This is the metapuzzle for the intro round of the hunt, making use of the 6 intro round puzzle answers.
The title of the puzzle is a reference to the Stephen Sondheim musical Into the Woods, a thematically appropriate musical about a few disparate fairy tale characters coming together in the woods.
The flavor text suggests that we should focus on the Prologue, the opening number of the musical, which repeats the title phrase “into the woods” multiple times. As hinted by the flavor text, the critical element is the phrase that follows each occurrence. Some of these phrases can be matched with feeder answers. Sorting them by their first mention in the song and taking the indicated letters in order gives the final answer: A CURSERY LOOK.
| Feeder Answer | Prologue Lyrics |
|---|---|
| RETIREMENT HOME | To GRANDMOTHERSHOUSE |
| LOAF BEARING | To BRINGSOMEBREAD |
| BOVINE AUCTION | To SELLTHECOW |
| FINISH LINE | To JOURNEYSEND |
| UNHEXING | To LIFTTHESPELL |
| ROYAL VISIT | To SEETHEKING |
Authors' Notes
I was in a local production of Into the Woods, and this metapuzzle was entirely inspired by me never remembering the right lyrics to this song (as well as the 3 reprises -- all of which have different lyrics).
Also, we found out during test-solves that the 2014 movie version of the song was the dominant Google search result over the stage version and, more consequently, has slightly different lyrics. Not sure why Rob Marshall felt the need to change a Tony-winning script. Nonetheless, it did force us to change some answers to accommodate both versions of the song.