Huntinality 2022/Chaos in Neopia

Chaos in Neopia is a mini-meta-meta-puzzle from the CTO round of Huntinality 2022. The puzzle is themed after the virtual pet website Neopets, founded in 1999. Specifically, it features a series of five metas and a metameta, each associated with faeries found in Neopets. It also features the meta-matching mechanic, presenting solvers with 31 out of the 36 feeder answers used to solve the metas.

Solve Path
As the flavortext for this puzzle states, the goal is to solve the faerie-themed metas using the answers provided. It also notes that there are five unsolved feeder puzzles, and while you "won't need them to solve the metas", it's still a good idea to think about the possible answers, based on the known information (title + length), as well as any information learned about them while solving the metas.

Since there are five metas and 36 feeders (including the five unknowns), the answers can't be split up equally between the metas. However, guesses can be made about the number of answers needed to solve each meta. The Fire/Snow Faerie meta has 8 clues, so possibly uses 8 answers. Air/Earth has 7 images, so uses 7 answers. Battle/Library has 6 contests, but 10 entrants; without solving or examining the other metas one can't really be sure whether it uses 6 or 10 answers. Meanwhile, Light/Shenkuu likely uses 7 to fill in the 7 rows, and Soup/Negg likely uses 8 to fill in the 8 sets of blanks. Summing these most-likely answer counts results in exactly 30, meaning we can reasonably assume Battle/Library uses 6 answers, one for each contest. Now that this step is complete, it's time to work on the metas themselves.

Fire & Snow
Ignoring the mix of numbers, letters, and +/- symbols at the bottom, solvers should realize that the flavortext for this puzzle indicates that each of the presented "clues" is actually a mix of two separate clues. 2-Across in particular can be deciphered easily, as "slangily" is unlikely to be used twice in a row, meaning it should be the clues 'Wings, slangily' and 'Beers, slangily'. Once unscrambled, they all start to make a bit more sense:


 * 1D - To move in haste / When pluralized, reluctance
 * 2A - Wings, slangily / Beers, slangily
 * 3A - A predicament or trouble / Ice, if extreme enough
 * 3D - An open military conflict / A state of political hostility characterized by propaganda
 * 4A - A geyser, e.g. / Village in New York
 * 5D - A calendering machine / A juice extraction method
 * 6D - Very passionate / Without emotion, callous
 * 7A - A popular place / A localized indicator of paranormal activity, perhaps.

A lot of these clues have some clear answers, like 'COLD WAR ', for the second 3-Down entry, or  'HOT SPOT ' for the first 7-Across entry. Getting a few of these answers should result in two major revelations. First, all of the answers begin with the words HOT and COLD. Not only that, but within each pair, one will start with HOT and the other will start with COLD, with the same word following in each. Secondly, the words following HOT and COLD are all present in the bank of feeder answers!


 * 1D - HOT/COLD FOOT
 * 2A - HOT/COLD ONES
 * 3A - HOT/COLD WATER
 * 3D - HOT/COLD WAR
 * 4A - HOT/COLD SPRING
 * 5D - HOT/COLD PRESS
 * 6D - HOT/COLD BLOODED
 * 7A - HOT/COLD SPOT

With all of these words assigned to across/down entries, they can then be arranged in criss-cross fashion to make the number labels make sense. Following traditional rules (that no strings of 2+ letters can be formed that aren't clued words), everything can be placed logically. The best place to start is with 1D (FOOT) and 3A (WATER), since they can only intersect at the T, meaning 2A (ONES) has to intersect 1D at the first O.

Additionally, solvers should now realize that the text at the bottom indicates intersections between entries and shifts made to the letters at these intersections. Keeping the order that these intersections are presented, the result of these shifts reads the final answer for this meta:.

One other thing can be gleaned from this puzzle. While most of the words were present in the answer list, ONES was not, meaning it can be backsolved as the answer to one of the unsolved feeder puzzles. Since it's only 4 letters long, it has to be Obligatory Binary Puzzle, which thankfully fits the answer thematically.

Track Differences
As with the other puzzles in this hunt, there are differences between the casual and expert tracks' versions of this puzzle. Since this puzzle has multiple sub-puzzles, most of them have their own differences between the two versions. The only sub-puzzle that is identical in both version is Soup Faerie and Negg Faerie. In all but one case, the only difference present in the casual versions is.

In Fire/Snow,. In Earth/Air,. In Battle/Library,. In Light/Shenkuu,. Lastly, the Faerie Queen has.