ANSWERS: Meta-Crossword #3 (Block Letters)

It's been about two weeks since I've posted my third meta-crossword (which you can still solve here, with a hint located here), so it's time for me to reveal the answers! But first, a list of people who have solved it:

• Eric Maddy **
• Paolo Pasco **
• Grant Fikes **
• Adam Weaver **
• Sam Levitin **
• Christian H.P. **
• Walker Anderson **
• Tyler Hinman **
• Dan Bowden **
• Mom **
• Yossi Fendel **
• Lynn Sweeney ½ a star (She needed a lot of help figuring out the meta and FINAL ANSWER. Not helping matters was the fact that she, surprisingly, had never even played the FINAL ANSWER!)
• M. Sean Molley *

Now just click on "Read more" for the answers, along with some solver comments and an anecdote on how scared I was regarding what I perceived to be a very hard puzzle!

Here's an explanation: you might have noticed that there are clusters of letters strewn across the grid. These letters form the seven shapes of blocks known as "Tetrominos", which are named after the letter they most resemble. So the "J"s are in the shape of the "J-Block",  the "T"s are in the shape of the "T-Block", and so on. These blocks are best known for their use in TETRIS, which is the answer to the BONUS PUZZLE!

Here's how paranoid I was when it came to this puzzle's difficulty: Firstly, I actually "borrowed" Grant Fikes' test solver Joseph DeVincentis to see if he could solve it! (He did, of course, and he even provided some pointers to make it easier to solve, like mentioning boxing in 1-Down's clue) Secondly, I originally left the puzzle unlocked, meaning that the options to "Check" and "Reveal" the answers were present in the puzzle (These options are available in my first meta since I didn't know how to get rid of them at the time, but for this one, there's no excuse). Solver Grant Fikes noticed that (though he still managed to solve it normally), and said that "you left the solution unencrypted to where the solver need only reveal it. (In my meta-crosswords, I replaced the actual answer with a hidden message not pertaining to the actual puzzle or its meta answer; although Across Lite offers a rudimentary encryption of puzzle answers where a 4-digit PIN is needed to unlock it, my first meta crossword involved rebus squares, and even when the solution's encrypted, looking at the puzzle file in a text editor makes the presence of rebus squares obvious. Worse, the answer was DOUBLEMINT, as in MM, II, NN, and TT, so yeah, being able to solve the puzzle from those four squares without knowing any of the answers? Not okay!)

My other issue is with the prompt being "the final answer is a video game." When you submitted the draft months ago [to give to Joseph], without actually looking at it, from the title and that prompt alone, I suspected it would be TETRIS. "A six-letter proper noun" might have been my prompt of choice. Still, marvelous construction!" Because of his comments, I had quickly replaced the puzzle with one that was locked. Oh, and he came up with an excellent alternate clue for "IIII" regarding the fact that some clocks have that instead of "IV": "It may be opposite from X on a circle?"

Peach got the Tanooki powerup! Too bad Super Mario 3D Land is over by this point...

Solver Paolo Pasco second-guessed himself, as seen by this series of responses: He first sent "TETRIS (Ooh, this one's good.)", but then he sent "Wait, ignore that. Wrong answer", and finally, he sent "Oh, no, wait, right answer. I think. Yeah, TETRIS. (That email chain was a roller coaster from start to finish)"

Told'ja it was a cute Pokémon...

Solver Christian H.P. wrote: "Great puzzle, with a very satisfying 'aha' moment. For a moment, I wondered if the letters in the tetromino shapes would spell out the answer, but I'm pretty there's no puzzle video game called "O. J. Liszt"! (Good title for a game about playing piano in ill-fitting gloves...)"