50. Now Read It Back to Me

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Typing this up while trying to shake off my bracket getting completely destroyed the last two days. March Madness indeed!

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1. Puzzle #49 recap

Puzzle #49 answer: PERFECT SQUARES

Correct entries: 57 (not a perfect square but 11^2 - 8^2)

So, if I make a grid where over 23% of the squares are black and there are 27 3-letter words, there is probably a good reason for that!

This grid was a bear to make, but it was also a lot of fun. The clue for the spanner MATHEMATICIAN implies we might need to be doing some substitutions of our own! And that's exactly what happens.

A lot of clues in this puzzle may have seemed cumbersome or vague, to the tune that you might even have to have hit reveal before finishing the grid.

Here are 14 of them, 7 in each direction.

1-A: Black, for one: PEA --> SEA

1-D: Character in a long-running NBC sitcom: PAM --> SAM

4-A: They may fill a very large saucer, briefly: ETS --> QTS (this was such a stretch, but I think it was Will's favorite clue of the switches; I struggled with this one but decided to play off the double meaning of "saucer").

4-D: He was seen on screens in the 1980s: EBERT --> QBERT (I played a couple rounds of the classic arcade game just now online).

7-A: Abbr. related to an important internal component: CPR --> CPU (tough to get a clue for this one).

9-D: It could be used for transportation, for short: RTE --> UTE (abbreviation for "route" or colloquialism for "sport utility vehicle")

16-A: It might store water: FLOE --> ALOE

16-D: Some radios FMS --> AMS

24-A: Team member who often defeated opponents in the 1980s: MET --> MRT (I liked this one - it helped the Mets were playing good ball in the '80s! Even I, as a Cubs fan, can recognize that.)

25-D: Big city sight, maybe: EATS --> RATS (I think you know which I'd prefer!)

36-A: Key in music: CFLAT --> EFLAT (technically, C-FLAT is just B, apparently)

36-D: They might be adorned with accessories: CARS --> EARS

24-D: Verb related to a bridge mishap: MISDEALT --> MISDEALS

49-A: Source of a liquid: TAP --> SAP

The original letters in the puzzle spell PERFECT, and the replacement letters spell SQUARES, making the answer to our puzzle PERFECT SQUARES, the meta answer.

Now, of course, that's all fine and good, but the puzzle should have something to do with squares! And it does!

The seven "Schrödinger" squares are located at the 7 numbers 1, 4, 9, 16, 25, 36, and 49 - and indeed, those are the seven PERFECT SQUARES in the grid! (I did not have to have exactly 49 numbered squares in the grid to accomplish this, but I did pull it off, albeit at the expense of some awkward black square placement.) Also, the title "7 by 7" might be a tiny bit of a stretch, but that does signal multiplication in the mathematical world.

Yes, this is one of those where you kind of have to see the meta-nism for the title to make sense, as opposed to using the title as an "in," perhaps, but I enjoyed the end result this time around and hope you did too!

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2. Many thanks to DrTom and KayW for some great feedback on this one! We're thinking Level 3 of 5.

Cross-posting my note on Crosshare to explain something:

Hey there! Mikey G here, hoping that you try meta #50 on for size.

This one is a bit avant-garde in that you might argue there are two separate mechanisms here. One was meant to be an Easter egg, but this egg just might give you what you need before perhaps the more hidden mechanism does. (Of course, you’re not required to find both.) Either way, may meta success be yours!

See you next time!

Mikey G

Best of luck, and may all your solves be beautiful!

Mikey G

The answer to the meta is a 4-letter title.