Two shorter puzzles here.  Looks like I did some off the clock research on Magians, so I don’t know how long it really took. Winged Men was 54 minutes.

In Winged Men I had that horrible feeling at the end of the puzzle when you have all the right data and just… can’t… extract… the answer.  It was quite frustrating; the text log doesn’t do it justice.

The puzzles and answer checker are all available from the main page for the puzzles: http://www.markhalpin.com/puzzles/wisht/wisht.html (my answer checker here won’t work, because there are two answers for each puzzle).

My solving logs are after the cut:

The City of Magians

0:00:00

opening puzzle

0:00:04

Do they have eternal flames? JFK does

0:00:55

12 lines, 15 people…

0:01:58

male astronaut is john glenn

0:03:58

tineye says first guy is BEGIN

0:06:21

Thomas Edward Lawrence

0:06:21

Back at this the next day… looked up some folks

0:07:36

have all but 1. the one next to Sally Ride.

0:12:32

oh god, are these in We Didn’t Start The Fire?

0:18:44

bridge on the river kwai, and Homeless Vets fit…don’t know why those

0:22:22

got california baseball and british beatlemania

0:25:06

are they the ones that rhyme with the people?

0:26:14

put JOHNNIE RAY on half a row. curious. he rhymes with DORIS DAY

0:30:46

reading down is ?M?HIT?EATER

0:34:51

AMPHITHEATER was right… why are SYNGMAN RHEE, SUICIDE, and PEYTON PLACE in the puzzle? looking down their columns

0:35:34

guessed HECATOMB

The City of Winged Men

0:00:00

opening puzzle

0:00:30

doing crosswordy stuff. goggling as needed. it’s a puzzle hunt. [As opposed to a pure crossword solve, where it’s brain vs puzzle]

0:07:16

so far ai Have SCAN -19/-9 LION +6/-11 DERN -17/-19 DIVE +7/-10 

0:09:28

+17/-3 TARTER

0:12:58

+7/+15 MOP -7/+7 PARK

0:14:30

+6/-5 HACK

0:15:09

-2/-3 DECK

0:21:33

-15/+2 SANDER

0:21:50

grid’s full

0:25:47

flavortext implies man/bird… so SCAN can become SWAN, DERN to TERN, PARK to LARK, DECK to DUCK  [Okay, Eric, that covers bird… where did the “man” part go?]

0:26:13

DIVE to DOVE, making a spreadsheet

0:29:09

so, do we shift the new letter (W in SWAN) fwd and back by the numbers to get two answers?

0:30:34

it’s making good letters, clearly in wrong order. trying other sorts. (in spreadsheet)

0:31:15

none are great. getting more letters

0:37:37

got all birds… trying the diffs on both orig and changed letters

0:39:13

in order, 2nd diffs give AND ASPIRER, ASPIRER is correct

0:40:20

the first diffs, not working as well… hmmm

0:43:24

nothing is working. hmmm

0:47:53

wow. nothing is really working. tried diffing pre-change letter, first letter… why is the first delta not helping?

0:51:51

maybe you swap in a letter to make a man’s name? that’s the first diff?

0:53:48

TAKE FLIGHT, CORRECT!