This is the crossword puzzle thread

ooooooh. you gotta look at the asterisked clues

Reminiscent of the HOP ON POP gimmick of a few weeks ago.

Saw there were asterisks on Friday then put the puzzle down and forgot about them when I looked again on Monday to think about the meta. Wonder how many of these I will have to do before I can make it through a month?

tbh i connected the asterisks and the theme entries asap and it was still hard as hell bc i had never heard "oracle of omaha" before, and i don't think it's really that common a nickname

my two other possibilities were howard hamm (cause he's an oilman of oklahoma, you see) and oprah

So I guess if I am going to continue doing these I'd like to start when everybody else does and get the puzzle on puzzlesocial on Thursday night. But puzzlesocial website just says "New Puzzle Social website coming soon," Facebook app is a pig and I couldn't find this puzzle anyway, although maybe it is the one that says "AV Club, Matt Gaffney, Hard"
/disgruntled_moronic_amazon_reviewer

Also, labeled "A humorous daily puzzle by today's top constructors" or something like that. But I just clicked and it is in fact Matt's Meta.

And then clicked the print icon for the pdf so I don't have to deal with the solver app.

Sorry "the nation's top indie constructors"

But he just sent it anyway. Puzzle is easy, no clue about the meta.

and still no clue. This one seems to be hard. Leader board has only fourteen correct answers so far. Usually it is about eighty by one pm.

OK, some bigtime solvers DNF on this one.

Also, toyed with PMX First Words of Songs Theme Construction Contest but it really seems to be quite a bit of work- no wonder he wasn't able to do it himself.

**SPOILER ALERT**
So, for future reference, in this week's MGWCC you had to take part of each theme answer, anagram it to a classical composer, then take the first letters of those composers names to get another composer. Some sixty-odd people got it right.

i've never done any of those gaffney metas. guess i should get on it, eh

i'm mostly just catching up on all the NYT puzzles i haven't done this year via iphone app (up to mid-september now)

ugh. that doesn't even sound too bad. i think i was just spoiled with weeks 1-3.

OK, zachlyon, we got the two easy metas this month let's see how we do this weekend when the challenging third puzzle drops.

gaffney's? just tried the most recent one and got it (altho it's closed now)

Yeah, Gaffney.

i was too late on the first one and i didn't spend much time on it but i was thinking too hard and it went right over my head anyway. last one was sorta fun tho.

Didn't get this last one which many people apparently found pretty easy, although thankfully I didn't spend too much time on it. Still not quite on his wavelength. Also haven't quite accustomed myself to the amount that you might need Google and Wikipedia for the meta.

working retail at christmas, didn't even have a chance to look at it

Nowhere on the muller meta-meta, sent in for the hint but it didn't help.

ditto

Feel like the hint was no hint at all. Have had some half-baked ideas but either they don't seem to lead anywhere or they lead to too many ramifications to chase down - how much time are we supposed to spend on this? Would try harder if more people had solved it pre-hint. Of course we don't know yet how many the hint helped.

yeah i was already sort of going for what the hint suggested anyway since they kind of lend themselves to that interpretation

Yeah, exactly, was hoping the hint would be more about what the answer might be rather than elaborating on the cryptic instructions in a useless way.

/sourgrapes

i didn't get gaffney's last meta either

From last year? I didn't get it either but it was reasonably hard. This new one is easy as one would expect for Week One.

OK, I just sent in my joke answer since time is running out

Looks like FOUR people got it

Muller meta meta of course

looking at gaffney's leader list...

459.	Tom C.	01/06 - 22:04
460.	Regina C. 01/06 - 22:05
461.	Jim C.	01/06 - 22:06
462.	Mike C.	01/06 - 22:06
463.	John C.	01/06 - 22:07
464.	Gladys C. 01/06 - 22:07

Noticed that crew a few weeks ago.

Do U See?

any luck with gaffney? was gonna say i'm stuck but i literally just had an idea that i'm going with. uh nevermind.

Nope

well, if i'm right, it helps to internalize every part of the meta hint

the six-letter company one? p sure i got it

You probably got it, plenty of others did.

help me understand this clue + answer from this week's Inkwell puzzle (SPOILER i guess):

12D Getting it on demand = HARDER

oh i get it, duh. it's a 'getting it on' demand. i kept separating the phrase into 'getting it' 'on demand'.

Me too! I just did that this morning and was baffled.

glad it's not just me!

ugh latest gaffney is something about chess and i hate it

oh NO

i'm going to spend all weekend trying to figure out how to chess move the circle spots and it'll be completely wrong

yup this is driving me crazy, if we all put "C." at the end of our names can we work together

ha.

There was some kind of Fireball contest this week that I completely forgot to do.

Anyone going to ACPT this year? I am, but I am not feeling it yet.