meta. That's appropriate.
projectylnpl 10:19 am
I have one for every multiple of five from 5 to 60, and they have an unambiguous traditional ordering.
projectylnpl 10:20 am
Staring at A Surprise...
projectylnpl 10:21 am
I have eleven regular puzzles, and eighteen rows here.
projectylnpl 10:23 am
Names I didn't recognize turn out to be a candy maker, the Marquis de Sade, and someone from Mott the Hoople (I think? Wikipedia calls him "Peter").
projectylnpl 10:24 am
Actual puzzles now. Gadget's on top of my stack, and it looks like one of those puzzles I don't have a name for with the modifications.
projectylnpl 10:24 am
M(EGAD!)ETH...
projectylnpl 10:25 am
SKIS -> KISS... These are metal bands?
projectylnpl 10:26 am
It is the Tin puzzle...
projectylnpl 10:26 am
Okay, not all metal. (HA)YES...
projectylnpl 10:28 am
GARBAGE...
projectylnpl 10:28 am
ACDC. I like that one.
projectylnpl 10:30 am
OASIS... Now looking for an authoratative pronouncement that works and is long enough.
projectylnpl 10:30 am
MMANDC. No.
projectylnpl 10:32 am
Looking up Zodiac order...
projectylnpl 10:33 am
FOGHAT. I don't envy people who have to figure that one out without having heard of it; I barely have.
projectylnpl 10:36 am
Oh, scratch that, the added letters aren't arbitrary.
projectylnpl 10:39 am
Oh, hey, never noticed that about Gene Siskel's name before.
projectylnpl 10:41 am
?HIS?O?SHAL???SSBA??
projectylnpl 10:41 am
THIS TOO SHALL PASS BAND, OK GO.
projectylnpl 10:42 am
Going for speed this month, as I've got testsolving to do today as well. Will finish the rest of the bands later.
projectylnpl 10:43 am
Going to try W.BG.E. now.
projectylnpl 10:44 am
BENDER fits in the appropriate spot...
projectylnpl 10:44 am
These are voices of fictional robots, I think. THE IRON GIANT, CROW T. ROBOT...
projectylnpl 10:46 am
And in between, probably D&D monsters? The Android's Dungeon etc. etc.
projectylnpl 10:48 am
AN DM EN FI LM going the opposite direction...
projectylnpl 10:50 am
Britney Spears voiced a robot? Why?
projectylnpl 10:55 am
Ah. One of the many things I've blacked out in my mind with regards to Goldmember.
projectylnpl 10:57 am
Film with Life?????? and Sandmen = LOGAN'S RUN, I think.
projectylnpl 10:57 am
Yeah, Lifeclocks were a thing in that movie.
projectylnpl 10:58 am
Office looks pretty easy.
projectylnpl 10:58 am
SEE-THROUGH should crack 4 pretty quickly...
projectylnpl 11:04 am
Huh. Three buggy letters. Two of them just aren't encrypted, and one's just wrong.
projectylnpl 11:04 am
All are A, C, or E...
projectylnpl 11:08 am
Minor bug - looks like MAITRE D' needs a space after it.
projectylnpl 11:12 am
No, he doesn't HATE anything. I'm just an uncultured lout who hadn't heard the full term before.
projectylnpl 11:14 am
Oh, duh! The wrong letters all have accents on them.
projectylnpl 11:23 am
Three per code so far. SPI???TAPACE???
projectylnpl 11:24 am
Resorting to automated pattern-matching to crack #2. TRAVELLER gets it.
projectylnpl 11:27 am
Ah, okay. A sharper solver than I could probably have gotten COUCH POTATO by eye.
projectylnpl 11:28 am
SPINALTAPACC??? = UMLAUT.
projectylnpl 11:29 am
OKGO, LOGAN'S RUN, UMLAUT. What can I do with those?
projectylnpl 11:31 am
Mudflaps.
projectylnpl 11:40 am
Oh! These are license plate slogans...
projectylnpl 11:40 am
And it took me all four damn movie titles to see that they were car makes. *facepalm*
projectylnpl 11:47 am
Okay, five states. What do I do with them?
projectylnpl 11:48 am
Order of admission gives WNFEM.
projectylnpl 11:48 am
May as well finish the grid, see if that helps.
projectylnpl 11:52 am
The actual license plates don't show much beyond the number, state name, and slogan.
projectylnpl 11:53 am
Bailing on that.
projectylnpl 11:53 am
Boxes?
projectylnpl 12:10 pm
Gotten to ?AS?WO?KER while AFK. Nice easy puzzle, just need to finish it.
projectylnpl 12:11 pm
CASEWORKER.
projectylnpl 12:14 pm
Books?
projectylnpl 12:16 pm
Araine Dewey has no Wikipedia page.
projectylnpl 12:16 pm
But she wrote FEBold FEBoldson...
projectylnpl 12:18 pm
DECision Points and JANe Eyre clinch it.
projectylnpl 12:19 pm
First instinct - take the letter in the same position as the corresponding typo, shift it the same amount...
projectylnpl 12:20 pm
But OCTopussy is too short.
projectylnpl 12:22 pm
Shifts as indices doesn't work either.
projectylnpl 12:24 pm
Hornsby's misspelled.
projectylnpl 12:25 pm
Wait, no, Wikipedia's being dumb. That's an actor.
projectylnpl 12:25 pm
Nick Hornby's an author.
projectylnpl 12:25 pm
(Who apparently isn't known as Nicholas?)
projectylnpl 12:29 pm
Heh, it starts and ends with DECISION POINTS and DECEPTION POINT. Coincidence or politcal commentary? (Or part of the puzzle?)
projectylnpl 12:29 pm
All books ID'd.
projectylnpl 12:33 pm
Oh hey, the full title is Octopussy and The Living Daylights. Didn't know that.
projectylnpl 12:42 pm
Switching to Gloves.
projectylnpl 12:42 pm
Sets of five, with not all represented.
projectylnpl 12:44 pm
Books of the Torah are all on different fingers on right-hand gloves; EXODUS belongs on the thumn.
projectylnpl 12:44 pm
*thumb.
projectylnpl 12:45 pm
????? E?I?S
projectylnpl 12:46 pm
M???? E?I?S
projectylnpl 12:46 pm
M??O?E?I?S
projectylnpl 12:47 pm
M?NO?E?I?S
projectylnpl 12:49 pm
MANO?E?IOS... what?
projectylnpl 12:50 pm
MANO DE DIOS, maybe?
projectylnpl 12:51 pm
Yep.
projectylnpl 12:52 pm
Can no longer say all answers are different lengths.
projectylnpl 12:56 pm
I feel like I ought to have enough answers to see what's going on here...
projectylnpl 12:56 pm
Soup.
projectylnpl 12:57 pm
I think I see what's going on - assemble a list of ingredients, in between which are extra letters that spell the soup.
projectylnpl 12:58 pm
BISQUE with O left over...
projectylnpl 1:06 pm
Oh, letters are alphabetized. That'll help.
projectylnpl 1:06 pm
Can't get #8, AAGLMON. Enumeration says I'll be dropping two...
projectylnpl 1:10 pm
SNERT is a soup?
projectylnpl 1:10 pm
SNERT is a soup.
projectylnpl 1:11 pm
O?T???S?U?
projectylnpl 1:15 pm
O?T??LS?U?
projectylnpl 1:15 pm
Gotta be OXTAIL SOUP.
projectylnpl 1:19 pm
MANO DE DIOS = SADE + DOMINO...
projectylnpl 1:24 pm
I guess a Pixar award would be a Pixie...
projectylnpl 1:24 pm
Candy, Marquis... yeah, this is working.
projectylnpl 1:29 pm
ANSWER I? L?CUS AWARD...
projectylnpl 1:29 pm
This isn't the meta. Huh.
projectylnpl 1:36 pm
But it gets some extra attention...
projectylnpl 1:37 pm
Low-key, Okie, logey, Casey...
projectylnpl 1:37 pm
Umlaut doesn't really work so well.
projectylnpl 1:37 pm
Nor oxtail soup.
projectylnpl 1:38 pm
Okay, getting graph paper for Tailor.
projectylnpl 1:58 pm
Looks like some down clues have letters that go on answer seams.
projectylnpl 2:02 pm
No, not just between pieces - looks like I need to add at least one entire row, even breaking given pieces.
projectylnpl 2:09 pm
UNRELATED TAYLORS. What.
projectylnpl 2:27 pm
And top seam starts BAND... I vaguely remember this being a thing. Either Thompson Twins or Duran Duran, I think?
projectylnpl 2:28 pm
Yep, it's DURAN DURAN.
projectylnpl 2:29 pm
A lot of these are ten letters long, but not all.
projectylnpl 2:34 pm
Okay, doing Cash. *crossed fingers that this won't take forever*
projectylnpl 2:40 pm
28D is a four-digit cube of a prime number.
projectylnpl 2:41 pm
So is 35D.
projectylnpl 2:42 pm
Those primes can only be 11, 13, 17, or 19.
projectylnpl 2:42 pm
Either way, that gives me the first digit of 21A...
projectylnpl 2:42 pm
Not that that helps much.
projectylnpl 2:43 pm
Oh hey, 43A is three digits and twice a two-digit number, so its first digit is 1, which gives me a digit in one of those cubes.
projectylnpl 2:44 pm
Okay, got those pinned down to 17 and 4913.
projectylnpl 2:46 pm
5A is a six-digit cube of a two-digit prime such that its last digit is the prime's first digit. Spreadsheet says...
projectylnpl 2:47 pm
Oh, and its first digit is odd from 5D.
projectylnpl 2:49 pm
Ding! One possibility: 73 and 389017.
projectylnpl 2:52 pm
And that gives me a few more entries. Significantly, I have 64 coins total in my left pocket.
projectylnpl 2:53 pm
I have 561 peckels in both pockets, total.
projectylnpl 2:54 pm
That means peckels are probably either 11 or 17 cents.
projectylnpl 2:58 pm
A haytime's worth 11 cents.
projectylnpl 2:59 pm
So unless I have a huge number of peckels, they're 17 cents.
projectylnpl 3:08 pm
Norters are 5 or 23 cents.
projectylnpl 3:13 pm
Quaypennies are 3 or 29.
projectylnpl 3:20 pm
Damn. I've messed something up.
projectylnpl 3:21 pm
Bolting from this one.
projectylnpl 3:21 pm
If this is a nearly pure meta, there's got to be some property to the answers that I'm not seeing.
projectylnpl 3:26 pm
Lots of Us.
projectylnpl 3:36 pm
Hm. Whatever's going on with the answer, it has to affect OKGO, which narrows things down a lot.
projectylnpl 3:36 pm
Anyway, need to keep going. Tennis Rackets.
projectylnpl 3:55 pm
Huh. Zelkova's new to me.
projectylnpl 4:02 pm
?EA??R?ICE
projectylnpl 4:02 pm
TEA SERVICE?
projectylnpl 4:08 pm
Yep. All but one clue solved. Don't get VETTING.
projectylnpl 4:09 pm
So I'm left with two stuck at extraction, one I'm dreading restarting, and the meta. Hm.
projectylnpl 4:13 pm
It really is weird that I'm getting so many ten-letter answers, but some that aren't. I might actually want to check those.
projectylnpl 4:13 pm
UMLAUT might technically be N-DIAERESIS...
projectylnpl 4:14 pm
And unless I've misguessed the clue phrase, OKGO's got to be OKGO.
projectylnpl 4:14 pm
Going to try and fully finish that one to be sure.
projectylnpl 4:26 pm
?HISTOOSHALLPASSBAN?. That really doesn't have much wiggle room.
projectylnpl 4:27 pm
Going to finish up Comic Book Guy, the other non-ten.
projectylnpl 4:29 pm
Yeah, that's definitely the clue phrase I thought it would be.
projectylnpl 4:33 pm
Hm. Getting something from Book of the Month. EACH Y...
projectylnpl 4:34 pm
Yeah. EACH YEAR
projectylnpl 4:34 pm
...
projectylnpl 4:36 pm
EACH YEAR LATIN.
projectylnpl 4:36 pm
PER ANNUM.
projectylnpl 4:37 pm
Hm. It's possible exactly half of the answers are ten letters long.
projectylnpl 4:46 pm
Ooh, erratum on Cash on exactly the spot where I was getting a contradiction.
projectylnpl 4:49 pm
Yep, that works. *keeps going there*
projectylnpl 5:18 pm
Finally a bit of endgame progress - dinnies are worth 37, and I have 19 of them in my left pocket.
projectylnpl 5:18 pm
...and 13 in my right pocket.
projectylnpl 5:35 pm
Lowest to highest, I get SM ?? ?? RO OS. SMACKEROOS looks likely.
projectylnpl 5:47 pm
Pressing through confirms it.
projectylnpl 5:49 pm
SMACKEROOS and CASEWORKER have an awful lot of letters in common...
projectylnpl 5:50 pm
And deleting shared ones leaves WER as in ANSWER at the end...
projectylnpl 5:52 pm
There's an A, an N, and an S in MANO DE DIOS, the answer that would go before that. But I can't pull MODEDIO out of any other answers.
projectylnpl 5:52 pm
MANO DE DIOS also has all the letters of DIAMOND, but I don't think any other answers have that sort of property. OKGO certainly doesn't.
projectylnpl 6:25 pm
Stepping away from this for a while.
projectylnpl 9:46 pm
Possible breakthrough on Mudflaps? They're five of the six New England states; the missing one is New Hampshire's LIVEFREEORDIE.
projectylnpl 9:48 pm
That's 110 total letters in the answers...
[...and there my logging ended; after some more staring, I switched over to testsolving the hopefully-soon-to-be-publicly-released prehunt I was working on with dalryaug and canadianpuzzler at the time. I didn't actually have the insight into the meta until after the first wave of hints was released, causing me to re-evaluate the importance of the "barking up the wrong tree" line that had only sort of caught my attention until then.]
projectylnpl 9:52 am
Getting ready...
projectylnpl 10:09 am
Noticed while printing - giftgivers are cluing traditional anniversary gifts. Minnie PEARL, Rin TIN TIN, etc. Going to get all of those before solving.
projectylnpl 10:12 am
Heh, Emeriled.
projectylnpl 10:12 am
Huh. Either there's a different Ron or I have two Woods.
projectylnpl 10:13 am
Ah, right, Silver.
projectylnpl 10:16 am
Okay, 5th lines up with what's clearly identified as the meta. That's appropriate.
projectylnpl 10:19 am
I have one for every multiple of five from 5 to 60, and they have an unambiguous traditional ordering.
projectylnpl 10:20 am
Staring at A Surprise...
projectylnpl 10:21 am
I have eleven regular puzzles, and eighteen rows here.
projectylnpl 10:23 am
Names I didn't recognize turn out to be a candy maker, the Marquis de Sade, and someone from Mott the Hoople (I think? Wikipedia calls him "Peter").
projectylnpl 10:24 am
Actual puzzles now. Gadget's on top of my stack, and it looks like one of those puzzles I don't have a name for with the modifications.
projectylnpl 10:24 am
M(EGAD!)ETH...
projectylnpl 10:25 am
SKIS -> KISS... These are metal bands?
projectylnpl 10:26 am
It is the Tin puzzle...
projectylnpl 10:26 am
Okay, not all metal. (HA)YES...
projectylnpl 10:28 am
GARBAGE...
projectylnpl 10:28 am
ACDC. I like that one.
projectylnpl 10:30 am
OASIS... Now looking for an authoratative pronouncement that works and is long enough.
projectylnpl 10:30 am
MMANDC. No.
projectylnpl 10:32 am
Looking up Zodiac order...
projectylnpl 10:33 am
FOGHAT. I don't envy people who have to figure that one out without having heard of it; I barely have.
projectylnpl 10:36 am
Oh, scratch that, the added letters aren't arbitrary.
projectylnpl 10:39 am
Oh, hey, never noticed that about Gene Siskel's name before.
projectylnpl 10:41 am
?HIS?O?SHAL???SSBA??
projectylnpl 10:41 am
THIS TOO SHALL PASS BAND, OK GO.
projectylnpl 10:42 am
Going for speed this month, as I've got testsolving to do today as well. Will finish the rest of the bands later.
projectylnpl 10:43 am
Going to try W.BG.E. now.
projectylnpl 10:44 am
BENDER fits in the appropriate spot...
projectylnpl 10:44 am
These are voices of fictional robots, I think. THE IRON GIANT, CROW T. ROBOT...
projectylnpl 10:46 am
And in between, probably D&D monsters? The Android's Dungeon etc. etc.
projectylnpl 10:48 am
AN DM EN FI LM going the opposite direction...
projectylnpl 10:50 am
Britney Spears voiced a robot? Why?
projectylnpl 10:55 am
Ah. One of the many things I've blacked out in my mind with regards to Goldmember.
projectylnpl 10:57 am
Film with Life?????? and Sandmen = LOGAN'S RUN, I think.
projectylnpl 10:57 am
Yeah, Lifeclocks were a thing in that movie.
projectylnpl 10:58 am
Office looks pretty easy.
projectylnpl 10:58 am
SEE-THROUGH should crack 4 pretty quickly...
projectylnpl 11:04 am
Huh. Three buggy letters. Two of them just aren't encrypted, and one's just wrong.
projectylnpl 11:04 am
All are A, C, or E...
projectylnpl 11:08 am
Minor bug - looks like MAITRE D' needs a space after it.
projectylnpl 11:12 am
No, he doesn't HATE anything. I'm just an uncultured lout who hadn't heard the full term before.
projectylnpl 11:14 am
Oh, duh! The wrong letters all have accents on them.
projectylnpl 11:23 am
Three per code so far. SPI???TAPACE???
projectylnpl 11:24 am
Resorting to automated pattern-matching to crack #2. TRAVELLER gets it.
projectylnpl 11:27 am
Ah, okay. A sharper solver than I could probably have gotten COUCH POTATO by eye.
projectylnpl 11:28 am
SPINALTAPACC??? = UMLAUT.
projectylnpl 11:29 am
OKGO, LOGAN'S RUN, UMLAUT. What can I do with those?
projectylnpl 11:31 am
Mudflaps.
projectylnpl 11:40 am
Oh! These are license plate slogans...
projectylnpl 11:40 am
And it took me all four damn movie titles to see that they were car makes. *facepalm*
projectylnpl 11:47 am
Okay, five states. What do I do with them?
projectylnpl 11:48 am
Order of admission gives WNFEM.
projectylnpl 11:48 am
May as well finish the grid, see if that helps.
projectylnpl 11:52 am
The actual license plates don't show much beyond the number, state name, and slogan.
projectylnpl 11:53 am
Bailing on that.
projectylnpl 11:53 am
Boxes?
projectylnpl 12:10 pm
Gotten to ?AS?WO?KER while AFK. Nice easy puzzle, just need to finish it.
projectylnpl 12:11 pm
CASEWORKER.
projectylnpl 12:14 pm
Books?
projectylnpl 12:16 pm
Araine Dewey has no Wikipedia page.
projectylnpl 12:16 pm
But she wrote FEBold FEBoldson...
projectylnpl 12:18 pm
DECision Points and JANe Eyre clinch it.
projectylnpl 12:19 pm
First instinct - take the letter in the same position as the corresponding typo, shift it the same amount...
projectylnpl 12:20 pm
But OCTopussy is too short.
projectylnpl 12:22 pm
Shifts as indices doesn't work either.
projectylnpl 12:24 pm
Hornsby's misspelled.
projectylnpl 12:25 pm
Wait, no, Wikipedia's being dumb. That's an actor.
projectylnpl 12:25 pm
Nick Hornby's an author.
projectylnpl 12:25 pm
(Who apparently isn't known as Nicholas?)
projectylnpl 12:29 pm
Heh, it starts and ends with DECISION POINTS and DECEPTION POINT. Coincidence or politcal commentary? (Or part of the puzzle?)
projectylnpl 12:29 pm
All books ID'd.
projectylnpl 12:33 pm
Oh hey, the full title is Octopussy and The Living Daylights. Didn't know that.
projectylnpl 12:42 pm
Switching to Gloves.
projectylnpl 12:42 pm
Sets of five, with not all represented.
projectylnpl 12:44 pm
Books of the Torah are all on different fingers on right-hand gloves; EXODUS belongs on the thumn.
projectylnpl 12:44 pm
*thumb.
projectylnpl 12:45 pm
????? E?I?S
projectylnpl 12:46 pm
M???? E?I?S
projectylnpl 12:46 pm
M??O?E?I?S
projectylnpl 12:47 pm
M?NO?E?I?S
projectylnpl 12:49 pm
MANO?E?IOS... what?
projectylnpl 12:50 pm
MANO DE DIOS, maybe?
projectylnpl 12:51 pm
Yep.
projectylnpl 12:52 pm
Can no longer say all answers are different lengths.
projectylnpl 12:56 pm
I feel like I ought to have enough answers to see what's going on here...
projectylnpl 12:56 pm
Soup.
projectylnpl 12:57 pm
I think I see what's going on - assemble a list of ingredients, in between which are extra letters that spell the soup.
projectylnpl 12:58 pm
BISQUE with O left over...
projectylnpl 1:06 pm
Oh, letters are alphabetized. That'll help.
projectylnpl 1:06 pm
Can't get #8, AAGLMON. Enumeration says I'll be dropping two...
projectylnpl 1:10 pm
SNERT is a soup?
projectylnpl 1:10 pm
SNERT is a soup.
projectylnpl 1:11 pm
O?T???S?U?
projectylnpl 1:15 pm
O?T??LS?U?
projectylnpl 1:15 pm
Gotta be OXTAIL SOUP.
projectylnpl 1:19 pm
MANO DE DIOS = SADE + DOMINO...
projectylnpl 1:24 pm
I guess a Pixar award would be a Pixie...
projectylnpl 1:24 pm
Candy, Marquis... yeah, this is working.
projectylnpl 1:29 pm
ANSWER I? L?CUS AWARD...
projectylnpl 1:29 pm
This isn't the meta. Huh.
projectylnpl 1:36 pm
But it gets some extra attention...
projectylnpl 1:37 pm
Low-key, Okie, logey, Casey...
projectylnpl 1:37 pm
Umlaut doesn't really work so well.
projectylnpl 1:37 pm
Nor oxtail soup.
projectylnpl 1:38 pm
Okay, getting graph paper for Tailor.
projectylnpl 1:58 pm
Looks like some down clues have letters that go on answer seams.
projectylnpl 2:02 pm
No, not just between pieces - looks like I need to add at least one entire row, even breaking given pieces.
projectylnpl 2:09 pm
UNRELATED TAYLORS. What.
projectylnpl 2:27 pm
And top seam starts BAND... I vaguely remember this being a thing. Either Thompson Twins or Duran Duran, I think?
projectylnpl 2:28 pm
Yep, it's DURAN DURAN.
projectylnpl 2:29 pm
A lot of these are ten letters long, but not all.
projectylnpl 2:34 pm
Okay, doing Cash. *crossed fingers that this won't take forever*
projectylnpl 2:40 pm
28D is a four-digit cube of a prime number.
projectylnpl 2:41 pm
So is 35D.
projectylnpl 2:42 pm
Those primes can only be 11, 13, 17, or 19.
projectylnpl 2:42 pm
Either way, that gives me the first digit of 21A...
projectylnpl 2:42 pm
Not that that helps much.
projectylnpl 2:43 pm
Oh hey, 43A is three digits and twice a two-digit number, so its first digit is 1, which gives me a digit in one of those cubes.
projectylnpl 2:44 pm
Okay, got those pinned down to 17 and 4913.
projectylnpl 2:46 pm
5A is a six-digit cube of a two-digit prime such that its last digit is the prime's first digit. Spreadsheet says...
projectylnpl 2:47 pm
Oh, and its first digit is odd from 5D.
projectylnpl 2:49 pm
Ding! One possibility: 73 and 389017.
projectylnpl 2:52 pm
And that gives me a few more entries. Significantly, I have 64 coins total in my left pocket.
projectylnpl 2:53 pm
I have 561 peckels in both pockets, total.
projectylnpl 2:54 pm
That means peckels are probably either 11 or 17 cents.
projectylnpl 2:58 pm
A haytime's worth 11 cents.
projectylnpl 2:59 pm
So unless I have a huge number of peckels, they're 17 cents.
projectylnpl 3:08 pm
Norters are 5 or 23 cents.
projectylnpl 3:13 pm
Quaypennies are 3 or 29.
projectylnpl 3:20 pm
Damn. I've messed something up.
projectylnpl 3:21 pm
Bolting from this one.
projectylnpl 3:21 pm
If this is a nearly pure meta, there's got to be some property to the answers that I'm not seeing.
projectylnpl 3:26 pm
Lots of Us.
projectylnpl 3:36 pm
Hm. Whatever's going on with the answer, it has to affect OKGO, which narrows things down a lot.
projectylnpl 3:36 pm
Anyway, need to keep going. Tennis Rackets.
projectylnpl 3:55 pm
Huh. Zelkova's new to me.
projectylnpl 4:02 pm
?EA??R?ICE
projectylnpl 4:02 pm
TEA SERVICE?
projectylnpl 4:08 pm
Yep. All but one clue solved. Don't get VETTING.
projectylnpl 4:09 pm
So I'm left with two stuck at extraction, one I'm dreading restarting, and the meta. Hm.
projectylnpl 4:13 pm
It really is weird that I'm getting so many ten-letter answers, but some that aren't. I might actually want to check those.
projectylnpl 4:13 pm
UMLAUT might technically be N-DIAERESIS...
projectylnpl 4:14 pm
And unless I've misguessed the clue phrase, OKGO's got to be OKGO.
projectylnpl 4:14 pm
Going to try and fully finish that one to be sure.
projectylnpl 4:26 pm
?HISTOOSHALLPASSBAN?. That really doesn't have much wiggle room.
projectylnpl 4:27 pm
Going to finish up Comic Book Guy, the other non-ten.
projectylnpl 4:29 pm
Yeah, that's definitely the clue phrase I thought it would be.
projectylnpl 4:33 pm
Hm. Getting something from Book of the Month. EACH Y...
projectylnpl 4:34 pm
Yeah. EACH YEAR
projectylnpl 4:34 pm
...
projectylnpl 4:36 pm
EACH YEAR LATIN.
projectylnpl 4:36 pm
PER ANNUM.
projectylnpl 4:37 pm
Hm. It's possible exactly half of the answers are ten letters long.
projectylnpl 4:46 pm
Ooh, erratum on Cash on exactly the spot where I was getting a contradiction.
projectylnpl 4:49 pm
Yep, that works. *keeps going there*
projectylnpl 5:18 pm
Finally a bit of endgame progress - dinnies are worth 37, and I have 19 of them in my left pocket.
projectylnpl 5:18 pm
...and 13 in my right pocket.
projectylnpl 5:35 pm
Lowest to highest, I get SM ?? ?? RO OS. SMACKEROOS looks likely.
projectylnpl 5:47 pm
Pressing through confirms it.
projectylnpl 5:49 pm
SMACKEROOS and CASEWORKER have an awful lot of letters in common...
projectylnpl 5:50 pm
And deleting shared ones leaves WER as in ANSWER at the end...
projectylnpl 5:52 pm
There's an A, an N, and an S in MANO DE DIOS, the answer that would go before that. But I can't pull MODEDIO out of any other answers.
projectylnpl 5:52 pm
MANO DE DIOS also has all the letters of DIAMOND, but I don't think any other answers have that sort of property. OKGO certainly doesn't.
projectylnpl 6:25 pm
Stepping away from this for a while.
projectylnpl 9:46 pm
Possible breakthrough on Mudflaps? They're five of the six New England states; the missing one is New Hampshire's LIVEFREEORDIE.
projectylnpl 9:48 pm
That's 110 total letters in the answers...
[...and there my logging ended; after some more staring, I switched over to testsolving the hopefully-soon-to-be-publicly-released prehunt I was working on with dalryaug and canadianpuzzler at the time. I didn't actually have the insight into the meta until after the first wave of hints was released, causing me to re-evaluate the importance of the "barking up the wrong tree" line that had only sort of caught my attention until then.]