31. Match Game

EDIT: The meta has been withdrawn, and I'm declaring this one a dud, which will happen now and again. I will try to rectify that moving forward the best I can.

Obviously, I need to own it, and - in advance - I'm sorry. There is heavy crossover with this site and the Muggles forum here, and I made too many assumptions going into this one that turned out not to be true, as I should've recognized.

I am a huge fan of Matt Gaffney's weekly meta, which can be seen here, and I am a copious data nerd, which caused me to chronicle (in a spreadsheet, of course) all the titles, statistics, etc., of the meta since I started solving. I decided to make a tribute puzzle (which, in retrospect, could've been done in a much fairer way) by using four of his titles as theme entries. I tried forever to get something else to spell out, but I could only get MATT, which I thought was clever based on the symmetry. (You had to match up the four themed entries to titles of his meta puzzles and find the original answers to those metas.)

But it really wasn't clever and deemed, rightfully so, too difficult without a proper mechanism. Thus, since it is considered too experimental, I withdraw it and learn from this experience. (You can still find the PDF and .PUZ below - the one person who did unearth the answer to this before the maelstrom automatically is declared the victor.) The meta is a powerful creation, and I certainly fell short in this one. I am a human, after all, and I don't say this in a crestfallen way but with a way to continue to move forward in my hobby that I hope brings you some amount of joy in the process.

My only wish is that you didn't spend copious amounts of time on the meta and that the grid brought you at least a smile or two, as is my mission.

Until next time,

Mikey

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Meta #15

PDF / PUZ



1. Meta #14 recap

#13 answer: CATCH-22 or GRAVITY

Correct entries: 11

Winners: Darth - congrats!!


More explanation here!

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