Let's start by solving the clues.
| Chain Clue | Answer |
|---|
| Mouse sensitivity meas. | DPI |
| Crooked (archaic) | AGEE |
| Won a single slam each year from '18 to '21 | OSAKA |
| Fate | KISMET |
| A group of skilled workers | GUILD |
| Brine-bounded Man? | ISLE |
| Derivative of vomma | ULTIMA |
| Major hip vein | ILIAC |
| The common cold or food poisoning, for example | ILLNESS |
| Save an hr. in spr. with this | DST |
| Simba's mate | NALA |
| Kevin Mitnick was famous for cyber___ | CRIME |
| How do you solve a problem like her? | MARIA |
| Sped | HASTED |
| Rental agreement | LEASE |
| Chief of Staff Alexander | HAIG |
| Character voiced by Zach Eisen | AANG |
| Great (free) souvenirs from Wrigley | BASEBALLS |
| Smooth talking while substanceless | GLIB |
| US resource for the disabled, destitute, or elderly | SSI |
| Sticks' or bananas' group | BUNCH |
| This | CLUE |
| Doling | ISSUING |
| Across Clue | Answer |
|---|
| You can count on these | ABACI |
| Destroy (a marriage) | ANNUL |
| Latin for at | APUD |
| Key ingredient in borscht | BEET |
| Live fight in a ring | BOUT |
| Like building IKEA furniture | DIY |
| War, murder, and revenge are in this early Malkovich film | ELENI |
| Arabic leader | EMIR |
| Roman helmet | GALEA |
| Recursive acronym or bovid | GNU |
| Brand of both big and small truck | HESS |
| "___ my case." (2 wds) | I REST |
| New name of South West Africa | NAMIBIA |
| Like Cyrano? | NOSY |
| First major civilization in Mexico | OLMEC |
| What barbers and strippers both have? | POLE |
| Mr. Robot's first name? | RAMI |
| Positive or negative factor | RHESUS |
| Pizza chain originating in Brooklyn | SBARRO |
| When you break your nose, but not the bone, you have a ___ fracture | SEPTAL |
| Cash's boy's name? | SUE |
We also ought to place these into the grid. Some of the things that can help with this are that the Across clues are alphabetical, and the Chain clues are ordered already, and likely entered somehow in a downwards direction. In fact, they should be entered in a zig-zag from the top, then coming back up from the bottom as depicted in the image of the chain-link fence. However, like the flavortext says, some parts stick out.
| | | | I | | | | S | | | | |
| | D | | S | | D | | L | | G | | |
| P | O | L | E | S | U | E | E | L | E | N | I |
| | I | R | E | S | T | R | A | M | I | | |
| A | P | U | D | N | O | S | Y | B | O | U | T |
| | G | A | L | E | A | H | E | S | S | | |
| S | E | P | T | A | L | R | H | E | S | U | S | |
| | E | M | I | R | A | B | A | C | I | | |
| O | L | M | E | C | D | I | Y | B | E | E | T |
| | S | B | A | R | R | O | G | N | U | | |
| N | A | M | I | B | I | A | A | N | N | U | L | |
| | K | | L | | M | | A | | C | | |
| | A | | | | E | | | | H | | |
Reading clockwise around, we get either the phrase “IS IT THE ANS” or “THE ANS IS IT” depending on where you begin. So clearly we should enter IT as the answer phrase.
But that’s wrong. We get a link to a giant blue X, and no answer deductions, so this is actually a KEEP GOING hint. The X indicates diagonals. If we read the diagonals top-left to bottom-right and then bottom-left to top-right, we get the phrase “ORDER BY NUMBER RHYME”.
We likely have to order the parts that stick out (the bolded/highlighted letters below). The number rhymes come from looking at their clues. Each clue begins with a word that rhymes with an English integer from 1-10. Putting them in order yields:
| Clue Answer | Clue | Number That Rhymes With Clue's First Word | Sticking Out Letter |
|---|
| OSAKA | Won a single slam each year from '18 to '21 | 1 | A |
| NAMIBIA | New name of South West Africa | 2 | N |
| BEET | Key ingredient in borscht | 3 | T |
| ELENI | War, murder, and revenge are in this early Malkovich film | 4 | I |
| BOUT | Live fight in a ring | 5 | T |
| BUNCH | Sticks' or bananas' group | 6 | H |
| CRIME | Kevin Mitnick was famous for cyber___ | 7 | E |
| BASEBALLS | Great (free) souvenirs from Wrigley | 8 | S |
| ISLE | Brine-bounded Man? | 9 | I |
| SEPTAL | When you break your nose, but not the bone, you have a ___ fracture | 10 | S |
…the answer ANTITHESIS.
Authors' Notes
Tim: This was the first puzzle I wrote for a hunt. I have a new appreciation for what goes into creating puzzles, as well as the editing process. I felt that this way of organizing a grid had potential, and hadn’t seen it before. I would have preferred fewer unchecked squares, but I think that the result turned out well. I’m also really happy that ANTITHESIS anagrams to what appears to be a somewhat normal solution-phrase.
Bryce: The overlay of the fence on the grid that you see on the puzzle page was not easy to do, but I had the knowledge of how to do this in my back pocket from spending most of a day previously working on a loading screen for 🤫 that also displayed the 🤫 emoji. We ended up scrapping it because of how quickly the site loads the 🤫 page compared to our prototype, but the overlay trick turned out to be a surprise tool that would help us later.