One Word Wonder

This is a cool illusion. If you look at the squares, some of them look grey until you look directly at one

It took you 10 seconds to solve this puzzle.
You were the 1st Tanga member to solve this puzzle.

woo-hoo, two firsts in a row!

...oh, wait...

Okay, I've got an idea of what to do, but I'm not sure where to find the resources to do it...

i'm with you dajagr. I thought I found a potential resource, but it doesn't seem to be as fruitful as I had hoped.

Even if I could fill the grid in, there doesn't appear to be any second step....

(This puzzle is making me cross)

if anyone gets this one deliberately, I call shenanigans

I see the second step, I just don't see how to fill in the boxes

Wiki seems to help. Now to fill in.

I get the odd feeling I'm overthinking this...

It took you 11 minutes and 19 seconds to solve this puzzle.
You were the 2nd Tanga member to solve this puzzle.

I only did the top third of it. Thankfully that was enough. Even with the Wiki gods, there were so many options, and so few seemed to fit.

First hint:

There is only one four-letter entry. Fortunately, it's right at the top. Even more fortunately, unlike most of the others, it's unequivocable what goes there.

We never get to brag like this so ...

* It took you 13 seconds to solve this puzzle.
* You were the 3rd Tanga member to solve this puzzle.
* Average solve time: 3 minutes and 54 seconds.
* Median solve time: 13 seconds.
* 3.614% of Tanga members that have attempted this puzzle have solved it.

This was an educated guess and I have no desire to backsolve this particular puzzle.

congrats Uethym and Zot!

I see a Tau, but it doesn't seem to fit in the boxes, WTF?

That "Checking Answer..." thing is kind of flaky.

Got three of them in the grid, then took an educated guess at the smallest one and said "Hey, I bet the answer is..."

Not sure I'm gonna backsolve, though.

* It took you 26 minutes and 15 seconds to solve this puzzle.
* You were the 6th Tanga member to solve this puzzle.
* Average solve time: 13 minutes and 2 seconds.
* Median solve time: 17 minutes and 13 seconds.
* 5.769% of Tanga members that have attempted this puzzle have solved it.

Youch. Too many possibilities for some of those. Clever, but... Youch.

I actually managed to put the entire list together. It's really tempting to put a list up on BGG, but I may wait a little and see how other people are doing.

[Edit] I am impressed, mind, that one of the perennial banes managed not to rear its ugly head.

Thank the LORD! I just got it on a combination of lucky guesswork.

It took you 26 minutes and 57 seconds to solve this puzzle.
You were the 8th Tanga member to solve this puzzle.

Looks clever.

The lengths of the words that I have don't match the numbers of boxes.

I have words that match the number of boxes but don't intersect.

[18] Lots of them have multiple names. Start looking for synonyms.

You were the 11th Tanga member to solve this puzzle.

Cute idea, but WAY too much ambiguity in the answers. At least the answer wasn't CROSSWORD, though.

http://www.seiyaku.com/customs/crosses/index-al... has a huge number of names

It took you 29 minutes and 41 seconds to solve this puzzle.
You were the 18th Tanga member to solve this puzzle.

I think my eyes are crossed after doing that one! Got tripped up by another darn plural too. Like others above, I got enough clues to figure out an answer but I don't feel like solving for all of them.

i actually worked it all out, simple idea, but just takes time to keep plugging them in and see what fits

It took you 25 minutes and 34 seconds to solve this puzzle.
You were the 29th Tanga member to solve this puzzle.

I got it all worked out except for the southern-most 6-letter "across" word. Nice idea for a puzzle -- once I had likely candidates for each entry, it all fell into place. The possible ambiguities made it a little intimidating at first, but in the end it wasn't so bad.

I hate to be like this, but with the ambiguity, this isn't even fun. I'm calling UNCLE!

Gah, there are like three names or so for each of these! Too much trial and error.

i'm getting so frustrated. there are too many options for some and it makes it really difficult.

it ain't that bad, i'm sure the four saints would agree

Second hint:

Yes, a lot of them have ambiguities. Fortunately, among the ones that don't are a couple with unique lengths (no other grid entry has the same number of letters), and which give you the first few letters of the overall answer. So concentrate on those.

Remember -- like most puzzles, you don't have to "finish" it (in this case, fill in the whole grid). You just have to get the answer.

It took you 18 minutes and 36 seconds to solve this puzzle.
You were the 46th Tanga member to solve this puzzle.

The 4-letter word isn't as hard as you'd normally think. Go for the ones attached to that answer next.

I used wikipedia to get them. Good luck

Ugh, I understand the puzzle completely, but that's way too many clues for this to be fun.

It's guessable after getting the upper five words, most of which are common enough.

No one ever promised you these puzzles would all be fun.

I'd start with the 7 and 11 letters and work out from there.

It's about as fun as getting T-boned when someone runs a red light...

[35] You're right, but Tanga should consider changing the menu graphic for today's from "Daily Fun" to "Daily Wikipedia Research" to be a little more accurate. ;-)

It took you 1 hour, 6 minutes and 3 seconds to solve this puzzle.
You were the 68th Tanga member to solve this puzzle.
Average solve time: 38 minutes and 16 seconds.
Median solve time: 36 minutes and 50 seconds.
32.075% of Tanga members that have attempted this puzzle

Well, I tried filling in the boxes, but finally gave up after alot of research. I just started plunking in guesses and got it on my fifth one. Geesh! I'll have to go back and see what words worked when this one has a solution posted.

"Remember--like most puzzles, you don't have to 'finish' it (in this case, fill in the whole grid). You just have to get the answer."

Sure, but it's a whole lot more enjoyable when you can fill in the entire puzzle. It's the puzzle that's fun (well, in most cases); finding the answer is just the corroboration that you did it correctly.

"No one ever promised you these puzzles would all be fun."

No they didn't, but if they ain't fun, there's no point in doing them. I can afford to go without a few Tanga points.

Took 13 minutes, but should have had it in 2. Cool puzzle, if a little ambiguous.

I am cross-eyed after doing this. Only solved six, then it hit me.

[37] vaevictus - LOL, looking back at this is funny.

Well,
Traveling again. I have heat and extremely extremely intermittent connectivity which is tough when there’s so much wiki-work involved.
But I got it finally (with the top 5) – can’t check my time, but I’d guess about an hour or so. -- ooh 51 mins.
Took me 20 minutes to reconnect to log this.
great - NOW I get good connection! go figure! Or not!

Not going to bother with this one after reading the comments in here and discovering that "AHrendahronon" isn't the answer.

[40]: Different strokes, I guess. For me, filling in the grid feels like busywork; the fun of puzzling comes from finding a way to cut laterally to the end zone.

I'll take a pass on these tanga points. Busywork solving and annoying topicality.

nevermind, got it

Wonderful idea for a puzzle. I guessed it after getting only 5 of the words into the grid. Lucky me since I don't have much more to go on!

thanks to [42] hld1970's reference to [37] vaevictus.

yesterdays was so much better.

Am I missing something, or is the only likely 4-letter one not depicted? That's what's throwing me off... I think I have most or all of the answers, but they don't quite fit, so I'm still looking for synonyms, and it perplexes me that the 4-letter answer is apparently missing...

Edit: Never mind - It was one of the "unofficial" synonyms of one of them that was the 4-letter answer. Would have been better if they had been a bit more standardized, but I'm pretty impressed that the puzzle maker was able to make it work correctly at all...

And just my opinion in general: I like the idea of having the final answer be related back to the nature of the puzzle, and I think a lot of others do too, based on the prevalence of it in the designs of late. However, I always think it's disappointing when a number of people are able to guess the answer without even attempting the puzzle, and I imagine the puzzle makers have to feel that much moreso.

For what it's worth, I submitted a puzzle recently where I did tie the answer back to the nature of the puzzle (obliquely), but I think (hope) it will be absolutely impossible to guess without completing the puzzle. My first draft of the puzzle had a much more guessable answer, and I ended up changing the design to remove the guessing aspect....

Tempus42: agreed!

Saw the puzzle, said 'are you kidding me?' looked on the discussion, found

[10]

and got it in 10 seconds.

Btw, I second [38]s motion.

Re:[44]
dlp, what does "ahrendahronon" mean? All I get from google is a lot of spam pages which makes me think it might be a real word.

Assuming that the four-letter one was "ankh" (since I didn't see any other possibility) I entered "AH..........." into a crossword solver. I have no idea what AHrendahronon means, but it was the only word that fit.