rehydrATEd

notATE

there's a triple

WINdows, draWINg a blank

So far the edit doesn't preclude my idea

rehydraTED, downhearTED

Unless he wants it to only be horizontal and vertical connections

which isn't possible

Huh?

Are all the rebuses solved?

Yep

@Deusovi nice work on the rebuses. Can't see a link between them for the next step though

DOWnhearted, land DOWn under winDOWs

Cool. None of you updated the answer I guess

I did.

BLAck sheep, drawing a BLAnk

@Sconibulus welp, that pokes a hole in my theory

I thought triples would be shared by only 2, not 3

Oh so there is ted and dow. And bla. Blateddow?

Sconibulus hasn't identified triples.

I think the goal is to make a 3x3 square

I sort of expected a 3x3 pattern

Maybe an anagram

Huh, interesting.

columns sharing a union, rows sharing a union

Good idea...

Maybe I'm being a bit misleading, but sconibulus message is also misleading.

i got pulled away for a bit - but i assume those two words were bolded deliberately, and yeah, they share letters. (4, actually, but if 3 suffice to make the unions, cool)

I'm not leading at all :)

this is following :)

triPLEs, PLEase works

yah. they're sequential, I didn't think of that limitation

so that's stronger than "4 anywhere"

Edgeless puzzle... what on earth is that?

but if Sconibulus' triples aren't triples, then that means my idea was wrong

and makes better sense with "triples" too

@BeastlyGerbil Well, presumably it's a puzzle without edges.

Maybe it's a clue. Edgeless = take 'edge' away from a word

@Deusovi Your ideas intrigue me. I wish to subscribe to your newsletter.

I think I'll stop saying anything remotely hinty now and just see how this plays out. It's my favourite step.

brandiSHEs, black SHEep

Although, ugh sorry for poor form editing a puzzle during the solve process

@TheGreatEscaper Hey, I've done it. :P

I edited rule two again. I suppose the less ambiguity the better.

*step two

ah, there's the issue - DOWNhearted and land DOWN under

Ah.

yeah, I saw that, but the DOW triple triple still exists

true, but we can separate them

"windows" goes in between "downhearted" and "land down under"

so adjacent tiles only share a triple

hm, there's another hole in my theory

subindex, windows, and land down under all have triples with each other

(IND, NDE, and DOW)

NDO

but how is that bad?

no, NDE in subiNDEx and land down uNDEr

oh

it means we can't place them in a 3x3 grid so all "triples" are adjacent

where is NDE or NDO a triple?

oh, wait, NDE is under and index

yeah, I just said that

land down under is nddo though?

NDO isn't a triple

I never said it was

oh, never mind, I got confused

We might be completely wrong...

I'm not sure about the jigsaws you guys played with... But insert spoilery comment here

*you guys have played with before

I think we have those right but we're using them wrong

maybe it's not a 3x3 grid?

Edgeless must hint at something, a grid has edges

@TheGreatEscaper you're the other person making the current clues for Mith, right?

I'd thought of a torus, but TGE confirmed non-noneuclidean-ness

The only thing I can think of that's 'edgeless' is an infinite plane and that doesn't help much

Would it be bad to edit the drawing a blank rebus now? I can credit Deusovi and Rubio for the suggestion.

Go for it.

Are you changing the word?

@Khale_Kitha I'm not currently doing any clues for Mith

Ah, okay

@Beastly nah, it's just I got a few complaints about 'blank'

I can't remember who it was, then

(and I'm also making one other edit which I forgot to do a while back and is actually important, ahhhhh sorry!)

Proofreading is important! :P

I'm a very careless person... :(

It shouldn't disadvantage the solving process, anyhow.

Ooh, a removed corner

in the interest of full disclosure, I got rid of a number.

OOPS

Oops?

*forgot to credit Deus and Rubio

Its not a bad puzzle oops, thank goodness :)

Everything should be okay now, sorry for the numerous edits I've made.

Really really sorry! There was nothing catastrophic, anyhow, so there should be no disadvantage to the solving process from this point on.

No worries

So many of the better puzzles here have gone through a crash testing phase :)

Okay, @Deu. I need one final opinion before I send this to Mith, lol. So you won't be able to answer that part of his puzzle, if I do.

haha

@Rubio I can vouch for that...

@Khale_Kitha Sure, that's fine.

OHMIGOD THE RICKROLL. That's hilarious, @Khale_Kitha :D

lol, TGE

?

sent, Deu

He must have been looking through my puzzles

I have a question

Go ahead

If I find an answer that's several years old, but is not a good answer (e.g. link-only), is it acceptable to flag it?

Specifically, I was looking at this

I don't see why not, personally

ugh.

ugh?

I hate answers with only links

ok so I guess we can now for sure state it's not going to be a 3x3 grid with connections based on triple letters

Because in my experience, 80% of the times, the links are dead

since "notate" only connects once, with "rehydrate", via "ate"

yep

Hrm.

Anyone know what I would flag it as?

If the links aren't dead...not sure

Unkess

*Unless 'no-tate' isn't quite right... (Ugh sorry I know this is iffy)

You could pose an edit for it, instead

...Wait, "notate" is wrong?

notated??

It's almost right... I was hoping that step two would help solvers reconsider notate, not for notate to kill step two :P

LACTATE

obviously it didn't quite work... intervention

@TheGreatEscaper, got it

:S yup! Sorry for making a two-answer rebus...

lol.

bingo

Nice!

Now, this can be rotated or reflected

if we assume subindex goes into the top left, that leaves two possibilities

Can you guys test these links, please?

Broken.

sla.ckers.org?

Site doesn't exist.

Doesn't load for me. (My input is very helpful)

well done @Deusovi!

@Khale_Kitha: Responded to your email. That definition definitely doesn't work.

Well, then I'll flag, since it doesn't work for me either

Def'n should be just fine. Supposed to work as a normal crossword clue, which it does

No, it really doesn't

That wouldn't work at all in a regular crossword (or in a cryptic, for that matter).

It strikes me that most of those share letters in a certain order.

BLA -> AND -> DRA (with LAN in the middle).

@DainIIIronfoot Yeah, I've managed to arrange them into a grid.

@Silenus You split APPEND? the horrors. the outrage!

Hm?

Anyway, now we're stuck on the Grandma rebuses unless we can manage to get an orientation

WIN + DOW with IND in the middle.

@Deusovi there's only two, aren't there?

responded, Deu. It fits per the wiki and everything that's been explained when I'ev been asking things :)

Yeah.

@Rubio, get over it! It takes all sorts to make a world!

See if step 3 means anything to you yet.

@Silenus Hehe. I'm not objecting. Purists, I hear, might be calling for your head though.

@Rubio, Purists might be calling for 'y'?

Wow.

I'm ...

just going to pretend that didn't happen.

haha, sorry

:)

@Deusovi I don't suppose you can stuff the numerics into your grid without making a complete disaster of it

@Silenus Your head, according to computer scientists, would be "S".

@Rubio I can expand the grid, and try

busy, give me a sec

NO. I WILL NOT WAIT. SOLVING THIS REBUS IS THE HIGHEST PRIORITY THING FOR ALL OF US. WHAT'S WRONG WITH YOU. I QUESTION YOUR LOYALTY AND DEDICATION. MY CAPS LOCK IS ANGRY. I CAN'T BELIEVE YOU ARE MAKING US WAIT. TAP. TAP. TAP. THAT'S THE SOUND OF MY FOOT TAPPING. "YOU HEAR, MY FOOT'S SOUND, INITIALLY TYMPANIC AND PETULANT. (3)" COME ON DAMN YOU.

wow. that was actually both painful and cathartic.

...are you okay?

Hi. I'm here. I'm clearly not ok.

Fair enough.

Note the missing number a corner

hah. Nice @ChrisCudmore

...One issue, Chris. We thought the decks went in the top left because of the missing number

:P

and that still gives two orientations

Ah. didn't even think of that.

Is two bad D: I can rub out another corner

(me being a terrible puzzle maker)

@ChrisCudmore Yeah, I stopped working on it when the number was removed, because no one was interested in it

nah

preserve a little ambiguity unless it's breaking

I think if clue 3 is interpreted correctly, there's no ambiguity as to which assembly is correct.

Clues 3 and 4 actually.

Presumably we need to look at the numbers in the middle four squares

(I'm vaguely surprised nobody scolded me for the bad cryptic in that pseudo-rant. hehe)

it was okay - the "you hear" wasn't necessary though

Overly flowery def, but it's not a dealbreaker

I know. that's what I meant. :)

Moving on. So

I'm working on putting the numbers in currently

There's one orientation.

And there's the other.

you have LA twice?