Solution: The Aloadae

Answer: SYMBOLIC

Written by Jonah Ostroff

This is one of two metas in the Classics round, and solvers must determine which four of the eight answers it uses.

As clued by the words “brothers”, “pledged”, and “rush”, this meta is about fraternities. This is the “Greek” meta, and its answers are:

BENDER
BOOGER
CHUCK
GOOFY

These answers are all characters who joined fictional fraternities:

In Futurama, Bender was a member of Epsilon Rho Rho.
In Revenge of the Nerds, Booger was one member of Lambda Lambda Lambda.
In Chuck, Chuck’s old fraternity was Gamma Delta Phi.
In An Extremely Goofy Movie, Goofy briefly joins Gamma Mu Mu.

The meta shell consists of three rows of 24 dots. Since there are 24 letters in the Greek alphabet, each answer can be associated to a sequence of three dots, one from each row. Connect them with lines, then read letters as shown in the examples: index each crossed number into the answer, and if there are multiple numbers on one line, add those letters mod 26:

Reading the results spells the meta answer, SYMBOLIC.

Author’s Notes

In most metas, the author starts by making a very long list of potential answers using the mechanic, and then this list is pared down to a set that works to produce the desired meta pun. In this meta, I found basically zero other good answers. Other fictional characters who joined fraternities or sororities either: (a) have names that don’t work well as puzzle answers (like RACHEL GREENE or DANNY TANNER), (b) joined a fraternity or sorority with only two Greek letters in its name (like ELLE, SCREECH, SMITHERS, or TURK), or (c) only joined fraternities outside of the canonical source material (like PINKY or BRAIN, who joined Kappa Delta Kappa in a comic strip). As such, the shell for this meta had to do a lot of work in turning the answers into specific letters.