Matt Gaffney's Weekly Crossword Contest

MGWCC #193 -- Friday, February 10th, 2012 -- "In Short Order"

2012-02-09T10:53:00.010-05:00

Good afternoon, crossword fans -- welcome to Week 193 of my contest. If you're new to the contest and would like to enter, please see the site FAQ on the left sidebar for instructions.

LAST WEEK'S RESULTS:

Slightly flawed meta last week, so let's sort it out: the puzzle's five theme entries were:

HOOP DREAMS
WATUSI TRIBE
WEDNESDAY ADDAMS
WEARING THIN
HOUSEWIVES

Say those five aloud and the first syllables you'll hear are who, what, when, where and how. What's missing is why, and the only one-word breed of dog that starts with that question is the WEIMARANER, making that our contest answer.

293 is low for Week 1, and there were two issues that tripped solvers up:

1) There are two pronunciations of WEIMARANER, as both the initial "why" sound and the original German "vie" (rhymes with pie) are used. I considered making the contest answer something less ambiguous like WYOMING or WHITE HOUSE, but didn't.

Ultimately this didn't wind up throwing many people off -- just three entrants submitted WIREHAIR, for example, which I couldn't take because it's not a breed.

2) This was the more troublesome imperfection: the second syllable of the last entry, HOUSEWIVES, begins with the missing "why" sound. This threw a lot of solvers off; it looks too unlikely to be a coincidence (especially since it's the last theme entry), but it's clearly different from the others, which all begin with the question word.

I didn't notice the "why" in HOUSEWIVES at all, and even though it is different from the others, it's certainly odd enough to ruin the aha moment/click for some (even many WEIMARANER entrants mentioned not being 100% sure about what was going on with that one). And 24 entrants submitted HOUND or BLOODHOUND, having seen the six question words (counting 2 for HOUSEWIVES) and reasoning that a "bloodhound" can mean a detective who asks a lot of questions, while a reporter can "hound" reluctant interviewees with questions.

It doesn't sit right with me to bump so many people out in Week 1 over an imperfect meta, so let's throw some prizes at the problem: for the 293 who got WEIMARANER, you're 1 for 1 and can continue your month's meta rampage uninterrupted.

For everyone who didn't get WEIMARANER, your month starts now: you're not eligible for the regular monthly prizes like the 293 WEIMARANER folks are, but you are eligible for 2 stationery prizes set aside only for those who missed Week 1. And keep in mind that, as ever, anyone can win weekly prizes regardless of their monthly status.

So let's put this glitch behind us and move on: I've already completed the rest of the puzzles for February, and I guarantee that a little ol' Weimaraner is going to be the kindest creature you meet all month here!

This week's winner, whose name was chosen at random from the 293 correct entries received, is Dana Hahn of Los Angeles, Calif. Dana has selected as her prize an autographed copy of 20 Minute While You Wait Crossword Puzzles.

STILL FEISTY:

Just three more days to get Andrew Feist's 9-puzzle contest suite at his site! It's for charity, too.

THIS WEEK'S INSTRUCTIONS:

This week's contest answer is a familiar city in the Midwest; it's what the 5th theme entry must be. E-mail it to me at crosswordcontest@gmail.com by Tuesday at noon ET. Please put the contest answer city in the subject line of your e-mail.

To print the puzzle out, click on the image below and hit "print" on your browser. To solve using Across Lite either solve on the applet below or download the free software here, then join the Google Group (1,651 members now!) here. To solve with friends at Team Crossword, click here.

Solve well, and be not led astray by words intended to deceive.

MGWCC #192 -- Friday, February 3rd, 2012 -- "The Question Is..."

2012-02-02T09:57:00.008-05:00

Good afternoon, crossword fans -- welcome to Week 192 of my contest. If you're new to the contest and would like to enter, please see the site FAQ on the left sidebar for instructions.

LAST WEEK'S RESULTS:

"YAHOO!" yodeled 239 solvers when they figured out last week's meta, for two reasons: not only is it a satisfying victory yelp, but it was also the correct contest answer.

Solvers were tasked with finding a familiar Internet company, and the 17x17 grid featured seven theme entries: MARTINI GLASS, EIFFEL TOWER, FOUR-POST BED, DINOSAUR EGG, PLANET EARTH and STICK AND BALL were left unexplained, but the 17-letter THE THIRD DIMENSION nudged solvers in the right direction, clued as {What you'll need to think in}.

I'll go ahead and steal joon pahk's images to explain the meta idea:

See what I did there? Each of the six objects described in the theme entries resembles a 3-d letter of the alphabet. So a MARTINI GLASS looks like a 3-d letter Y, the EIFFEL TOWER looks like a 3-d letter A, and so on down to the STICK AND BALL which, properly aligned, can serve as YAHOO!'s famous exclamation point.

I grudgingly accepted !-less entries, since instructions asked for the company's name, and the company is often referenced in the media without its exclam. But some of you owe me an exclamation point, which you can attach to this week's entry.

Narayan Venkatasubramanyan sent in a similar sestet to joon's above, and noted that:

it is a bit ironic that the above images were found using google

Robert Hartford drew the images himself:

Gene Faba was busy, but still got YAHOO! in on time:

I was concerned that the fourth dimension was going to preclude me getting the third dimensional answer before the deadline.

Andrew Greene gets some serious bragging rights:

So FYI, this week I tried solving the meta without the instructions, and succeeded.

Impressive! Don't try this at home, kids.

Meg Duvall had a wild meta ride:

You devil!!!!!! More than a few hours spent on simple geometric solids (cone, sphere, prism etc) Another few hours wondering why HIGH, EGG and BALL (grid entries) were also in the clues. A while wondering why TWO, FOUR, FIVE and TEN were grid entries.

Finally started thinking about those Google doodles (weird clue for 28A) and then the pictures came. What a wonderful feeling when the answer is revealed! I'm screaming at my husband in the car "OK, but what's the stick and ball?" He yells back, "It's the exclamation point!"

Now I can do that delightful Cox and Rathvon cryptic I printed out yesterday and haven't even looked at. Might even play Angry Birds.

And finally, Gary Levin writes:

The central clue made this relatively easy. As soon as I read that, I sketched the COCKTAIL GLASS, EIFFEL TOWER, and PLANET EARTH (alas poor Pluto). Y A - - O - . The only hard part was that I had forgotten that "!" was part of the name and I couldn't figure out how I was going to get 6 characters.

This was intentional -- I was aiming to tempt guessers to GOOGLE, AMAZON, or another six-letter company since there were six theme entries. Without knowing about the exclam, a solver can't know that the company's name is only five letters long.

This week's winner, whose name was chosen at random from the 239 correct entries received, is Jason Juang of Mountain View, Calif. In addition to a MGWCC pen, pencil and notepad set, Jason will also receive a 1-year subscription to Peter Gordon's extremely good Fireball Crosswords. Next week we return to regular book prizes for the first time in a long time!

MONTHLY PRIZES:

A record 112 solvers submitted the correct contest answer to all four of January's challenges (BANANA SPLIT, RICHARD WRIGHT, WRONG ORGAN, YAHOO!). The following ten lucky and skillful winners, chosen randomly from that group, will receive a MGWCC pen, pencil and notepad set:

Steve Blumenthal -- San Francisco, Calif.

David Cole -- Wyomissing, Penna.

Anne Erdmann -- Champaign, Ill.

Robert Hartford -- Stow, Mass.

Alex Jeffrey -- Columbia, Md.

Cris Pannullo -- Jackson, N.J.

David Plotkin -- Mississippi State, Miss.

Eric Prestemon -- Woodside, Calif.

Daniel Simoncini -- Worcester, Mass.

Brett Streetman -- Somerville, Mass.

Congratulations to our ten winners, and to everyone who went 4-for-4 in January.

FEBRUARY GRYPTICS CONTEST:

You know what to do!

GETTING FEISTY:

Andrew Feist is running a 9-puzzle contest suite at his site. I haven't gotten to it yet myself, but Andrew is a clever fellow so it's going to be fun I'm sure. Deadline is Valentine's Day, so check it out sooner than later if you're gonna!

THIS WEEK'S INSTRUCTIONS:

This week's contest answer is a one-word breed of dog. E-mail it to me at crosswordcontest@gmail.com by Tuesday at noon ET. Please put the contest answer doggie in the subject line of your e-mail.

To print the puzzle out, click on the image below and hit "print" on your browser. To solve using Across Lite either solve on the applet below or download the free software here, then join the Google Group (1,646 members now!) here. To solve with friends at Team Crossword, click here.

Solve well, and be not led astray by words intended to deceive.

MGWCC #191 -- Friday, January 27th, 2012 -- "Depth Squad"

2012-01-27T01:42:00.012-05:00

Good afternoon, crossword fans -- welcome to Week 191 of my contest. If you're new to the contest and would like to enter, please see the site FAQ on the left sidebar for instructions.

LAST WEEK'S RESULTS:

238 solvers got last week's meta, though a big chunk of them also got a little lucky. The five theme entries consisted of two five-letter words forming nonsense phrases:

CAPED TAPES
REZIP SPIRE
PENAL PALIN
SWEAT WAITS
HIKES HAKES

Obviously the two words in each pair look strikingly similar -- all but CAPED TAPES share four letters, and indeed 76 solvers wound up guessing ANTSY ANGST based on that similarity alone.

But there had to be something else going on, since a pair of five-letter words sharing four letters once anagrammed isn't much to hang your hat on, and CAPED TAPES doesn't even follow that pattern. So what was it?

Nudged perhaps by the title "Mix & Match," successful metapuzzlers did a little mixing and realized that those five pairs each anagram to a set of homophones:

PACED PASTE
PRIZE PRIES (or PRISE)
PLANE PLAIN
WASTE WAIST
SHEIK SHAKE

Instructions asked for two entries that would have made an excellent themer, so we're on the lookout for two five-letter pieces of fill that anagram to homophones. And there they are at 21-a and 50-a, WRONG and ORGAN, which anagram to GROWN and GROAN. And I hope you've grown as a person by solving MGWCC, even if you occasionally groan at an answer.

Because no order was specified, I naturally accepted both WRONG ORGAN and ORGAN WRONG as correct, even though the syntax on the second one is a little lacking.

And what did I mean by solvers getting a little lucky? About 25% of those who sent in WRONG ORGAN didn't fully grok the meta. Rather they guessed it using the same logic that ANTSY ANGST guessers did -- a spidey-sense that the general similarity of the letters within each theme pair had to mean something. But luck counts in life, and it certainly counts in MGWCC!

Andrew Greene finally got the meta this week, but only after a struggle:

I was only looking at the words, not listening to them, so I was solving with my eye, not my ear. You could say I was using the....

This week's winner, whose name was chosen at random from the 238 correct entries received, is Neal Hudders of Seattle, Wash. In addition to a MGWCC pen, pencil and notepad set, Neal will also receive a 1-year subscription to Peter Gordon's extremely good Fireball Crosswords. Next week's winner will receive the same.

Incidentally, Patrick Blindauer's Fireball from this week, "Little White Lie," is going to be a strong contender for 2012's puzzle of the year -- so if you're not yet a Fireball subscriber, consider becoming one.

JUDYTH, JUDYTH, JUDYTH:

I blanked last week on a picking a winner, so let's do it now: the winner of MGWCC #189, whose name was chosen at random from the 442 entries received, is Judyth Stavans of Yorktown Heights, N.Y. In addition to a MGWCC pen, pencil and notepad set, Judyth will also receive a copy of Trip Payne's forthcoming Kickstarter puzzle suite, which is still available for 4 more days only (and which has now been funded to the tune of almost $4,200!)

MATT GAFFNEY'S DAILY CROSSWORD:

Today's has an amusing theme. Check it out:

http://mattgaffneydaily.blogspot.com/2012/01/mgdc-0093-friday-jan-27th-2012.html

INDEFINITE ARTICLE:

I have an intriguing little crossword piece at Slate.com this afternoon, but I'm not sure exactly when it's going up. I'll post the link here when it does, or you can just keep refreshing at Slate's site every 30 seconds like I am. UPDATE, 3:10 PM: here she is:

http://www.slate.com/articles/arts/culturebox/2012/01/etta_james_esai_morales_and_erle_stanley_gardner_introducing_a_new_measure_of_crossword_fame.html

THIS WEEK'S INSTRUCTIONS:

This week's contest answer is a familiar Internet company. E-mail it to me at crosswordcontest@gmail.com by Tuesday at noon ET. Please put the contest answer company in the subject line of your e-mail.

To print the puzzle out, click on the image below and hit "print" on your browser. To solve using Across Lite either solve on the applet below or download the free software here, then join the Google Group (1,636 members now!) here.

Solve well, and be not led astray by words intended to deceive.

MGWCC #190 -- Friday, January 20th, 2012 -- "Mix & Match"

2012-01-20T09:02:00.008-05:00

Good afternoon, crossword fans -- welcome to Week 190 of my contest. If you're new to the contest and would like to enter, please see the site FAQ on the left sidebar for instructions.

LAST WEEK'S RESULTS:

"Did You Finish That Book?" was the question I asked of solvers last week, who were presented with four unfinished book titles. Well, not quite "unfinished," as their last words could be found beneath each of the books in question, though not clued as such:

20-a {Dr. Seuss book about an elephant} HORTON HEARS A (plus WHO at 23-a)
31-a {Book that Jessica Fletcher works on during the intro to the same-name TV series} MURDER, SHE (plus WROTE at 33-a)
44-a {Classic 1878 novel set on the mysterious Egdon Heath} THE RETURN OF THE (plus NATIVE at 53-a}
59-a {Dickens novel about a shipping company owner} DOMBEY AND (plus SON) at 66-a)

Which 20th century American novelist do these clues point to? Notice the trivia question spelled out by the "unfinished" parts of these four books: WHO WROTE NATIVE SON? The answer to that is RICHARD WRIGHT, making him our contest answer as well.

Don Albright says:

I want to make sure that I get this one, so I am having a Write Wright Right Rite Right after I send this E-mail. Alright?

Alright, Albright!

Jim Curran got the (W)right answer, but with an amusing addendum:

Alternative answer is SAUL BELLOW, because the book titles are not finished in one answer. Where is the final word... it's all below (final word is always BELOW the beginning of the title).

I know... a bit of a stretch :-)

Many MGWCC solvers participated in the MIT Mystery Hunt last weekend, submitting their entries on Monday or Tuesday with frazzled brains and all. But Gary Levin submitted during the event, which is like stopping in the middle of a marathon to do 100 pushups:

Even during the MIT Mystery Hunt, there is time for your puzzle.

Well thanks, Gary -- and next year I'll add an extra day to the contest deadline on the MIT Hunt weekend, in response to many requests.

BANANA SPLIT REDUX:

Meant to run this last week, but Andrea Blumberg created this visual illustration of our previous contest answer:

This week's winner, whose name was chosen at random from the 442 correct entries received, is Kelly Langan of Somerville, Mass. In addition to a MGWCC pen, pencil and notepad set, Kelly will also receive a copy of Trip Payne's forthcoming Kickstarter puzzle suite, which is still available for 11 more days only! Next week we switch to yet another special prize -- see below. [UPDATE 1/20, 1:10 PM: oops! In response to solver queries, Kelly Langan did NOT win MGWCC twice in a row. I got my winners and weeks mixed up...which means I didn't pick a winner at all this week. D'oh! I'll announce this week's real winner next week. And Kelly will receive an extra mini-prize anyway.]

I must say: it gladdens and amazes me to see all the interesting things crossword constructors are making happen in the Crucisphere these days.

THIS WEEK'S INSTRUCTIONS:

This week's contest answer is the two grid entries which, when combined, would make an excellent sixth theme entry. NOTE: please send the actual grid entries, not their clue numbers. E-mail it to me at crosswordcontest@gmail.com by Tuesday at noon ET. Please put the contest answer in the subject line of your e-mail.

To print the puzzle out, click on the image below and hit "print" on your browser. To solve using Across Lite either solve on the applet below or download the free software here, then join the Google Group (1,635 members now!) here.

SPECIAL PRIZE THIS WEEK AND NEXT:

In addition to a MGWCC pen, pencil and notepad set, contest winners over the next two weeks will also receive a 1-year subscription to Peter Gordon's outstanding (and popular) Fireball Crosswords.

Solve well, and be not led astray by words intended to deceive.

MGWCC #189 -- Friday, January 13th, 2012 -- "Did You Finish That Book?"

2012-01-13T11:56:00.005-05:00

Good afternoon, crossword fans -- welcome to Week 189 of my contest. If you're new to the contest and would like to enter, please see the site FAQ on the left sidebar for instructions.

LAST WEEK'S RESULTS:

A new record: 460 entrants found the BANANA SPLIT as last week's contest answer dessert, demolishing the previous record of 412. The PuzzleSocial effect in action, as that fun new application sent lots of new names our way.

Each of the puzzle's four theme entries split the word BANANA in a different way:

BANAL SUBPOENA
BANNED NIRVANA
BAGHDAD ZENANA
BOLIVIA MANANA

See solution grid at right (with keyword highlighted in banana yellow).

First puzzle of the new month (and indeed year), so Tony Antonakas chides:

You know you're not supposed to start with dessert :)

Maggie Wittlin had no trouble with the 29-d/52-d combination:

I just got my hair cut at an Aveda Spa!

Both of MGWCC's astrophysicist solvers chimed in on NOUN. First, Leo Stein:

As an astrophysicist, I enjoyed your cluing for 50D!

And similarly, Brandon Hensley:

Not sure how "astrophysics" worked its way in as a NOUN, but it made me smile!

This month's first three puzzles (but not the fourth!) are a bit easier than normal since we want to give the PuzzleSocial people a gentle welcome. I mentioned in last week's e-mail that super-skilled solvers can make an early-month meta tougher by simply not looking at the instructions. Naturally many of you took up the gauntlet!

Dan Feyer writes:

Without instructions. Under two minutes on the crossword.

Andy Bouwman tries to top that -- not time-wise, of course, but process-wise:

Solved without instructions OR down clues!

While Jon Delfin boldly tries to top everybody:

Scout's honor, I haven't looked at the puzzle yet. From the title, and
the suggestion to look at the puzzle grid, my unofficial guess is PIE.

[a moment later]

Okay, not PIE. I thought your blocks might be a Greek letter. Now that
I see it, nothing leaps to mind. Excelsior.

This week's winner, whose name was chosen at random from the 460 correct entries received, is Kelly Langan of Somerville, Mass. In addition to a MGWCC pen, pencil and notepad set, Kelly will also receive a copy of Trip Payne's forthcoming Kickstarter puzzle suite, which is still available for 17 more days only! Winner next week will receive the same.

GRYPTICS CONTEST:

Gryptics creator Les Foeldessy announces a new contest featuring his addictive puzzle. Note: this month's contest is tougher than last month's!

THIS WEEK'S INSTRUCTIONS:

This week's contest answer is a 20th-century American novelist. E-mail it to me at crosswordcontest@gmail.com by Tuesday at noon ET. Please put the contest answer novelist in the subject line of your e-mail.

To print the puzzle out, click on the image below and hit "print" on your browser. To solve using Across Lite either solve on the applet below or download the free software here, then join the Google Group (1,632 members now!) here.

Solve well, and be not led astray by words intended to deceive.

MGWCC #188 -- Friday, January 6th, 2012 -- "Just Desserts"

2012-01-04T15:06:00.016-05:00

Good afternoon, crossword fans -- welcome to Week 188 of my contest. If you're new to the contest and would like to enter, please see the site FAQ on the left sidebar for instructions.

LAST WEEK'S RESULTS:

Fifth Friday last week, so it had to be tough. Instructions asked for a famous athlete, but there were no obvious theme entries in the grid. So where and how to begin?

You may have noticed the crossword term CHEATER SQUARES crossing in the middle of the grid. These are black squares that don't add to the word count of a puzzle (they're termed "cheater squares" since they indicate that the constructor couldn't fill the grid without their help).

There aren't any cheater squares in the grid -- but meta solvers noticed that you could add eight black squares around the edge of the grid without affecting their crossing clues. See red squares in the grid at right.

For example, the M at the intersection of HAREM and MADAM can be blacked out while still leaving the viable answers HARE and ADAM for {It's designed for speedy breeding} and {Part of a palindrome in paradise} -- that's the famous "Madam, I'm Adam."

Similarly, moving clockwise:

Black out the A in SENHORA and SOYA and you get SENHOR and SOY {Nice address in Rio de Janeiro} and {___ sauce}

Black out the R in REELS and RANDY and you get EELS and ANDY {They may be found near a fisherman} and {One of Miss Piggy's two nephews}.

Black out the A in RAJA and ALITTLE and you get RAJ and LITTLE for {Erstwhile holder of dominion in India} and {Not much}

Black out the D in HEARD and DRIFT and you get HEAR and RIFT {Put in one's ears, as music} and {Gradual movement apart}

Black out the O in OOHS and OPOSSUM and you get OHS and POSSUM {Utterances often elicited by massage therapists} and {Frequent roadkill victim}

Black out the N in RICAN and MAYAN and you get RICA and MAYA {Costa ___} and {Word before calendar or hieroglyphs}

Black out the A in TAVERNA and AEON and you get TAVERN and EON {Business that may serve ouzo} and {A billion years}

Take those eight blacked-out letters in order, starting from M, and you get one of the very greatest -- perhaps the greatest -- soccer players of all time, Diego MARADONA -- who also, fittingly for our theme, committed one of the most infamous acts of cheating of all time in sports, 1986's infamous "Hand of God" goal. (watch it here; Maradona punches the ball into the net with his hand, leading Argentina past England and eventually to becoming World Cup champions. Watch Maradona explain how he'd scored goals similar to that in Argentina; the interviewer is Gary Lineker, who was on the English World Cup squad that year. Maradona doesn't even really seem to view what he did as cheating!).

Meg Duvall laments, while submitting Troy POLAMALU:

Because Samoa lost a day and he has great hair. Killed again at the end of the month. But it was fun!

This week's winner, whose name was chosen at random from the 135 correct entries received, is Christian Parker of Vancouver, B.C. In addition to a MGWCC pen, pencil and notepad set, Christian will also receive a copy of Brendan Quigley's new 21x21 freestyle crossword, still available at the link.

Next week we switch over to a different special prize -- see below.

MONTHLY PRIZES:

67 solvers submitted the correct contest answer to all five of December's challenges (QUITO, DICK VAN DYKE, NEW DELHI or N'DJAMENA, EMANUEL, MARADONA). The following ten lucky and skillful winners, chosen randomly from that group, will receive a MGWCC pen, pencil and notepad set:

Erik Agard -- Gaithersburg, Md.

Neal Carey -- Maple Glen, Penna.

Paul Coulter -- Glassboro, N.J.

Peter Gwinn -- Brooklyn, N.Y.

Dan Katz -- Greensboro, N. Car.

Alan Neely -- Hermitage, Tenn.

Rich Novo -- Andover, Mass.

Amy Reynaldo -- Chicago, Ill.

David Schooler -- Washington, D.C.

Matt Soule -- Duluth, Minn.

Congratulations to our ten winners, and to everyone who went 5-for-5 in December.

SPECIAL PRIZE THIS WEEK AND NEXT:

In addition to a MGWCC pen, pencil and notepad set, contest winners this week and next will receive a copy of Trip Payne's forthcoming Kickstarter puzzle suite ($20 level). I'm extremely interested in seeing what Trip conjures up for this project -- get your copy at the link for as little as ten bucks.

THIS WEEK'S INSTRUCTIONS:

This week's contest answer is a familiar dessert. E-mail it to me at crosswordcontest@gmail.com by Tuesday at noon ET. Please put the contest answer dessert in the subject line of your e-mail.

To print the puzzle out, click on the image below and hit "print" on your browser. To solve using Across Lite either solve on the applet below or download the free software here, then join the Google Group (1,624 members now!) here. To solve with friends at Team Crossword, click here.

Solve well, and be not led astray by words intended to deceive.

MGWCC #187 -- Friday, December 30th, 2011 -- "The Edge of Darkness"

2011-12-30T13:08:00.005-05:00

Good afternoon, crossword fans -- welcome to Week 187 of my contest. If you're new to the contest and would like to enter, please see the site FAQ on the left sidebar for instructions.

LAST WEEK'S RESULTS:

What famous U.S. mayor did last week's puzzle point to? Let's take a gander at the theme entries:

17a {How many human civilisations have gained power} = SLAVE LABOR
23a {Person who covers many thousands of kilometres} = WORLD TRAVELER
36a {Defence against root canal pain} = LOCAL ANESTHETIC
46a {It helped fulfil a JFK dream} = APOLLO PROGRAM
58a {"You've been marvellous!"} = THANKS A TON
190 successful metapuzzlers noticed that each of these five theme clues contained a word spelt like Brits do: civilisations, kilometres, Defence, fulfil and marvellous. Surely that couldn't be a coincidence! But what next?

Aha -- each of the theme entries also ends in a word that the British spell differently than Americans. A Londoner would spell our five theme entries:

SLAVE LABOUR
WORLD TRAVELLER
LOCAL ANAESTHETIC
APOLLO PROGRAMME
THANKS A TONNE

The added letters have been emboldened above, and anagram to Chicago mayor Rahm EMANUEL, who was last week's contest answer.

Mark Manuel can't believe he missed the meta:

Combine my last name with the fact that I was in London right before Christmas and you have one embarrassed contestant. Colour me red.

The recently-relocated Eric LeVasseur writes:

For Boxing Day I spent much of the day emptying boxes (the cardboard kind). Relaxing now by filling boxes (the crossword kind).

This week's winner, whose name was chosen at random from the 190 correct entries received, is Reid Koss of Seattle, Wash. In addition to a MGWCC pen, pencil and notepad set, Reid will also receive a copy of Brendan Quigley's new 21x21 freestyle crossword. Winner next week will receive the same.

ACROSS LITE FOR iPAD:

Want to solve crosswords on your iPad? Litsoft has just launched a new app that lets you do so. Check it out here:

http://itunes.apple.com/app/across-lite-crosswords/id480513184

THIS WEEK'S INSTRUCTIONS:

This week's contest answer is the last name of a famous athlete. E-mail it to me at crosswordcontest@gmail.com by Tuesday at noon ET. Please put the contest answer athlete in the subject line of your e-mail.

To print the puzzle out, click on the image below and hit "print" on your browser. To solve using Across Lite either solve on the applet below or download the free software here, then join the Google Group (1,621 members now!) here. To solve with friends at Team Crossword, click here.

Solve well, and be not led astray by words intended to deceive.

MGWCC #186 -- Friday, December 23rd, 2011 -- "English Lesson"

2011-12-23T10:27:00.009-05:00

Good afternoon, crossword fans -- welcome to Week 186 of my contest. If you're new to the contest and would like to enter, please see the site FAQ on the left sidebar for instructions.

LAST WEEK'S RESULTS:

Somewhat oblique meta last week: solvers were asked to find an eight-letter world capital, and the puzzle's theme entries turned out to be:

17-a HEARTLIGHT
22-a ARA PARSEGHIAN (everyone liked seeing his whole name for once)
36-a BOW TO YOUR SENSEI
47-a GIRL DETECTIVE
54-a GRAND FORKS

What do these five have in common? They each point to a prominent two-word phrase whose initials are N.D.: The atrocious 1982 song HEARTLIGHT was sung by Neil Diamond; ARA PARSEGHIAN won two national titles at Notre Dame; BOW TO YOUR SENSEI is a line from "Napoleon Dynamite"; The book series GIRL DETECTIVE is the revamped Nancy Drew; and GRAND FORKS is the third-largest city in North Dakota. Searching for an eight-letter world capital with the initials N.D., 163 solvers came up with NEW DELHI, India's capital and last week's contest answer.

10 solvers submitted an alternate answer that I'm also accepting as correct: Chad's capital is N'DJAMENA, which is eight letters long. True, it doesn't consist of two words whose initials are ND, but the apostrophe muddies things a bit and the city does begin with the letters ND. I was aware of N'Djamena's existence as a possible spoiler here and planned to accept it before posting the puzzle; but really, what are the odds that there are two ND world capitals with eight letters in them?

ERRATUM:

Lee Sammons was the first to point out that the clue for 54-across is incorrect. The clue was {It's downriver from Winnipeg} but GRAND FORKS is actually upriver from Winnipeg. I had assumed that the Red River of the North, which makes up most of the border between Minnesota and North Dakota, flowed south like everything else in the region. But it turns out to be one of the not very many northerly-flowing rivers in North America, meandering into Manitoba before emptying into Lake Winnipeg.

Eric Suess writes:

As a Notre Dame grad, I appreciate the initials. Once years ago at a Mensa party I had a Notre Dame cap on. A gentleman came up to me and, trying to be witty, said "North Dakota?" to which I replied instantly "New Delhi" - that was the first time I'd noticed the similar initials.

This week's winner, whose name was chosen at random from the 173 correct entries received, is George Dakis of Chicago, Ill. In addition to a MGWCC pen, pencil and notepad set, George will also receive a copy of Brendan Quigley's new 21x21 freestyle crossword. Winners for the next two will receive the same.

PUZZLESOCIAL:

This could be revolutionary: a new crossword-solving Facebook application called PuzzleSocial. Enter solving contests, win awards, or challenge a friend head-to-head (which is awesome; you're both solving the same crossword on the same grid, and your entries are color-coded so you can see who's beating who where in the puzzle).

MGWCC will be appearing at PuzzleSocial each Friday starting today, and always an hour or two before I post it here (because PuzzleSocial is running them as a speed contest, the puzzle obviously can't appear anywhere else before then). This probably won't affect my posting times here at all; if anything I'll be posting here earlier than usual. More on PuzzleSocial in the coming weeks.

Note that nothing will be substantially different for you here at MGWCC if you're not on Facebook or don't participate in PuzzleSocial. Just keep on solving like normal! Also, please note that you need to click on the "A.V. Club" box at PuzzleSocial to access the MGWCC puzzles.

THIS WEEK'S INSTRUCTIONS:

This week's contest answer is a well-known U.S. mayor, past or present. E-mail it to me at crosswordcontest@gmail.com by Tuesday at noon ET. Please put the contest answer mayor in the subject line of your e-mail.

To print the puzzle out, click on the image below and hit "print" on your browser. To solve using Across Lite either solve on the applet below or download the free software here, then join the Google Group (1,619 members now!) here. To solve with friends at Team Crossword, click here.

Solve well, and be not led astray by words intended to deceive.

MGWCC #185 -- Friday, December 16th, 2011 -- "Nine Down Is Like Five Across"

2011-12-14T09:00:00.008-05:00

Good afternoon, crossword fans -- welcome to Week 185 of my contest. If you're new to the contest and would like to enter, please see the site FAQ on the left sidebar for instructions.

LAST WEEK'S RESULTS:

Happy belated birthday to DICK VAN DYKE, who turned 86 on Tuesday. The venerable comedic actor also served as last week's contest answer, as discovered by 345 solvers.

Contest instructions asked for an actor you might watch on 33-down, which turned out to be DVD. The other theme entries were:

17-a {Chanteuse you can listen to on a CD player} = CELINE DION
23-a {1992 thriller too violent to get a PG rating} = PATRIOT GAMES
39-a {TV show where Whoopi tells it like it is} = THE VIEW
52-a {Classic rock band often heard on FM radio} = FLEETWOOD MAC
63-a {Two-time Booker Prize winner whose novels you can read on Kindle for PC} = PETER CAREY

See the trick? The abbreviation in each clue also serves as the initials of the answer. That means we're looking for a well-known comic actor with the initials DVD. Not Danny DeVito, who's DDV (and whose last name is one word), but the aforementioned DICK VAN DYKE.

Matthew Perez-Stable writes:

funny that i solve this after watching Chitty Chitty Bang Bang with my younger sister this weekend.

Laura Effinger-Dean speculates:

Perhaps someday I will appear on an LED television!

Peter Gwinn sends along the photo (click on it to enlarge) at right, with the following explanation:

I wanted to outdo Jeff Schwartz from last week.

I actually got the meta from the clue to 17A, which I figured out just looking at it.
Had to complete 33-down, though, because I couldn't think of any comedians with the initials DVR.

And Chip Prince met the man himself:

While I was in L.A. with the stage version of "Mary Poppins" almost two years ago, Dick Van Dyke appeared on stage in a one-night-only cameo walk-on as a superannuated banker, a role he had played in the movie but is finally actually old enough for. He can still do physical comedy even in his 80s... the audience ate it up!

This week's winner, whose name was chosen at random from the 345 correct entries received, is Joel Berghoff of San Rafael, Calif. In addition to a MGWCC pen, pencil and notepad set, Joel will also receive a copy of Patrick Blindauer's Musical Puzzlefest, which went out to subscribers yesterday (I've got all day tomorrow set aside to solve it myself). Next week we ~~return to regular book prizes~~ have yet another series of special prizes! See below.

GRYPTICS CONTEST:

Les Foeldessy is running a Gryptics contest over at his website. Solve the (tough) Gryptic and you might win a copy of his new book Next-Generation Crosswords!

THIS WEEK'S INSTRUCTIONS:

This week's contest answer is an eight-letter world capital. E-mail it to me at crosswordcontest@gmail.com by Tuesday at noon ET. Please put the contest answer capital in the subject line of your e-mail.

To print the puzzle out, click on the image below and hit "print" on your browser. To solve using Across Lite either solve on the applet below or download the free software here, then join the Google Group (1,618 members now!) here. To solve with friends at Team Crossword, click here.

SPECIAL PRIZES FOR THE REST OF DECEMBER:

In addition to a MGWCC pen, pencil and notepad set, weekly winners for Dec. 16th, 23rd and 30th will receive a copy of Brendan Emmett Quigley's new freestyle 21x21. Now there's a pleasant way to spend half an hour!

Solve well, and be not led astray by words intended to deceive.

MGWCC #184 -- Friday, December 9th, 2011 -- "You've Got to Stand for Something"

2011-12-08T12:33:00.014-05:00

Good afternoon, crossword fans -- welcome to Week 184 of my contest. If you're new to the contest and would like to enter, please see the site FAQ on the left sidebar for instructions.

LAST WEEK'S RESULTS:

Well, that was easy! 409 solvers -- 1 shy of the MGWCC record -- found QUITO as our contest answer capital last week. They got there by speaking the first word of each theme entry aloud:

CUE VIOLINS (Q)
YOU SAID IT (U)
EYE OF THE TIGER (I)
TEA LEAVES (T)
OH NO, MR BILL! (O)

Put 'em all together and you've got that capital city high in the Andes Mountains.

I laughed when I saw Eric Maddy's entry:

— — · — · · — · · — — — —

MGWCC's one Swedish solver, Gunnar Bergvall, missed SWEDEN in last week's tough meta. While submitting QUITO this week, he writes:

It seems to be easier for me to spot a Latin American capital than my own home country...

Jeff Schwartz didn't need much of the puzzle to suss out the meta:

I love the beginning of the month. I saw the "cue" and just knew:

Finally, Leigh Newman had no trouble getting the meta since she and her husband were in Quito just a couple of weeks ago. Here they are on the equator, right outside the city:

This week's winner, whose name was chosen at random from the 409 correct entries received, is Simon McAndrews of New York City, N.Y. In addition to a MGWCC pen, pencil and notepad set, Simon will also receive a copy of Patrick Blindauer's forthcoming Musical Puzzlefest, which drops on Dec. 15th. Next week's winner will receive the same.

MATT GAFFNEY'S DAILY CROSSWORD (MGDC):

For the past couple of months I've been writing a daily 11x13 puzzle. They're free, they go live at 6 AM ET Mondays thru Fridays, have mini-themes, get tougher as the week goes on, and will continue until we've done 10,000 of them (we're on #0058 now).

Here are a couple of the recent ones I like best:

http://mattgaffneydaily.blogspot.com/2011/12/mgdc-0055-tuesday-dec-6-2011.html

http://mattgaffneydaily.blogspot.com/2011/12/mgdc-0056-wednesday-dec-7-2011.html

UPDATE, 12/9, 1:40 PM ET:

Dan Feyer writes:

If I want a little warmup in the morning before solving the rest of the day's offerings, I'll zip through a week of MGDCs (average time, about 60 seconds each).

Wow -- beat that!

THIS WEEK'S INSTRUCTIONS:

This week's contest answer is a famous actor/comedian you might watch on 33-down. E-mail it to me at crosswordcontest@gmail.com by Tuesday at noon ET. Please put the contest answer in the subject line of your e-mail.

To print the puzzle out, click on the image below and hit "print" on your browser. To solve using Across Lite either solve on the applet below or download the free software here, then join the Google Group (1,611 members now!) here. To solve with friends at Team Crossword, click here.

Solve well, and be not led astray by words intended to deceive.

MGWCC #183 -- Friday, December 2nd, 2011 -- "See the Trick?"

2011-12-01T13:25:00.010-05:00

Good afternoon, crossword fans -- welcome to Week 183 of my contest. If you're new to the contest and would like to enter, please see the site FAQ on the left sidebar for instructions.

LAST WEEK'S RESULTS:

Which mysterious Eurasian nation did last week's theme entries conceal? Here they are:

17-a fiji dollar ... S
21-a tic-tac-toe .-- W
34-a average joe . E
42-a scots-irish -.. D
52-a juxtapose . E
61-a slack-jawed -. N

No, I'm not channeling e.e. cummings, k.d. lang -- or even joon pahk. I typed this in all-lowercase because the entry at 13-down informed us that this puzzle's theme entries are case-sensitive, indicating something funny going on in that realm.

Indeed, taking the nine dots that appear over i's and j's in the theme entries and then adding the four hyphens as dashes, you get the Morse code for SWEDEN, as illustrated above.

Not a bad meta, if I do say so myself...but with one cringeworthy flaw that semi-ruined my Thanksgiving weekend when a solver pointed it out (let no one say that I don't take MGWCC seriously enough).

The flaw comes at the entries average joe and scots-irish, where the J in joe and the first i in irish would normally be capitalized. Many solvers interpreted the "CASE-sensitive" hint at 13-down to indicate that the six theme entries should be written with letters capitalized where they normally would be in print, meaning those two would read "average Joe" and "Scots-Irish." Needless to say, this throws off the Morse code message a bit.

This isn't a complete meta-killer, since "case-sensitive" could also reasonably be interpreted to mean that all letters should be in lowercase (such as when typing in a Captcha code word). But it's still unnecessarily ugly, and if I'd noticed this other interpretation I certainly would have precluded it by choosing entries which contain only indisputably uncapitalized i's and j's.

Another reason this blot didn't kill the meta: capping the J in average joe leaves that entry with neither dot nor dash, meaning it has no reason for existing. It would also leave the solver with SWNEN, which suggests SWEDEN and would be an easy backsolve.

Still, I'm rather annoyed with myself for overlooking this, as you can probably tell...so let's move on.

Joshua Kosman points out a striking coincidence:

OK, I get that I and J are dots, that's the easy part — but where are the dashes? Backsolving from SWEDEN, which seems to be the only plausible candidate, suggests that C's are dashes. I don't understand why, but I'm content with my answer.

If it's sheer coincidence that C=dash and I/J=dot yields a country on the Eurasian landmass, then you can consider my mind officially blown.

OK, that's probably in the "Top 10 Odd Things in a MGWCC" for the 3.5 years we've been doing this. The four C's (in tic-tac-toe, scots-irish and slack-jawed) can replace the hyphens as Morse code dashes, and the message doesn't change. Also critical here is that none of the other three theme entries contains a C.

What are the odds? Must be tens of thousands to one, but there it is.

Mark Taylor (and 22 others) had a good reason for submitting TURKEY:

Because I just ate some.

You've heard of an answer-specific trap in crosswords, like {Capital of Georgia} when the answer's TBILISI but the evil constructor wants you to put in ATLANTA.

This was an answer-specific meta trap, where I wanted to siphon off as many lucky guessers as I could into the TURKEY aisle (there are only a handful of six-letter countries in Europe, and the "Eurasian" hint and the holiday both point towards Asia Minor).

This week's winner, whose name was chosen at random from the 24 correct entries received, is J.T. Williams of Pasadena, Calif. In addition to a MGWCC pen, pencil and notepad set, J.T. will also receive a copy of my new book 20 Minute On-the-Road Crossword Puzzles. Next week ~~we return to normal book prizes~~ we switch to new special prizes! See below.

MONTHLY PRIZES:

19 solvers submitted the correct contest answer to all four of November's challenges (CARNEGIE MELLON, PASTEUR, D'OH!, SWEDEN). The following ten lucky and skillful winners, chosen randomly from that group, will receive a MGWCC pen, pencil and notepad set:

Peter Abide -- Biloxi, Miss.

Andy Arizpe -- Austin, Tex.

Joseph DeVincentis -- Salem, Mass.

Richard Kalustian -- Tacoma, Wash.

Joshua Kosman -- San Francisco, Calif.

Joon Pahk -- Somerville, Mass.

Miss Kali -- Brooklyn, N.Y.

Peter Washington -- Oakland, Calif.

David Wild -- Washington, D.C.

J.T. Williams -- Pasadena, Calif.

Congratulations to our ten winners, and to everyone who went 4-for-4 in November.

SPECIAL PRIZE THIS WEEK AND NEXT:

In addition to a MGWCC pen, pencil and notepad set, weekly winners this week and next will receive a copy of Patrick Blindauer's new Musical Puzzlefest. Patrick is one of the very best constructors around and this is his 3rd annual puzzle suite. He'll e-mail it out to subscribers on Dec. 15th, and I've set aside that weekend to solve it myself.

THIS WEEK'S INSTRUCTIONS:

This week's contest answer is a world capital. E-mail it to me at crosswordcontest@gmail.com by Tuesday at noon ET. Please put the contest answer capital in the subject line of your e-mail.

To print the puzzle out, click on the image below and hit "print" on your browser. To solve using Across Lite either solve on the applet below or download the free software here, then join the Google Group (1,610 members now!) here. To solve with friends at Team Crossword, click here.

Solve well, and be not led astray by words intended to deceive.

MGWCC #182 -- Friday, November 25th, 2011 -- "Nation Divination" -- alternate title -- "Country Code" -- SEE UPDATE BELOW

2011-11-23T11:10:00.013-05:00

Good afternoon, crossword fans -- welcome to Week 182 of my contest. If you're new to the contest and would like to enter, please see the site FAQ on the left sidebar for instructions.

UPDATE, 11/25, 9:20 PM ET: This week's meta might be a little tough, so I'm giving the puzzle an alternate title (a more revealing one): "Country Code". Hope that helps! And no, I won't make a habit of this...

LAST WEEK'S RESULTS:

Five politicians, one three-letter exclamation. They were:

16-a JOHN GLENN (D-OH)
10-d LARRY CRAIG (R-ID)
29-d ORRIN HATCH (R-UT)
63-a MIKE BEEBE (D-AR)
33a/44a EVAN BAYH (D-IN) (whose clue was starred for clarity)

Prompted by the puzzle's title, solvers noted the party affiliation and home state abbreviation of each (see above), as often appear on TV screens and newspaper articles featuring the wise members of our political class.

Four of these five letter combinations appear as entries in the grid: RID at 22-a, RUT at 43-d, DAR at 38-a, and DIN at 1-a. The only one missing is D'OH!, making that famous Homer Simpson utterance our contest answer (apostrophe and exclamation point appreciated but not required).

Peter Gwinn writes:

I had noticed this too -- I used to shout "D'oh!" every time I saw Dennis Kucinich on TV.

Mike McCormick says:

Not an exclamation you like to associate with an astronaut....

(And that's not John Glenn on the right but Buzz Aldrin, who lent his voice to that "Simpsons" episode)

Deirdre Zarrillo had no trouble with 39-across:

Probably the only time my name will ever show up in a crossword!

A number of solvers mentioned thinking DEIRDRE must have some role in the meta, with its central location and plethora of D's and R's (and even an I). It wasn't an intentional red herring, though -- that's just the word that fit.

Joon Pahk points out:

if i'm not mistaken, this is the second time that DOH has been the answer to the MGWCC.

http://crosswordcontest.blogspot.com/2008/06/mgwcc002-friday-june-13th-2008-it.html

that time, it was the answer because it was in the grid; this time, it's the answer because it isn't.

And, after submitting his answer:

in retrospect it would have been cleverer of me to send in my answer this week by replying to the same email (with the same subject line) from june '08.

Finally, the great HH points out in comments at Crossword Fiend that:

a list of politicians would be better suited for 4-letter exclamations.

This week's winner, whose name was chosen at random from the 180 correct entries received, is Jeff Louie of Cambridge, Mass. In addition to a MGWCC pen, pencil and notepad set, Jeff will also receive a copy of my new book 20 Minute While-You-Wait Crossword Puzzles. Next week's winner will receive either the same or its companion book, 20 Minute On-the-Road Crossword Puzzles.

SQUARESVILLE AGAIN, THIS TIME WITH META:

Jeffrey Harris's puzzle this fortnight has a meta! I had no trouble figuring it out -- will you?

http://www.janglerspuzzles.com/?p=86

THIS WEEK'S INSTRUCTIONS:

This week's contest answer is a country on the Eurasian landmass. E-mail it to me at crosswordcontest@gmail.com by Tuesday at noon ET. Please put the contest answer country in the subject line of your e-mail. UPDATE, 11/25, 9:20 PM ET: This week's meta might be a little tough, so I'm giving the puzzle an alternate title (a more revealing one): "Country Code". Hope that helps! And no, I won't make a habit of this...

To print the puzzle out, click on the image below and hit "print" on your browser. To solve using Across Lite either solve on the applet below or download the free software here, then join the Google Group (1,610 members now!) here. To solve with friends at Team Crossword, click here.

Solve well, and be not led astray by words intended to deceive.

MGWCC #181 -- Friday, Nov. 18th, 2011 -- "Where's the Party?"

2011-11-18T09:36:00.011-05:00

Good afternoon, crossword fans -- welcome to Week 181 of my contest. If you're new to the contest and would like to enter, please see the site FAQ on the left sidebar for instructions.

LAST WEEK'S RESULTS:

341 solvers found Louis PASTEUR as our contest answer scientist last week. The puzzle's theme featured four phrases, each of which began with a chemical element:

20-a [Numismatist's purchases (1,4)] are PLATINUM COINS
27-a [Little Boy was one (6)] is URANIUM BOMB
43-a [Plastic surgeon's tool (5,7)] is an ERBIUM LASER
49-a [With 54-down, 1944 Cary Grant comedy (2,3)] is ARSENIC AND OLD / LACE

Take the chemical symbols of these four elements (Pt, U, Er, As), pop them into the parenthetical numbers in the clues, and you get Monsieur PASTEUR, n'est-ce pas? Naturellement.

This week's winner, whose name was chosen at random from the 341 correct entries received, is Bill McCoy of Iowa City, Ia. In addition to a MGWCC pen, pencil and notepad set, Bill will also receive a copy of my new book 20 Minute On-the-Road Crossword Puzzles. Weekly winners throughout November will receive either the same or its companion book 20 Minute While-You-Wait Crossword Puzzles.

SQUARESVILLE:

Nice 19x19 by Jeffrey Harris at his site, where he posts a new puzzle each fortnight. This one took me 12:18, which I bet you can't beat.

http://www.janglerspuzzles.com/?p=82

THIS WEEK'S INSTRUCTIONS:

This week's contest answer is a familiar three-letter exclamation. E-mail it to me at crosswordcontest@gmail.com by Tuesday at noon ET. Please put the contest answer exclamation in the subject line of your e-mail.

To print the puzzle out, click on the image below and hit "print" on your browser. To solve using Across Lite either solve on the applet below or download the free software here, then join the Google Group (1,604 members now!) here. To solve with friends at Team Crossword, click here.

Solve well, and be not led astray by words intended to deceive.

MGWCC #180 -- Friday, Nov. 11th, 2011 -- "Science Digest"

2011-11-10T11:33:00.008-05:00

Good afternoon, crossword fans -- welcome to Week 180 of my contest. If you're new to the contest and would like to enter, please see the site FAQ on the left sidebar for instructions.

LAST WEEK'S RESULTS:

348 solvers found CARNEGIE MELLON as last week's contest answer school (and indeed, you can't spell CARNEGIE MELLON without C-O-L-L-E-G-E). The puzzle's theme featured four fictional schools:

17-a {College known for its school of performing arts?} = GRIFFITH KAUFMAN
24-a {College known for its school of political science?} = JACKSON JOHNSON
43-a {College known for its school of journalism?} = SULLIVAN ROONEY
57-a {College known for its music school?} = LLOYD WEBBER GIBB

What would all these fictional universities have in common? They're named for two people named ANDREW or ANDY: actor Andy Griffith / comedian Andy Kaufman; presidents Andrew Jackson and Andrew Johnson; journalists Andrew Sullivan and (recently departed) Andy Rooney; and musical greats Andrew Lloyd Webber and Andy Gibb.

So we're looking for a college in the Top 50 list of US News & World Report, and we find it at #23, named for tycoon Andrew Carnegie and banker Andrew Mellon (both of whom also went by "Andy" among friends, incidentally).

Milo Beckman explains:

I did a bit of Googling, andrew the conclusion from there.

Andrew Sullivan writes:

I like the theme, and especially the answer at 43-across, though I'm
not that person.

Mark Taylor says:

I got a math degree from CMU and on the diploma it says my degree is in MATHEMTAICS. Yes, they spelled math wrong. Great school otherwise!

(click image at right to enlarge)

This week's winner, whose name was chosen at random from the 348 correct entries received, is Bill Spindler of Palmyra, Va. In addition to a MGWCC pen, pencil and notepad set, Bill will also receive a copy of my new book 20 Minute On-the-Road Crossword Puzzles. Weekly winners throughout November will receive either the same or its companion book 20 Minute While-You-Wait Crossword Puzzles.

ERRATUM:

13 solvers (Rick T. was first) pointed out that "And She Was" (referenced at 23-down) is not a Grateful Dead song but rather a Talking Heads song. And It Was.

11/11/11:

I didn't write a special puzzle for 11/11/11, but someone else did and I like it very much.

THIS WEEK'S INSTRUCTIONS:

This week's contest answer is a famous scientist. E-mail it to me at crosswordcontest@gmail.com by Tuesday at noon ET. Please put the contest answer scientist in the subject line of your e-mail.

To print the puzzle out, click on the image below and hit "print" on your browser. To solve using Across Lite either solve on the applet below or download the free software here, then join the Google Group (1,595 members now!) here. To solve with friends at Team Crossword, click here.

Solve well, and be not led astray by words intended to deceive.

MGWCC #179 -- Friday, Nov. 4th, 2011 -- "College Knowledge"

2011-11-03T10:44:00.012-04:00

Good afternoon, crossword fans -- welcome to Week 179 of my contest. If you're new to the contest and would like to enter, please see the site FAQ on the left sidebar for instructions.

THE TRIBE (JUST BARELY) SURVIVES:

Just 13 solvers puzzled out the extremely difficult (unfairly so, some claimed -- more below) final challenge in H40, "A Time to Cull." This left us with only seven surviving tribal members for the month, whose names are listed below.

Solvers were given a morbid scenario where the mushroom-eating shaman was supposedly leading the tribe to new hunting grounds. There were no overt hints in the grid, so where to search?

Many solvers noticed a bunch of numbers in the clues (18 in total) and that many of those clues seemed either random or forced. At 47-across, for instance, we had {82 and 87, for octogenarians} cluing AGES. Why those two ages? And at 35-across GIGI was clued as {Winner in '58}. That was indeed the year that film won Best Picture, but why wasn't the full year used in the clue? Several other clues with numbers were similarly stilted, sending red flags up in solvers' minds.

But what to do with those numbers? That was the tough part, especially since there were no hints in the grid about it. Via several subtle nudges plus trial and error, successful tribal members realized that those 18 numbers in the clues refer to words in the contest story posted on Friday. So the "1,2,3,4" in 1-across referred to the words 1-4 in that story, which were THE WISE SHAMAN LEADS. The next two numbers in the clues are at 16-across, where 202 and 212 point to the 202nd and 212th words in the story, which are YOUR and TRIBE.

In full, the 18 numbers in the clues spell out the following message:

THE WISE SHAMAN LEADS YOUR TRIBE TO STARVATION WITH HIS MUSHROOM VISIONS. CRUSH HIS SKULL WITH A ROCK.

Here is the full list of clue numbers and their corresponding words:

1-a {"1,2,3,4 (Sumpin' New)" singer} = THE WISE SHAMAN LEADS
16-a {202 or 212} = YOUR TRIBE
29-a {"227" actress} = TO
35-a {Winner for '58} = STARVATION
47-a {82 and 87, for octogenarians} = WITH HIS
48-a {"101 Dalmatians" voice} = MUSHROOM
54-a {First of 26} = VISIONS
4-d {52} = CRUSH
10-d ('55 Chevy, e.g.} = HIS
25-d {blink-182, e.g.} = SKULL
34-d (144 things} = WITH
54-d (Got 100 on} = A
60-d ("99" group} = ROCK

Was this meta unfairly difficult or at least insufficiently hinted at? Long and heated discussion about that here, but solvers' main complaints with the puzzle and meta were:

1) The weirdness of the numbers in clues may have been obvious, but there were no instructions about what to do with those numbers. Solvers were forced to use trial and error, which some viewed as inelegant. COUNTERARGUMENT: although there were no explicit (or even implicit) instructions there were some subtle hints, which several of the 13 who solved the meta mentioned using: the extremely stilted language of the story, for example, or the numbers themselves (see counterargument to #3).

2) You didn't really even have to solve the puzzle to get the meta, since the meta was hidden in the clues and story only. COUNTERARGUMENT: there was no way to know that before solving the puzzle and meta, so who cares? Besides, there's no rule that the meta must include the grid, though it will 98+% of the time.

3) There were a huge number of things you could do with those numbers, so I should have included a hint. COUNTERARGUMENT: there weren't that many things, and some were ruled out. For example, the numbers couldn't be pointing at squares in the grid, since 227 is the highest number and there are only 225 squares in the grid.

Many more arguments for and against the puzzle and meta at the Crossword Fiend link above. In special months I aim for between 25 and 40 winners; the number of winners of the four special months so far in MGWCC history are 36 (Oct. 2009), 36 (May 2010), 50 (February 2011) and now 7 for October 2011.

So obviously that's low. I'd have preferred a higher number (I estimated 50 people would get MGWCC #179) but that's the way it shook out; perhaps a small hint in the title would have nudged more solvers towards the trick.

I'm torn on whether the meta was "unfair" -- that's about the worst adjective you can apply to a meta in my view, since it implies that solver-constructor trust has been violated. Solvers invest their time and energy into tough metas under the belief that the meta is reasonably gettable.

Since 13 solvers did get this one I don't think it can be argued that it wasn't reasonably gettable (especially since this was not a meta where one could successfully guess from a limited number of possibilities; all 13 fully grokked it). Still, it's a thin line to tread between a challenging meta and an unfair one, and I do regret that some solvers feel I stepped over the line with this one. It's just the second time in 178 metas that I can recall solvers throwing the word "unfair" around, and I certainly got the message.

Are the special prizes this month (details below) penance for overshooting a bit on this last meta? Only the Wise Shaman knows for sure. But thanks for playing the Hunt for Food October -- the tribe did survive, in some form. Perhaps we shall hear from them again in the future.

This week's winner, whose name was chosen at random from the 13 correct entries received, is Neville Fogarty of Lexington, Ky. Neville has selected as his prize an autographed copy of TV Crosswords.

REMNANTS OF A TRIBE:

The following seven solvers survived the Hunt for Food October:

Ross Beresford -- Kingsley, Penna.

Todd Etter -- Alexandria, Va.

Jeffrey Harris -- Norwalk, Conn.

Robert Hartford -- Stow, Mass.

Brent Holman -- San Francisco, Calif.

David Sullivan -- Swampscott, Mass.

John L. Wilson -- Shoreview, Minn.

Congratulations to our seven surviving members. The Wise Shaman sends greetings from the Great Beyond.

CLAWSWORD PUZZLE:

Jill Palmer writes:

We're in day 3 of a power outage from the freak October snowstorm. My kitten enjoyed my only hard copy of the puzzle, making it really hard to work on it, let alone by candlelight.

SPECIAL PRIZES FOR THE NEXT FOUR WEEKS:

Over the month of November I'll be awarding two weekly book prizes instead of the regular one. In addition to MGWCC pen, pencil and notepad set, weekly winners during this period will win a copy of either of my two new books, 20 Minute On-the-Road Crosswords or 20 Minute While-You-Wait Crosswords.

THIS WEEK'S INSTRUCTIONS:

This week's contest answer is one of the 50 top universities in the country, according to U.S. News & World Report. If you're not familiar with this list, find it here. E-mail it to me at crosswordcontest@gmail.com by Tuesday at noon ET. Please put the contest answer college in the subject line of your e-mail.

To print the puzzle out, click on the image below and hit "print" on your browser. To solve using Across Lite either solve on the applet below or download the free software here, then join the Google Group (1,590 members now!) here. To solve with friends at Team Crossword, click here.

Solve well, and be not led astray by words intended to deceive.

MGWCC #178 -- Friday, Oct. 28th, 2011 -- THE HUNT FOR FOOD OCTOBER, PUZZLE #4 -- "A Time to Cull"

2011-10-27T13:39:00.006-04:00

Good afternoon, crossword fans -- welcome to Week 178 of my contest. If you're new to the contest and would like to enter, please see the site FAQ on the left sidebar for instructions.

MUSHROOMS FOR EVERYONE:

The Great Deity brought the spirits of the dead back to life: from a tribe of 211, 275(?!?!) enjoyed non-toxic mushrooms last week (more metaphysical details on this seeming impossibility below). The Eaters-of-Apple-and-Okra tribe now count 171 surviving members entering the final week of our hunt.

8-down instructed tribal members to LOOK FOR DOUBLE M'S to locate the seven mushroom patches, and indeed there were seven MM's in the grid (see solution at right). But which of these three were poisonous?

Any reader of fairy tales knows that you don't eat a toadstool. Merriam-Webster backs this wisdom (emphasis added):

Definition of TOADSTOOL
: a fungus having an umbrella-shaped pileus : mushroom; especially : a poisonous or inedible one as distinguished from an edible mushroom

With this knowledge it's easy to pick out the three MM's with a TOAD sitting atop them (they're toad-stools, get it?): eMMys in the upper-right, aMMo in the center and aMMan in the lower-left were the three poisonous patches, which enabled successful Wise Shaman-chosen tasters to eat only from the four non-toxic patches.

I was quite liberal in accepting any answer that indicated the correct areas of the grid. Even simple entries like "Under the toadstools" were counted as correct, as were the handful of entries that didn't fully grok the toadstool concept, but did find TOADs sitting on the three relevant mushrooms and submitted their locations.

Rich Dobkin asks:

So what's the morel of the story?

Mark Manuel writes about himself:

It would be a bad day if a guy with the initials MM missed this meta.

And Alan Neely says:

This Wise Shaman seems like a pretty fungi to me.

This week's winner, whose name was chosen at random from the 275 correct entries received, is Chuck Cooper of Shalimar, Fla. Chuck has selected as his prize an autographed copy of Brain Games.

THE FINAL HUNT:

The Wise Shaman leads us from the mushroom patch. Many were saved from starvation, and many spirits of departed brothers and sisters returned as if visions of the future guided them from beyond the physical world.

Only 171 members of our tribe remain; can the Wise Shaman lead us from winter’s crush? Now only his skill avoids starvation for our tribe; only with a successful hunt of big game will we find enough meat to avoid starvation during the winter; only with luck, we’ll survive; only his words get us there.

The Shaman places (while sitting on a rock) a mushroom in his mouth to confer with the Great Deity. The tribe surveys the unfamiliar landscape; instead of lush savannah for hunting, our surroundings look bleak, despite the Wise Shaman’s reassurances. We see little but scrub brush, small trees and the occasional rock, with dangerous cliffs off in the distance. In a daze of madness the Wise Shaman wanders off alone towards a small, distant hill.

In a few hours the Wise Shaman returns, walking slowly and holding the eyeless, eerie skull of a large animal. He has recently convened with the Great Deity, it is plain to all members of your people. His head gyrates back and forth as the tribe looks on in hopeful wonder.

“We must continue forward,” the Wise Shaman finally announces to members of the tribe. “The Great Deity says that we must forsake our traditional, bountiful hunting grounds. Though the land here appears lifeless, I am promised by the Deity that great herds of game lie just one more day’s travel through this barren land.”

The tribe appears hopeful but fearful as they move forward across the dusty undergrowth. Hours of travel pass without spotting a single animal, but still you dream of bountiful herds of big game. Perhaps they will appear on the horizon at any moment, if the Great Deity speaks the truth.

THIS WEEK'S INSTRUCTIONS:

This week's contest answer is the big game you must hunt to save your tribe AND the precise method you use to kill your quarry. E-mail them to me at crosswordcontest@gmail.com by Tuesday at noon ET. Please put the contest answer game and method in the subject line of your e-mail.

IMPORTANT NOTE: You may still enter the contest even if you've missed one or more of the first three weeks of H40! You won't be eligible for the monthly prizes, of course, but you can still win the weekly prize.

To print the puzzle out, click on the image below and hit "print" on your browser. To solve using Across Lite either solve on the applet below or download the free software here, then join the Google Group (1,587 members now!) here. To solve with friends at Team Crossword, click here.

Hunt well, and be not led astray by words intended to deceive.

MGWCC #177 -- Friday, Oct. 21st, 2011 -- THE HUNT FOR FOOD OCTOBER, PUZZLE #3 -- "Poisonous Mushrooms"

2011-10-21T10:54:00.012-04:00

Good afternoon, crossword fans -- welcome to Week 177 of my contest. If you're new to the contest and would like to enter, please see the site FAQ on the left sidebar for instructions.

THE SECOND HUNT:

218 solvers found a calorie-filled patch of OKRA last week, which means 211 members of our tribe have survived to forage further.

Instructions asked for a four-letter vegetable, and successful gatherers noticed a four-letter vegetable hiding in each of the five theme entries:

17-a TOOK A LEFT --> KALE
26-a SLEEK LOOK --> LEEK
36-a MUNGO PARK --> MUNG
52-a SENORITAS --> NORI
60-a SLEEP EASY --> PEAS

The first letters of these five almost form an alphabetical sequence: K, L, M, N, P. As suggested by the title, we're looking for a sequence from K to P, and all that's missing is an O. The only four-letter vegetable starting with O is that famous gumbo ingredient, OKRA, making it our contest answer.

Peace Corps volunteer Jonathon Brown writes that our answer is:

Something that i coOK RArely here in Mozambique even though it's
available.

Cole Kendall asks:

Couldn't fit BOOKRACKS into your grid?

Similarly, Laura Effinger-Dean suggests:

COSMO KRAMER?

Len Elliott says:

...hope I didn't miss a "beet."

While Milo Beckman exclaims:

I found a TOMATO!

And finally, Dan Chall was mystified by the meta, but sent in this memorable line:

PEAS/NORI/MUNG/KALE/LEEK anagrams to "Gamekeeper kills a noun," so that suggests the answer is a verb.

This week's winner, whose name was chosen at random from the 218 correct entries received, is Ben Henri of Royal Oak, Mich. Ben has selected as his prize an autographed copy of Golf Crosswords.

THE HUNT CONTINUES:

To neighboring groups, our tribe is known as "eaters-of-apple-and-okra," but this week we must expand our search. Evening comes more swiftly now, and our fields of apple and okra are depleted to nothing. We search desperately for new sources of nourishment as we travel towards the hunting grounds for next week's big game hunt. If we make it there alive, there is hope for finding enough meat to survive the winter. But we are all weak and hungry, desperate for anything edible.

The Wise Shaman has led us to a field containing seven patches of mushrooms. Before we can begin eating he raps our hands with his staff and warns us of the danger of poison. Devouring a single mushroom cap (from his pocket, you notice), he convulses in spasms as his eyes turn wild -- and we realize he is communicating with the Great Deity.

When his moments of divine madness pass, he informs us that though this bountiful field contains seven patches of mushrooms, three of these patches are poisonous. We need all the nourishment the four edible patches contain, so we must discover which three are lethal to our tongues and which are not.

With a final, frightening wave of his staff, the Wise Shaman points directly at YOU and declares, "This must be our taster -- go forth and eat one mushroom from four patches. We pray that you choose wisely." And with that, he collapses into exhaustion -- as the other 210 surviving eaters-of-apple-and-okra turn their hopeful, desperate gazes towards you.

THIS WEEK'S INSTRUCTIONS:

This week's contest answer is the location of the three poisonous mushroom patches (I accidentally called them "fields" in 8-down; same thing, though). A simple description of each of the three locations is sufficient. E-mail them to me at crosswordcontest@gmail.com by Tuesday at noon ET. Please put the contest answer locations in the subject line of your e-mail (or as much of the description as you can fit into the subject line -- might be tough to get it all in there this week).

IMPORTANT NOTE: You may still enter the contest even if you've missed one of the first two weeks! You won't be eligible for the monthly prizes, of course, but you can still win the weekly prize.

To print the puzzle out, click on the image below and hit "print" on your browser. To solve using Across Lite either solve on the applet below or download the free software here, then join the Google Group (1,584 members now!) here. To solve with friends at Team Crossword, click here.

Hunt well, and be not led astray by words intended to deceive.

MGWCC #176 -- Friday, Oct. 14th, 2011 -- THE HUNT FOR FOOD OCTOBER, PUZZLE #2 -- "KP Duty"

2011-10-13T16:02:00.007-04:00

Good afternoon, crossword fans -- welcome to Week 176 of my contest. If you're new to the contest and would like to enter, please see the site FAQ on the left sidebar for instructions.

THE FIRST HUNT:

A little tricky for Week 1, but nature must winnow the pack on her own cruel timetable. 351 hunter-gatherers found an APPLE as our fruit of the month, suggested by the first words of the five theme entries:

I KNEW THAT (or "i KNEW THAT," to mimic the company's lowercase i)
MAC 'N' CHEESE (the famous Mac computers)
SAFARI SHIRT (Safari is Apple's web browser)
STEVE YOUNG (referencing either of Apple's two co-founders, Steve Wozniak or...)
JOB'S TEARS (referencing Apple's recently-deceased CEO, Steve Jobs)

He was indeed young and there were tears. Ask Dana Hahn, who writes:

iSad.

While Leo Stein mentions that:

This crossword puzzle was solved on a Mac.

This week's winner, whose name was chosen at random from the 351 correct entries received, is William Bernhardt of Midwest City, Okla. William has selected as his prize an autographed copy of Brain Games.

THIS WEEK'S INSTRUCTIONS:

Our Hunt continues with a tribe of 351! This week's contest answer is a four-letter vegetable. IMPORTANT NOTE: We're using the everyday, expansive definition of "vegetable" this week, so don't think too technically along that front. If you think something might be reasonably considered a vegetable, it is one for our purposes. E-mail it to me at crosswordcontest@gmail.com by Tuesday at noon ET. Please put the contest answer vegetable in the subject line of your e-mail.

To print the puzzle out, click on the image below and hit "print" on your browser. To solve using Across Lite either solve on the applet below or download the free software here, then join the Google Group (1,578 members now!) here. To solve with friends at Team Crossword, click here.

Hunt well, and be not led astray by words intended to deceive.

MGWCC# 175 -- Friday, Oct. 7th, 2011 -- THE HUNT FOR FOOD OCTOBER, PUZZLE #1 -- "Fruitful Endeavors"

2011-10-06T15:00:00.009-04:00

Good afternoon, crossword fans -- welcome to Week 175 of my contest. If you're new to the contest and would like to enter, please see the site FAQ on the left sidebar for instructions.

LAST WEEK'S RESULTS:

Last week was a 5th Friday, and the meta was brutal: just 103 solvers found the correct contest answer song, which was OB-LA-DI, OB-LA-DA.

Six theme entries ran through the grid, identifiable not just from their lengths but also from their curious enumerations:

17-a {Symbol of peace (5,6)} = DOVES FLYING
25-a {One of the ten largest cities in the U.S. (3,7)} SAN ANTONIO
30-a {Visiting briefly (8,2)} = STOPPING BY
42-a {Occult "game equipment" (5,5)} = TAROT CARDS
48-a {Cause of a sprinter's leg pain (6,4)} = MUSCLE TEAR
57-a {"Harlem Nights"} actor, 1989 (5,6)} = EDDIE MURPHY

The obvious question was: why the enumerations? The non-obvious answer: each of these six clues has an alternate answer that also fits the given enumerations. Another famous (5,6) symbol of peace, for example, is an OLIVE BRANCH. Here are all six:

17-a OLIVE BRANCH
25-a LOS ANGELES
30-a DROPPING IN
42-a OUIJA BOARD
48-a LACTIC ACID
57-a DANNY AIELLO

The initials of these six alternate answers, emboldened above, spell out our contest answer song, whose Wikipedia page is quite fascinating.

Joel Rosenberg writes:

HELP!...I cant solve the meta

The rarely-stumped Jeffrey Krasnick submitted the great Beatles tune I'M A LOSER, with the explanation:

I know it is wrong, but it is accurate.

John L. Wilson got the meta, but appended:

Fallback was "We Can't Work It Out."

This week's winner, whose name was chosen at random from the 103 correct entries received, is Eric Suess of Pocatello, Ida. Eric has selected as his prize an autographed copy of Gridlock.

COOL FIND IN MGWCC #173:

I forgot to mention this last week, but 11 solvers spotted an interesting find in the UTAH meta. I'll let Cory Oldweiler explain:

Interesting to see the solution to last week. I sent IOWA because if you take the RIGHT CORNER of each of the intersections, it spells IOWA.

Isn't that a coincidence? I didn't accept IOWA as a correct alt-answer for several reasons: 1) that theme entry is just RIGHT CORNER, but it'd need to specify UPPER RIGHT CORNER to be accurate, since it could just as well be the lower-right corner; 2) that answer doesn't explain the other three theme entries; and 3) the W in IOWA is taken from the entry IOWAN, which takes some of the shine off it. Still, a cool little Easter Egg.

MONTHLY PRIZES:

38 solvers submitted the correct contest answer to all five of September's challenges (EAST COAST, PULLEY, ROME, UTAH and OB-LA-DI, OB-LA-DA). The following ten lucky and skillful winners, chosen randomly from that group, will receive a MGWCC pen, pencil and notepad set:

Jeff Davidson -- Mountain View, Calif.

Todd Etter -- Alexandria, Va.

Cheryl Faba -- Detroit, Mich.

Brandon Hensley -- Princeton, N.J.

Brent Holman -- San Francisco, Calif.

Paul Melamud -- Milford, N.J.

Joon Pahk -- Somerville, Mass.

Ned Robert -- Los Gatos, Calif.

Eric Suess -- Pocatello, Ida.

Sean Trowbridge -- Redmond, Wash.

Congratulations to our ten winners, and to everyone who went 5-for-5 in September. It wasn't an easy thing to do.

JOON ON "JEOPARDY!":

You know the guy who blogs this puzzle every week on Crossword Fiend? Well, he's found a better-paying gig: Joon Pahk has won $129,400 on "Jeopardy!" over the past four nights, and he's still the reigning champ as I type this. So watch him tonight, or check out the YouTube videos of past shows here:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4xLZZ3eggA0

THE HUNT FOR FOOD OCTOBER:

Summer is but a memory, and the days grow shorter and colder. To you and me that means football and J. Crew sweaters, but think of our ancestors -- I'm talking about our ancient ancestors, the parts of us that have been around for 10,000 years. Before we got hip to farming and animal husbandry, the main concern this time of year would have been food.

This October, our ragtag, pencil-wielding tribe of several hundred will relive that endless, ancient process of hunting and gathering. Each week you'll be tasked with finding food, and, nature being as cruel as she is amoral, missing one week's bounty will spell your demise.

Good luck, my fellow tribal members. May our sustenance not be so well-hidden, and may our skill at locating it be great. The stomach groans already; let the hunt commence!

THE HUNT FOR FOOD OCTOBER RULES:

1) We shall refer to this month in shorthand as "H40." A pun on water, which is also kind of important.

2) Every tribal member who finds food (i.e. answers the meta correctly) for each of H40's four puzzles will receive a MGWCC pen, pencil and notepad set. The stationery sets are not edible.

3) You may use any references to help you (Google, Webster's, etc.) in your quest. You may NOT confer with, give hints to, or receive help from any other participant in the Hunt! The tribal leaders do not take kindly to awful cheaters, so remain within the behavioral bounds set by our primitive society!

THIS WEEK'S INSTRUCTIONS:

This week's contest answer is a fruit. E-mail it to me at crosswordcontest@gmail.com by Tuesday at noon ET. Please put the contest answer fruit in the subject line of your e-mail.

To print the puzzle out, click on the image below and hit "print" on your browser. To solve using Across Lite either solve on the applet below or download the free software here, then join the Google Group (1,576 members now!) here. To solve with friends at Team Crossword, click here.

Hunt well, and be not led astray by words intended to deceive.

MGWCC #174 -- Friday, Sept. 30th, 2011 -- "Mean Mr. Meta"

2011-09-29T12:22:00.008-04:00

Good afternoon, crossword fans -- welcome to Week 174 of my contest. If you're new to the contest and would like to enter, please see the site FAQ on the left sidebar for instructions.

LAST WEEK'S RESULTS:

Another toughie last week, though you wouldn't know it from the scoreboard: 221 solvers found UTAH as our contest answer. That's a large number for Week 4 of a five-puzzle month, but perhaps half of that number hadn't fully understood the meta gimmick.

You had to put one letter in UTAH in each of four symmetrical corners to complete four words there, including the theme entries (see solution at left). For example, in the SE, a U on the corner completes CROSS CO(U)SIN, AND I Q(U)OTE, Q(U)ADS and A(U)SSI. Similarly:

In the NE, the corner T completes AT A JUNC(T)ION, QUI(T)O, C(T)RL, and TOR(T)OLA.

In the NW, the corner A completes T-FR(A)ME MOTOR, COM(A)NCHES, IOW(A)N and STR(A)W.

In the SW, the corner H completes RIG(H)T CORNER, ALO(H)A OE, BA(H)T and O(H) GOD.

Put those four corners together and you've got one of the four corners states, UTAH. Further hinting at the gimmick, each theme entry contained a synonym for "intersection" (cross, junction, T, corner).

Dan Seidman writes:

Would have been cool if Zion was in the bottom left. And if nothing was in the top right.

With a similar notion, Joel Horn:

Would have been cool if you made the meta clues L-shaped, like the state.

And sorta like this:

http://www.patrickblindauer.com/play.html

Finally, Rick Bibby corrects one of my theme clues:

A "T-frame motor" is not shaped like a T. 'T Frame' is simply a standard frame size of an electric motor.

This week's winner, whose name was chosen at random from the 221 correct entries received, is Leon Glass of Montreal, Que. Leon has selected as his prize an autographed copy of Gridlock.

CROSSWORD CLUING CONTEST:

This is interesting: you can win cool prizes not by solving a crossword, but by cluing one single word more cleverly than anyone else. Find out the word (and the rules) here:

http://www.crosswordnation.com/fall-gala-crossword-giveaway

THIS WEEK'S INSTRUCTIONS:

This week's contest answer is a well-known Beatles song. E-mail it to me at crosswordcontest@gmail.com by Tuesday at noon ET. Please put the contest answer song in the subject line of your e-mail.

To print the puzzle out, click on the image below and hit "print" on your browser. To solve using Across Lite either solve on the applet below or download the free software here, then join the Google Group (1,574 members now!) here. To solve with friends at Team Crossword, click here.

Solve well, and be not led astray by words intended to deceive.

MGWCC #173 -- Friday, September 23rd, 2011 -- "State Lines"

2011-09-21T14:57:00.009-04:00

Good afternoon, crossword fans -- welcome to Week 173 of my contest. If you're new to the contest and would like to enter, please see the site FAQ on the left sidebar for instructions.

LAST WEEK'S RESULTS:

OK, that was a lot tougher than I'd intended! After 410 and then 376 correct answers arrived for weeks 1 and 2, just 93 solvers found ROME as last week's contest answer capital, which means I severely underestimated the difficulty of this meta. That's a number I'd aim for on the fourth or fifth week of a month, not the third.

Solvers were asked to find "a European capital I've never laid eyes on." That and the title hinted at eyesight, and the puzzle's one obvious theme entry hinted at lack of eyesight: {Unfair puzzle square} at 36-across led to BLIND CROSSING, that horrible situation where the band you've never heard of and an Icelandic river cross in your crossword grid, leaving you guessing at the letter.

With BRAILLE at 12-down, some suspicious-looking clumps of black squares, and three entries clued identically as {Dot follower}, many solvers reported spending a long time looking for a Braille message hidden in the grid. That was an evil (and mostly unintentional) red herring, as the meta's secret lay in the literal "blind crossings" of eight famous blind people:

In the NE, Louis BRAILLE and Greek poet HOMER crossed at the R;
In the NW, John MILTON and Stevie WONDER crossed at the O;
In the SW, jazzman Art TATUM and Biblical figure SAMSON crossed at the M;
And in the SE, Ray CHARLES and Helen KELLER crossed at the E.

Put those four blind crossings together and you get ROME, which I do hope to lay eyes on someday.

Like so many solvers this week, John L. Wilson had to take a random stab (his was VATICAN CITY):

After ruling out Lisbon, that left only ~45 others to consider...

Debbie Keller did, too (her stab was REYKJAVIK):

ARRGGHH! I just can't see it! I was so excited to find my last name in the puzzle! I even raised a guide dog (puppy) last year for Leader Dogs for the Blind here in Rochester Hills. So you'd think I could solve this meta! But my answer is a total shot in the dark...

While Jeff Davidson almost sent in a city in Utah before coming to his senses:

I was all ready to submit "OREM" because I knew it was a place *somewhere* before I decided to check to make sure it was in Europe. Whoops. Then I figured you must have made that mistake, too. Then I figured I should check a list of capitals somewhere, starting with O... nothing. What about R?

Oh... duh.

This week's winner, whose name was chosen at random from the 93 correct entries received, is Todd Etter of Alexandria, Va. Todd has selected as his prize an autographed copy of Gridlock.

PRINTING ISSUES:

Several solvers have reported printing difficulties with the new .pdf printable format. If you're one of them, note that you can also print directly from the Across Lite file; either join the Google Group to get it by e-mail each Friday, or just click "Download Crossword for Across Lite" under the AL applet on the blog.

MATT GAFFNEY'S DAILY CROSSWORD:

I've just started a new daily crossword feature which I've creatively labeled "Matt Gaffney's Daily Crossword" (MGDC). Wednesday was puzzle #0001, and there'll be a new one up at 6 AM each weekday from now until the end of time.

MGDC puzzles are 11x13 in size, lightly themed, and on the easy side; a Monday MGDC will be significantly less difficult than a Monday New York Times puzzle, while a Friday MGDC will be about as tough as a Tuesday Times. No contest or meta, either, so if you have friends who like crosswords but find MGWCC a little rough, send them on over to MGDC.

The site's still bare-bones but I'll spruce it up over the coming week. Here it is:

http://mattgaffneydaily.blogspot.com/

THIS WEEK'S INSTRUCTIONS:

This week's contest answer is a U.S. state. E-mail it to me at crosswordcontest@gmail.com by Tuesday at noon ET. Please put the contest answer state in the subject line of your e-mail.

To print the puzzle out, click on the image below and hit "print" on your browser. To solve using Across Lite either solve on the applet below or download the free software here, then join the Google Group (1,570 members now!) here. To solve with friends at Team Crossword, click here.

Solve well, and be not led astray by words intended to deceive.

MGWCC #172 -- Friday, September 16th, 2011 -- "The Vision Thing"

2011-09-15T11:19:00.008-04:00

Good afternoon, crossword fans -- welcome to Week 172 of my contest. If you're new to the contest and would like to enter, please see the site FAQ on the left sidebar for instructions.

LAST WEEK'S RESULTS:

Which of the 6 SIMPLE MACHINES was missing from last week's puzzle? 376 solvers figured that meta-mystery out last week. Let's take a look at the theme entries:

17-a PUSH OVER THE EDGE
22-a NATHAN LANE
34-a BRING TO HEEL
42-a HAVE YOU EVER
50-a MOTLEY CREW

See the pattern? The last word of each theme entry is one of the simple machines with its head lopped off: (W)EDGE, inclined (P)LANE, (W)HEEL and axle, (L)EVER, and (S)CREW. The only one missing is the PULLEY, making that our contest answer machine.

Zack Stiefler says:

Hanks or he reat uzzle his eek.

Joel Horn points out something you can do with the leftovers:

Shortest word with the letters you omitted (WPWLS) is snowplow, which
is a combination wedge/inclined plane.

Tyler Hinman thinks I could've snuck the sixth one in, too:

Oh, come on. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ulley

Charles Montpetit appreciated the geographical exactitude:

Since I only knew one of these South Yorkshire villages, I had no idea that it was part of a "familiar sextet." But I have to marvel at the way you once again managed to approximate their respective locations in the grid. Kudos!

[Note: this is a complete joke! Please don't go looking for any of these (except Ulley) in an atlas.]

And Mary Lou Perry writes:

So nice to see that 6 in the lower left - Henry Hook-esque, which, to me, is high praise!

To me, too! I'll take it.

This week's winner, whose name was chosen at random from the 376 correct entries received, is Jeff Merriman of Columbia, S.C. Jeff has selected as his prize an autographed copy of Gridlock.

THIS WEEK'S INSTRUCTIONS:

This week's contest answer is a European capital I've never laid eyes on. E-mail it to me at crosswordcontest@gmail.com by Tuesday at noon ET. Please put the contest answer capital in the subject line of your e-mail.

To print the puzzle out, click on the image below and hit "print" on your browser. To solve using Across Lite either solve on the applet below or download the free software here, then join the Google Group (1,571 members now!) here. To solve with friends at Team Crossword, click here.

Solve well, and be not led astray by words intended to deceive.

MGWCC #171 -- Friday, September 9th, 2011 -- "Building Locks"

2011-09-09T10:49:00.006-04:00

Good afternoon, crossword fans -- welcome to Week 171 of my contest. If you're new to the contest and would like to enter, please see the site FAQ on the left sidebar for instructions.

LAST WEEK'S RESULTS:

For the third time in five puzzles, a record number of correct entries poured into MGWCC international headquarters last week. 410 solvers had no trouble spotting the EAST COAST as our contest answer region, formed by anagramming the words in EAST and COAST (separately) into nonsense phrases:

SATE TOSCA
SEAT TACOS
EATS ASCOT
TASE COATS

Amy Reynaldo had quite a view for it:

I was up in the CN Tower in Toronto when the quake hit! The tower moved. My first noticed quake!

Linda Graham was unimpressed:

I've already submitted my answer, but I wanted to assure you that we Californians use an earthquake like you had in Virginia as a coffee stirrer.

But Clare Farris sticks up for our little quake:

I grew up in the Los Angeles area and experienced some good ones--notably Whittier and Northridge--but I've lived on the EAST COAST now for the past 15 years.

Californians had a good chuckle at people's reaction to the Mineral event, but let me tell you: it scared the *&%# out of me! We live in bricks here! Bricks are great protection against one thing: wolves. For earthquakes you're much better off sticking with straw or wood.

While Jonathon Brown writes from Mozambique:

Didn't quite feel the quake over here.

And Ben Henri is just glad to have time for crosswords again:

Anyone who gripes at teachers for "having the summers off" needs to live a summer in my shoes. Too busy to even do the Matt Gaffney puzzles until school RESUMES!

And finally, there was a quirk in the crossword I was wondering if anyone would notice. Chip Van Kirk came through:

If you had changed the A at the ARNIE and ALTON intersection to an E (resulting in very legitimate ERNIE and ELTON words), you would have had IRENE anagrammed in the center of the puzzle.

Extremely observant! I wrote this puzzle after Irene had first hit, and I was under the mistaken impression at that time than she was petering out and that no lives were going to be lost. I had ERNIE and ELTON in there, and had clued the former as {Gender-bent hurricane, after the quake?}.

When I found out that Irene had claimed quite a few lives, I thought it'd be in poor taste to use the hurricane in the grid. So I changed the E to an A to "make sure" no one would notice it, but then I thought, "I wonder if anyone will..." And they did!

This week's winner, whose name was chosen at random from the 410 correct entries received, is Rachel Melman of San Francisco, Calif. (appropriate city, given the theme). In addition to a MGWCC pen, pencil and notepad set, Rachel will also receive an autographed copy of The Penguin Classics Crossword Puzzles, the lovely new book edited by Ben Tausig.

FORTNIGHTLY SQUARESVILLE:

Jeffrey Harris is posting a new themed crossword every two weeks at his new web digs, Squaresville Puzzles. May a thousand independent crossword sites bloom!

THIS WEEK'S INSTRUCTIONS:

This week's contest answer is the missing member of a familiar sextet. E-mail it to me at crosswordcontest@gmail.com by Tuesday at noon ET. Please put the contest answer in the subject line of your e-mail.

To print the puzzle out, click on the image below and hit "print" on your browser. To solve using Across Lite either solve on the applet below or download the free software here, then join the Google Group (1,562 members now!) here. To solve with friends at Team Crossword, click here.

Solve well, and be not led astray by words intended to deceive.

MGWCC #170 -- Friday, September 2, 2011 -- "Quaker States"

2011-09-01T12:23:00.010-04:00

Good afternoon, crossword fans -- welcome to Week 170 of my contest. If you're new to the contest and would like to enter, please see the site FAQ on the left sidebar for instructions.

LAST WEEK'S RESULTS:

104 solvers found an ESCALATOR running northeasterly through last week's grid along the central black squares.

Those solvers noticed that putting the letters in ESCALATOR on those nine squares still allowed valid answers for the 18 acrosses on either side. Starting from the bottom of the escalator, for example, {Part of a matador's getup} at 45-a works for either CAP or CAPE.

Similarly:

42-a {What's heard in church on Sunday} = AMEN or AMENS
39-a {Ending for mono or ego} = MANIA or MANIAC
33-a {Woman's name from the Hebrew for "God is gracious"} = JOANN or JOANNA
31-a {Part of a wooden door} = PANE or PANEL
29-a {Section of a tax form} = LINE or LINE A
26-a {Cut finely} = FILE or FILET
23-a {Blue material} = PORN or PORNO
19-a {One of the Beatles, e.g.} = STAR or STARR

And on the other side of the escalator:

46-a {Common medium of communication} = MAIL or E-MAIL
43-a {Pulverize} = MASH or SMASH
40-a {Standard iPhone feature} = LOCK or CLOCK
35-a {Came up} ROSE or AROSE
32-a {Character in an Ogden Nash poem} = LAMA or LLAMA
30-a {Like some of Schoenberg's music} = TONAL or ATONAL
27-a {"___ your problem..."} = HERE'S or THERE'S
24-a {It's great in Greece} = MEGA or OMEGA
21-a {A figure 8 may be made in it} = INK or RINK

All of which makes the humble ESCALATOR our contest answer.

Great minds think alike: first, Jon Delfin:

What, you couldn't make it work with the pairs of Downs, too? Slacker! ;-)

And now Jeffrey Harris:

What, you couldn't get the downs to work too? Slacker ;-P

(And no, those two didn't confer on their e-mails!)

Neville Fogarty turned his Mom C Fogarty on to MGWCC this summer, and she didn't waste any time: not only did C get all the metas right in July, but she was also picked for a monthly prize. Neville was impressed, and C got the first three metas in August, too -- but he figured last week's killer would finally stump her:

Very nice! We'll see if mom gets this one!

Here's what happened, as C writes:

Neville was shocked when I told him the answer was escalator. He asked me how I got it. I just looked at the grid - it looks like an escalator. Then he told me how he did it with the "missing" letters. Oh well. At least I got it!

Eric Prestemon had an epic solve, which you can read about here:

http://solvingpuzzles.tumblr.com/post/9656334149/mgwcc-169-moving-day

And finally, Russ Cooper plots the ups and downs of his journey to meta nirvana:

This one gave my self esteem a wild ride right into the ground:

1. Noticed the pattern of black squares right away, and
thought, "stairs or escalator." Felt pretty smart.

2. Counted the black squares in the middle diagonal, and
noted strong correlation with the number of letters in
"escalator." Felt really smart.

3. Worked the puzzle on paper, but had to Google to verify
Eddie Money and spelling of Abu Dhabi. Felt sort of
stupid.

4. Looked around the middle diagonal for something useful, but
failed. Felt stupid.

5. Decided to type the puzzle solution into Across Lite
because I couldn't think of anything else to do. Still
felt stupid.

6. Noticed the Ringo thing while typing. Aha! Felt really
smart.

7. Worked out the remaining missing letters. Still felt
really smart.

8. Wrote them down, in order: ROTALACSE. Couldn't anagram
that in my head. Felt sort of stupid.

9. Broke out my anagram software and watched it spit out
"escalator." Felt really stupid.

This week's winner, whose name was chosen at random from the 104 correct entries received, is Owen Dolan of Brooklyn, N.Y. In addition to a MGWCC pen, pencil and notepad set, Owen will receive a 1-year subscription to Liz Gorski's exciting new project, Crossword Nation.

MONTHLY PRIZES:

66 solvers submitted the correct contest answer to all four of August's challenges (CATCHER, FLAMINGO, RAIN DELAY, ESCALATOR). The following ten lucky and skillful winners, chosen randomly from that group, will receive a MGWCC pen, pencil and notepad set:

Russ Cooper -- Phoenix, Ariz.

Benjamin Hall -- Chicago, Ill.

John Lenning -- Irvine, Calif.

Mike Lewis -- Cedar Falls, Ia.

Eric Maddy -- Huntington Beach, Calif.

Pete Muller

Jill Palmer -- Leverett, Mass.

Michael Utkus -- Bala Cynwyd, Penna.

Mike Weepie -- Cedar Rapids, Ia.

Scott Weiss -- Walkersville, Md.

Congratulations to our ten winners, and to everyone who went 4-for-4 in August.

THIS WEEK'S INSTRUCTIONS:

This week's contest answer is a region of the United States. E-mail it to me at crosswordcontest@gmail.com by WEDNESDAY at noon ET (note extra day for the holiday weekend). Please put the contest answer region in the subject line of your e-mail.

To print the puzzle out, click on the image below and hit "print" on your browser. To solve using Across Lite either solve on the applet below or download the free software here, then join the Google Group (1,557 members now!) here. To solve with friends at Team Crossword, click here.

SPECIAL PRIZE THIS WEEK:

In addition to a MGWCC pen, pencil and notepad set, next week's winner will receive a copy of The Penguin Classics Crossword Puzzles, the lovely new book edited by Ben Tausig (who will autograph the prize). This book features literary-themed crosswords by dozens of familiar constructors, including one by yours truly.

Solve well, and be not led astray by words intended to deceive.

MGWCC #169 -- Friday, August 26th, 2011 -- "Moving Day"

2011-08-25T12:40:00.007-04:00

Good afternoon, crossword fans -- welcome to Week 169 of my contest. If you're new to the contest and would like to enter, please see the site FAQ on the left sidebar for instructions.

LAST WEEK'S RESULTS:

No more Mr. Nice Guy: just 140 solvers found RAIN DELAY as a "common kind of summer break" last week, barely a third of the 403 who got Week 2.

Three theme entries cryptically instructed solvers to THINK FIRST / WHEN YOU LOCATE / NINE PAUSES. Those pauses could have been a lot of things -- see e-mails below -- but they pointed at the nine clues in the grid with commas. Take the first letter of those nine clues (THINK FIRST, as it were) and you get, in order, our contest answer:

1-a {Respectful but friendly closing, sometimes} = BEST WISHES
23-a {Admits, as a visitor} = LETS IN
32-a {Iron, for one} = ORE
45-a {Norm Macdonald's old show, briefly} = SNL
52-a {Dumb as dirt, or smart as a whip} = SIMILE
30-d {Extreme point, as of an orbit} = APOGEE
33-d {Longtime magazine owner, for short} = HEF
39-d {Admits, as a crime} = OWNS UP TO
62-d {You've got mail," they'll tell you} = AOL

Ed Sills says:

I had a brain delay before this one clicked.

Peter Abide stumbled on a tricky cross:

hardest part was realizing there is no show called "Marry", which had me looking for 9 parses

Adam Rosenfield sensed the presence of a meta:

What tipped me off to the meta in this puzzle was the clues for 26D
and 58A—I thought it was strange how there was no comma in 26D (and
it didn't look like a mistake since you'd have also have had to add
the "and" by mistake), and the fullstops in the quote in 58A jumped
out and made the link to the 'pauses' that were hinted at in 60A.
A little clue searching later, and it all fit together.

Nancy Hart hasn't seen much of our contest answer lately:

Keep it up with the baseball clues. Gives me a fighting chance. However, I'm from Texas -- would you remind me what a rain delay is?

Same reminder needed for Richard Kalustian:

Matt, this meta was definitely unfair to fans in cities with roofed or domed stadiums. We haven't had a rain delay in Seattle since the days of the Pilots. (Though there was that time when some tiles fell from the ceiling of the KingDome.)

I reluctantly let 47-down into the grid, but Eric LeVasseur says not to worry:

I have no problem with seeing ALPENA in a puzzle - but then again, I'm originally from Michigan, so I know of the city (though admittedly I've never been there). Being the largest town in a sparsely populated part of the state, they'd show it on the local news weather maps all the time.

And finally, Mark Navarrete found a (serendipitous) red herring:

Before I realized that it actually meant commas, I'd been thinking that "nine pauses" might be a sneaky way of saying "nine PA uses". There were exactly 9 instances of the bigram PA appearing in a word in the clues (PART 1/2/3 of directions, accomPAnied, PAternity, Toronto PAper, Tenant counterPArt, pitchfork PArts, and A PANEL anag.) Coincidence?

This week's winner, whose name was chosen at random from the 140 correct entries received, is Steve Jorgensen of Columbia, Mo. In addition to a MGWCC pen, pencil and notepad set, Steve will also receive a one-year subscription to Liz Gorski's Crossword Nation. Next week's winner will receive the same.

THIS WEEK'S INSTRUCTIONS:

This week's contest answer is a common form of transportation. E-mail it to me at crosswordcontest@gmail.com by Tuesday at noon ET. Please put the contest answer in the subject line of your e-mail.

To print the puzzle out, click on the image below and hit "print" on your browser. To solve using Across Lite either solve on the applet below or download the free software here, then join the Google Group (1,552 members now!) here. To solve with friends at Team Crossword, click here.

Solve well, and be not led astray by words intended to deceive.

MGWCC #168 -- Friday, August 19th, 2011 -- "Summer Break"

2011-08-18T14:28:00.005-04:00

Good afternoon, crossword fans -- welcome to Week 168 of my contest. If you're new to the contest and would like to enter, please see the site FAQ on the left sidebar for instructions.

LAST WEEK'S RESULTS:

I'm glad this isn't one of those months where everyone who gets all the metas wins a prize! After a record-busting 392 entrants got Week 1, a record-busting 403 solvers found the FLAMINGO as Week 2's contest answer hotel.

There was just one theme entry in the grid, DOUBLES DOWN at 17-d, clued as {Employs a blackjack tactic, or figures out this puzzle's theme}. That was meant literally, as eight symmetrically-placed squares in the grid became double letters on the down entry:

2-d OF(F)LINE
11-d IL(L) AT EASE
28-d A(A)RP
9-d MIA HAM(M)
43-d I (I)NSIST (That's "I insist!," an easy double to overlook)
38-d PEN(N)
35-d ROBIN EG(G)S
46-D ONE-RO(O)M

Read line by line those eight spell out FLAMINGO, the venerable Vegas landmark that's the oldest hotel on the Strip (it opened in 1946). Also note that those eight are the only double letters in the entire grid, which was this grid's real challenge to pull off. Double letters are insidiously easy to overlook; in fact, I had DOUBLED DOWN at 17-d for a long time until I was suddenly mortified to notice that DD straddling its words! Three panicky seconds later I realized I could change the first D to an S. Talk about lucky...

Dar(r)en Mitchel(l) writes:

Thanks, I realy enjoyed the puzle this wek.

Matt Matera says:

I don't know if I have more than one leg to stand on here, but I think the answer is the Flamingo.

Mark Diehl got FLAMINGO:

...in which the even letters are consecutive letters...the four my grandkids like to slur into one

Justin Redd is:

Heading to Vegas this weekend for a bachelor party

Hmmm -- after solving this puzzle, I wonder which color he should bet on at the roulette table?

Jeremy Horwitz is headed there, too:

I bought plane tickets to Vegas yesterday. I would've been a bit spooked had MANDALAYBAY been the answer this week.

Laura Effinger-Dean found some un-PC humor:

I had MEN instead of HES at 54-across for a long time, and could not
fathom what was so scary about a MAC.

Michael Farabaugh didn't have to anagram:

Nice theme. I didn't think there was a hotel called "Main Golf" or "Fang Limo"

Chris McCoy found an alternate defintion for FLAMING "O":

Or what happens when you throw an OATY Cheerio into a BONFIRE.

Jeff Mizrahi suggests a way to monetize my site:

they should give you a cut if people say you referred them there.

Tim Noonan didn't fall for a plausible trap:

Got doubles down immediately and thought it would be New York New York.

Sheila O'Keefe likewise dodged some trouble:

Somehow I missed the N in my first pass collecting the missing doubles and spent a few minutes trying to anagram "FMLAGIO", which led me to try to convince the F and M to become a B and E, but obbline just wasn't a word (and yeah, I would have needed another L). Then I saw flamingo, if only I had an N. Sure enough, there it was in Penn.

As did Tony Antonakas:

At first glance I assumed it was a rebus puzzle with the clue for 26D leading to AARP, but soon hit on the DOUBLES DOWN theme. As the first letters I got were G, I, A, and M, I was sure the answer had to be The Mirage and the letters would be anagrammed. Good thing I waited to finish and got the remaining letters.

And finally, Dan Chall wonders:

Does the "double down" hint at feathers?

This week's winner, whose name was chosen at random from the 403 correct entries received, is Barbara Hartwell of Framingham, Mass. Barbara has selected as her prize an autographed copy of Golf Crosswords.

SPECIAL PRIZE THIS WEEK AND NEXT:

Elizabeth Gorski is one of the very best constructors out there. You knew that -- but did you know that she has a new site called Crossword Nation? Each Tuesday Liz is publishing a new 15x15 available by subscription only (99 cents per month) for your PDA.

In addition to a MGWCC pen, pencil and notepad set, winners this week and next will receive a one-year subscription to Crossword Nation (and a copy of Stand Alone to solve it on if they don't already own one).

But why wait to win? Go ahead and subscribe to Crossword Nation yourself.

THIS WEEK'S INSTRUCTIONS:

This week's contest answer is a common kind of summer break. E-mail it to me at crosswordcontest@gmail.com by Tuesday at noon ET. Please put the contest answer break in the subject line of your e-mail.

To print the puzzle out, click on the image below and hit "print" on your browser. To solve using Across Lite either solve on the applet below or download the free software here, then join the Google Group (1,548 members now!). To solve with friends at Team Crossword, click here. [OK, Blogger isn't letting me do the normal hyperlinks in this paragraph, so please refer to links in last week's post for now]

Solve well, and be not led astray by words intended to deceive.

MGWCC #167 -- Friday, August 12th, 2011 -- "Strip Search"

2011-08-12T11:06:00.007-04:00

Good afternoon, crossword fans -- welcome to Week 167 of my contest. If you're new to the contest and would like to enter, please see the site FAQ on the left sidebar for instructions.

LAST WEEK'S RESULTS:

A new MGWCC record! 392 solvers found the CATCHER as last week's contest answer, far surpassing our previous high of 364. Instructions asked for one of the nine baseball positions, and the four theme entries pointed right at a masked man:

BENCH PRESS
CROUCHING TIGER
HOME ON THE RANGE
MITT ROMNEY

So we have (greatest catcher of all time, it's generally agreed) Johnny BENCH CROUCHING at HOME plate with his catcher's MITT, making our contest answer clear.

Bruce Sutphin had no trouble with the meta:

Thanks for a nice fat pitch down the center to start the month off.

Neil Bellovin knocked it out of the park as well:

Got Mitt Romney and knew right away. Now for a change I have more time this weekend.

Tyler Hinman writes:

I spent several seconds looking at 2D wondering who the hell "Business Bart" is.

Dave Sullivan wanted a different theme entry:

Being from Boston, I would have been more partial to FISK UNIVERSITY.

And finally, Mark Ballinger found a funny idea at 10-d:

I was hoping "chichi" would be involved as an interleague games meta clue.

This week's winner, whose name was chosen at random from the 392 correct entries received, is Mandy Scott of Rockford, Mich. Mandy has selected as her prize an autographed copy of The Pocket Idiot's Guide to Brain Games.

YOU SAID A BAD WORD!

The entry at 20-across raised a few eyebrows last week. I normally put a "vulgarity alert" in the blog post on the rare occasions when I use a blue word in the grid, and indeed simply forgot to do so this time.

My view on using cusswords in crosswords is the same as using them in general life: sparingly and only when truly necessary...or when it would be extremely funny. Otherwise you just come across as a 20-across.

THIS WEEK'S INSTRUCTIONS:

This week's contest answer is a hotel on the Las Vegas Strip. E-mail it to me at crosswordcontest@gmail.com by Tuesday at noon ET. Please put the contest answer hotel in the subject line of your e-mail.

To print the puzzle out, click on the image below and hit "print" on your browser. To solve using Across Lite either solve on the applet below or download the free software here, then join the Google Group (1,547 members now!) here. To solve with friends at Team Crossword, click here.

Solve well, and be not led astray by words intended to deceive.

MGWCC #166 -- Friday, August 5th, 2011 -- "Position Paper"

2011-08-04T13:04:00.015-04:00

Good afternoon, crossword fans -- welcome to Week 166 of my contest. If you're new to the contest and would like to enter, please see the site FAQ on the left sidebar for instructions.

LAST WEEK'S RESULTS:

A Caribbean mystery: four vertical two-word theme entries last week, where the top words were of obvious French origin and the bottom words were maritime terms. What island do these clues point us to?

Those bottom words held a secret: their key feature was not their relation to the sea, but rather their derivation, which is much less obvious than their French counterparts': FREEBOOTER, SMUGGLER, YACHT and KEELHAULING all come from Dutch. Once that insight hits the rest is just a Google away: SAINT MARTIN / SINT MAARTEN is the only Caribbean island that's French up north and Dutch down south, making it our contest answer island.

Jonathan Olsen thought the meta was:

Tres goed!

Miss Kali asks:

I wonder how many 'Jamaican me crazy' jokes you're gonna get...

A little research paid off for Karen Horn:

I wouldn't have noticed the etymologies from the Dutch, except I looked up to confirm that the first parts were all French, and got curious about the others so I looked them up also.

While Clare Farris's meta research unearthed an amusing tropical redundancy:

There is a place in the Bahamas called Little Petit Island!

Peggy Johnson had the a-ha moment:

I spent two days mulling over the French answers, thinking it must be a French island. But that was not definitive. Which island? Then the aha moment hit when I googled the "English" words under the French. Voila! They were all of Dutch origin. By god, I think I've got it! Didn't I see the island of St. Martin as controlled by both the French and Dutch? And isn't the French portion north of the Dutch portion. There were the French words sitting atop the Dutch in the four long answers. I had wondered at the significance of the vertical long answers right from the beginning. Now that made sense. Boy, did I learn a lot about pirates of the Caribbean islands!

Ed Brody wasn't going to miss this one:

Saint Martin/Sint Maarten was our honeymoon destination umpty-ump years ago, so perhaps I had an unfair advantage.

Mark Taylor had a big advantage, too:

OK, now that's hilarious. As you may remember I mailed in my incorrect answer last week FROM ST. MAARTEN. The cruise ship internet was impossibly slow - and 65 cents a minute - and didn't allow me to print, so I just guessed Hanging Gardens (Colossus was my 2nd mental choice, oh well).

And to confirm - yes the French part is still on top and the Dutch part still on the bottom.

Speaking of not being able to print out the puzzle, here's Ed Brody's solve of MGWCC #161:

I was visiting friends in coastal Maine where I could see the puzzle on my Droid, but had no other internet or printer access. So I had to go hunting for a piece of paper...

(click image to enlarge -- and that's a coffee filter!)

This week's winner, whose name was chosen at random from the 116 correct entries received, is Andy Arizpe of Austin, Tex. Andy has selected as his prize an autographed copy of Gridlock.

MONTHLY PRIZES:

54 solvers submitted the correct contest answer to all five of July's challenges (DELTA, MATCHBOX, TALK SHOW, THE COLOSSUS OF RHODES, SAINT MARTIN/SINT MAARTEN). The following ten lucky and skillful winners, chosen randomly from that group, will receive a MGWCC pen, pencil and notepad set:

Jimmy Dale -- Hastings-on-Hudson, N.Y.

Meg Duvall -- St. Petersburg, Fla.

Laura Effinger-Dean -- Seattle, Wash.

C Fogarty -- West Windsor, N.J.

Nathan Fung -- Brighton, Mass.

John Lenning -- Irvine, Calif.

Christy Meisler -- Somerville, Mass.

Marcia Rose -- Mequon, Wisc.

Adam Rosenfield -- Cambridge, Mass.

Peter Washington -- Oakland, Calif.

Congratulations to our ten winners, and to everyone who went 5-for-5 in July.

THIS WEEK'S INSTRUCTIONS:

This week's contest answer is one of the nine baseball positions. E-mail it to me at crosswordcontest@gmail.com by Tuesday at noon ET. Please put the contest answer position in the subject line of your e-mail.

To print the puzzle out, click on the image below and hit "print" on your browser. To solve using Across Lite either solve on the applet below or download the free software here, then join the Google Group (1,545 members now!) here. To solve with friends at Team Crossword, click here.

Solve well, and be not led astray by words intended to deceive.

MGWCC #165 -- Friday, July 29th, 2011 -- "Island Time"

2011-07-29T11:20:00.011-04:00

Good afternoon, crossword fans -- welcome to Week 165 of my contest. If you're new to the contest and would like to enter, please see the site FAQ on the left sidebar for instructions.

LAST WEEK'S RESULTS:

OK, so maybe that should have been Week 5 instead of Week 4! Just 84 solvers found the COLOSSUS OF RHODES as last week's contest WotAW, and about 15 of those were 1-in-7 shots taken successfully without grokking the meta.

The difficulty came not from the complexity of the meta -- it can be described in a single sentence -- but from the unusual pattern solvers were asked to find. Normally meta-hunters look for either wordplay patterns in the theme entries or some commonality in meaning among them. This meta was different: the common thread among the theme entries was nothing they shared in wordplay or meaning, but simply that their last words were members of a well-known set of seven:

BLACK FRIDAY --> 7 days of the week
GREEN WITH ENVY --> 7 deadly sins
KIND OF BLUE --> 7 colors of the rainbow
WEST AFRICA --> 7 continents
DON'T BE BASHFUL --> 7 dwarfs
BLAME CANADA --> G7 countries

Contest instructions asked for one of the Seven Wonders of the Ancient World, but which to choose? Crafty metapuzzlers noticed that each of these six septet members is first alphabetically within its septet. Completing the pattern with a 7th septet member is the first WotAW alphabetically, the COLOSSUS OF RHODES.

I was slightly concerned about some of the sins having alternate names, since greed is sometimes labeled as "avarice" and wrath sometimes as "anger," either of which would have knocked envy off the top spot. I decided to use the list sanctioned by both Wikipedia and, more importanly, the classic 1995 movie "Se7en": gluttony, greed, sloth, envy, wrath, pride and lust. If it's good enough for Brad Pitt, Morgan Freeman and Kevin Spacey then it's good enough for MGWCC:

Also, it'd be a thousands-to-1 shot for the other five septet members to be first in their sets by coincidence, so it seemed mathematically clear that these placements had to be the meta key -- especially since envy is placed first alphabetically on many contemporary lists.

Jed Scott writes:

I especially liked the red herring of colors in the first three theme entries -- I had WEST ORANGE written in for a long time in the fourth entry!

Lively and lengthy comments section here.

This week's winner, whose name was chosen at random from the 84 correct entries received, is Daniel W. of Kirkland, Wash. Daniel has selected as his prize an autographed copy of Gridlock.

E-MAIL I MEANT TO RUN LAST WEEK:

Refreshing your memory: MGWCC #163's meta was formed from the eight silent letters used in theme entries, which spelled out (in order) TALK SHOW.

Mark Manuel writes:

Do you ever have those moments where you feel just a little bit stupid? I figured out that each word had a silent letter and then highlighted them in the puzzle. I went to an on-line anagram solver and started typing t - a - l - k - s - h - o - w then looked at the screen to see what was returned to me.

Just laughed out loud...what can you do...

THIS WEEK'S INSTRUCTIONS:

This week's contest answer is a Caribbean island. E-mail it to me at crosswordcontest@gmail.com by Tuesday at noon ET. Please put the contest answer island in the subject line of your e-mail.

To print the puzzle out, click on the image below and hit "print" on your browser. To solve using Across Lite either solve on the applet below or download the free software here, then join the Google Group (1,546 members now!) here. To solve with friends at Team Crossword, click here.

Solve well, and be not led astray by words intended to deceive.

MGWCC #164 -- Friday, July 22nd, 2011 -- "Seven Wonders"

2011-07-22T10:11:00.007-04:00

Good afternoon, crossword fans -- welcome to Week 164 of my contest. If you're new to the contest and would like to enter, please see the site FAQ on the left sidebar for instructions.

LAST WEEK'S RESULTS:

Silence was golden in last week's puzzle -- and the key to the meta. 288 solvers noticed that each of the eight words in the four theme entries contained a silent letter:

GLISTENING BREAD
SALMON KNOB
DEBRIS HOUR
LEOPARD ANSWERED

Take those eight silent letters in order and you've got TALK SHOW, which was last week's contest answer.

Marie desJardins writes:

Scent build often clue.

The last theme entry contained a slight inelegance pointed out by Noam Elkies in Crossword Fiend comments: "answered" contains not one but two silent letters, the W used in the meta and the second E. I somehow managed to overlook this, but fortunately no one submitted TALK SHOE.

This week's winner, whose name was chosen at random from the 288 correct entries received, is Steve Tolopka of Portland, Ore. Steve has selected as his prize an autographed copy of Sip & Solve Hard Crosswords.

THIS WEEK'S INSTRUCTIONS:

This week's contest answer is one of the Seven Wonders of the Ancient World. E-mail it to me at crosswordcontest@gmail.com by Tuesday at noon ET. Please put the contest answer wonder in the subject line of your e-mail.

To print the puzzle out, click on the image below and hit "print" on your browser. To solve using Across Lite either solve on the applet below or download the free software here, then join the Google Group (1,539 members now!) here. To solve with friends at Team Crossword, click here.

Solve well, and be not led astray by words intended to deceive.

MGWCC #163 -- Friday, July 15th, 2011 -- "You Don't Say..."

2011-07-15T10:38:00.006-04:00

Good afternoon, crossword fans -- welcome to Week 163 of my contest. If you're new to the contest and would like to enter, please see the site FAQ on the left sidebar for instructions.

LAST WEEK'S RESULTS:

16 I's were the key to last week's meta: they came in an octet of pairs, one letter separating each pair's components. Look "right between the I's," as the puzzle title suggests, and those eight letters spell our contest answer, MATCHBOX.

This week's winner, whose name was chosen at random from the 338 correct entries received, is Jim Kaye of Scarsdale, N.Y. Jim has selected as his prize an autographed copy of Brain Games.

THIS WEEK'S INSTRUCTIONS:

This week's contest answer is an eight-letter environment where silence is not a virtue. E-mail it to me at crosswordcontest@gmail.com by Tuesday at noon ET. Please put the contest answer in the subject line of your e-mail. [UPDATE, 7/15, 2:05 PM: the clues at 51- and 52-down should reference themselves, not the nonexistent 51- and 52-across.]

To print the puzzle out, click on the image below and hit "print" on your browser. To solve using Across Lite either solve on the applet below or download the free software here, then join the Google Group (1,538 members now!) here. To solve with friends at Team Crossword, click here.

Solve well, and be not led astray by words intended to deceive.

MGWCC #162 -- Monday, July 11th, 2011 -- "Right Between the Eyes"

2011-07-11T11:57:00.009-04:00

Good afternoon, crossword fans -- welcome to Week 162 of my contest. If you're new to the contest and would like to enter, please see the site FAQ on the left sidebar for instructions.

LAST WEEK'S RESULTS:

DELTA was the Greek letter that served as last week's contest answer, found by 294 solvers. Three Δ's showed up at 35-across, referencing the DELTA DELTA DELTA sorority of a 1990s "Saturday Night Live" sketch. And three DELTAs are exactly what solvers needed at 16- and 60-across to make six phrases: DELTA BLUES, DELTA FORCE, DELTA DAWN, DELTA AIRLINES, DELTA WING and DELTA RAY.

Crossing the rebus answers we had:

35-d ΔHOUSE
28-d MOΔNK (that's MODEL TANK)
17-d RIVERΔ

This week's winner, whose name was chosen at random from the 294 correct entries received, is Wayne Mesard of Belmont, Mass. In addition to a MGWCC pen, pencil and notepad set, Wayne will also receive a copy of Brendan Quigley's entertaining new 21x21 freestyle. Next week we return to regular book prizes.

THIS WEEK'S INSTRUCTIONS:

This week's contest answer is an eight-letter kind of container. E-mail it to me at crosswordcontest@gmail.com by Thursday at noon ET. Please put the contest answer container in the subject line of your e-mail.

To print the puzzle out, click on the image below and hit "print" on your browser. To solve using Across Lite either solve on the applet below or download the free software here, then join the Google Group (1,533 members now!) here. To solve with friends at Team Crossword, click here. [UPDATE, 7/11, 2:35 PM ET: Oops, 5-down should have ended one word sooner...}

Solve well, and be not led astray by words intended to deceive.

MGWCC #161 -- Friday, July 1st, 2011-- "Greece Is the Word"

2011-06-29T11:32:00.008-04:00

Good afternoon, crossword fans -- welcome to Week 161 of my contest. If you're new to the contest and would like to enter, please see the site FAQ on the left sidebar for instructions.

LAST WEEK'S RESULTS:

"Hardest month ever, I think," a veteran MGWCC solver wrote me this week. He may be right -- just 91 correct entries for Week 3, and a hard-to-beat 73 right answers for Week 4.

Nudged by a few subtle hints -- the word "plot" in the title and two prominent references to the game Battleship in the grid -- those solvers figured out the key to the meta: six clues contained an alphanumeric sequence referencing a square in the puzzle grid. They were:

{A.1. targets} at 1-down, which was STEAKS
{Excellent source of vitamin B12} at 10-down, which was LIVER
{Exercise with an F-15, say} at 13-down, which was WAR GAME
{Part of the G7} at 33-down, which was ITALY
{City that I-10 runs through} at 26-down, which was MOBILE
{K2's superior} at 40-down, which was EVEREST

The emboldened letters above mark the points on the grid denoted in the clues (see solution graphic at left, stolen from Joon Pahk's writeup, with letters and numbers along the grid edge). Reading from top to bottom they spell SIMILE, which was last week's contest answer word. Also note that each of the six points falls within the answer to the clue in which it appears, e.g. the M in WAR GAME appears in box F-15, the coordinate given in WAR GAME's clue.

Since the instructions asked for a six-letter literary term, Dan Seidman writes:

If I hadn't figured it out I would have submitted TMESIS for old times' sake.

While Kate Washington got the right answer, but only after many literary dead ends:

Two literature PhDs in my household, and it turns out all that dissertation-writing time would have been better spent playing Battleship. (Lots of red herrings in your plot...)

This week's winner, whose name was chosen at random from the 73 correct entries received, is Joe Fendel of Berkeley, Calif. In addition to a MGWCC pen, pencil and notepad set, Joe will also receive a copy of Brendan Quigley's entertaining new 21x21 freestyle. Next week's winner will receive the same.

MONTHLY PRIZES:

35 solvers submitted the correct contest answer to all four of June's challenges (THE B-52'S, JACK, DAY, SIMILE). The following ten lucky and skillful winners, chosen randomly from that group, will receive a MGWCC pen, pencil and notepad set:

Rich Dobkin -- Chatsworth, Calif.

Noam Elkies -- Cambridge, Mass.

Jeffrey Harris -- Norwalk, Conn.

Brent Holman -- San Francisco, Calif.

Peggy Johnson -- Granada Hills, Calif.

Dan Katz -- Greensboro, N. Car.

Hugh Murphy -- Wilmington, Del.

Dan Seidman -- Watertown, Mass.

Michael Sylvia -- Seattle, Wash.

Kate Washington -- Sacramento, Calif.

Congratulations to our ten winners, and to everyone who went 4-for-4 in June.
It wasn't easy to do!

UPCOMING SCHEDULE:

Due to my vacation schedule, MGWCC #162 will be published on Monday, July 11th at 2:00 PM ET. I know, it's gotten a little confusing around here lately...but we'll go back to Fridays only after that.

THIS WEEK'S INSTRUCTIONS:

This week's contest answer is a letter in the Greek alphabet. E-mail it to me at crosswordcontest@gmail.com by Tuesday at noon ET. Please put the contest answer word in the subject line of your e-mail.

To print the puzzle out, click on the image below and hit "print" on your browser. To solve using Across Lite either solve on the applet below or download the free software here, then join the Google Group (1,528 members now!) here. To solve with friends at Team Crossword, click here.

Solve well, and be not led astray by words intended to deceive.

MGWCC #160 -- Saturday, June 25th, 2011 -- "Plot Device"

2011-06-25T11:14:00.011-04:00

Good afternoon, crossword fans -- welcome to Week 160 of my contest. If you're new to the contest and would like to enter, please see the site FAQ on the left sidebar for instructions.

LAST WEEK'S RESULTS:

Difficult month of metas here at MGWCC: in Week 3 just 91 solvers found DAY as the contest answer word. Let's have Bob Klahn explain:

This one took a while, Matt! I was going, I was stopping, I was going, I was stopping ... I must've put this aside a dozen times.

Then it dawned on me! So to speak.

NICE MEAN: L -> N
SWEET BITTER: U -> I
TAKE GIVE: F -> G
HERE THERE: W -> H
SHORT TALL: B -> T

Now it's time for a nightcap!

See what he did there? Bob noticed that he could change one letter in a word in each theme entry to leave himself with a pair of antonyms. Guided by the parenthetical numbers appended to the theme clues you spell out NIGHT, whose opposite DAY was last week's contest answer.

Michael Sylvia writes:

That meta was definitely the hard sort.

A BEAUTIFUL FIND:

For the second week in a row a solver significantly improved the meta with a flash of inspiration. Although the crossword was well received at Crossword Fiend with 4.71 stars out of 5, solvers did pick a couple of (legitimate) nits with one theme entry, WE'RE THERE at 16-across. The complaints were: 1) you change a letter in the first word of this theme entry to get the opposite pair, while it's the second word changed in the other four; and 2) the apostrophe in WE'RE is slightly odd, since you drop it when changing to HERE.

My attitude in comments was essentially "I follow you, but tough noogies," since a replacement phrase was extremely unlikely to exist. You'd need it to be a) exactly 9 letters long, b) with no apostrophe as in WE'RE, c) the replacing letter would need to be an H, and d) the second word would need to be changed instead of the first.

Since I'd only been able to come up with about 15 candidate phrases for the entire theme, it was naturally impossible for a phrase I'd missed to satisfy all four constraints. That's when Peter Abide uncorked GUEST POST in comments, which amazingly does just that! You can GUEST POST on a blog, and a GUEST and HOST are indeed opposite functions. Wow.

If I use this one in the next book I'll do some surgery in the NW, and maybe sneak ABIDE in the grid as a tribute.

This week's winner, whose name was chosen at random from the 91 correct entries received, is Sean Trowbridge of Redmond, Wash. Sean has selected as his prize an autographed copy of Sports Crosswords.

SPECIAL PRIZES OVER THE NEXT TWO WEEKS:

In addition to a MGWCC pen, pencil and notepad set, weekly prizewinners this week and next will receive a copy of Brendan Quigley's new 21x21 freestyle crossword. I'm solving it myself this afternoon and I'll post my time here once I'm done. [UPDATE, 6/25, 8:45 PM ET: I finished BEQ's freestyle in 17:43. Very fun -- buy it at the link above.]

THIS WEEK'S INSTRUCTIONS:

This week's contest answer is a six-letter literary term. E-mail it to me at crosswordcontest@gmail.com by Wednesday at noon ET. Please put the contest answer word in the subject line of your e-mail.

To print the puzzle out, click on the image below and hit "print" on your browser. To solve using Across Lite either solve on the applet below or download the free software here, then join the Google Group (1,528 members now!) here. To solve with friends at Team Crossword, click here.

Solve well, and be not led astray by words intended to deceive.

MGWCC #160 will be posted SATURDAY, June 25th at 2:00 PM ET.

2011-06-24T12:53:00.002-04:00

Apologies, folks -- life has intervened and, for the second time in 3+ years, I'm not going to be able to post the contest crossword on its normal Friday. MGWCC #160 will go up tomorrow (Saturday 6/25) at 2 PM Eastern time.

For the solution to last week's puzzle, click here:

http://www.crosswordfiend.com/blog/2011/06/21/mgwcc-159/

I'll post a full write-up like normal tomorrow and I'll naturally move the deadline back to Wednesday next week. Again, sorry for the delay -- travel + book deadline + intricate Week 4 meta have conspired to thwart our regular Friday afternoon plans. But we'll be back on track very soon.

Until tomorrow,
Matt

MGWCC #159 -- Friday, June 17th, 2011 -- "Going Shopping"

2011-06-17T11:38:00.009-04:00

Good afternoon, crossword fans -- welcome to Week 159 of my contest. If you're new to the contest and would like to enter, please see the site FAQ on the left sidebar for instructions.

LAST WEEK'S RESULTS:

Toughish and somewhat inelegant Week 2 meta: 198 solvers found the contest answer, which is on the low end of normal for a second week, but about a quarter of those guessed well or didn't fully grok what was going on.

The five theme entries consisted of four playing card spoonerisms, plus one nudge towards the meta. The spoonerisms were:

SPACE OF AIDES A♠
HEN OF TARTS 10♥
DEVON OF SIMONS 7♦
CLICKS OF SUBS 6♣

The first meta nudge came at 44-a: {Magician's secret, or what you need to find in the grid} yielded HIDDEN CARD.

Two more nudges in the clues told solvers that they didn't need the hidden card's SUIT (55-d) and that an ACE should count as 13 for the meta (59-d). Solvers were then supposed to take the four card values used in the theme answers (6,7,10 and 13 for the ace, as instructed), then find those four numbered boxes on the top row -- and lo, they indeed spell out the contest answer, JACK. And, it should be said, the large majority of solvers who submitted JACK did just this.

But here's where the meta inelegance enters the picture: why, many solvers wondered, was an ace to be counted as 13? In games where the ace has a numeric value it's usually 1 or an 11, as in blackjack, or 15 (as in gin rummy). If you count from 10, then a jack would be 11, a queen 12, a king 13, and an ace 14. There's no well-known game (that I'm aware of) where an ace is 13. This oddity threw some solvers off, like Joel Alderson:

Why not just count the ace as 11, like blackjack?

This is an especially easy solution since there already happens to be a K at the 11 square (the first K in HICKOK).

So how did that happen? Truth is, I just miscounted. I play a lot of cards but while making this puzzle the number 13 was in my mind for an ace and I never challenged it. A solver pointed out that I must have been thinking that there are 13 cards in a suit and the ace is the highest, therefore A=13.

So I could have fixed the entire meta by simply having the clue at 59-d reference 11 instead of 13, but Jay Giess found something even better -- an extremely clever idea I wish I had thought of:

Matt, Did you consider KITSCH for 1-down, FRAPPE for 2-down, and CPAS for 23-across? Granted it would mean CSO (Chicago Symphony Orchestra ?) for 21-down, but then the ace could be 1,11, or 13!

Beautiful! Kicking myself for not noticing this possibility, especially since the grid fix would have been so simple.

The one saving grace of this inelegance is that it didn't really affect the play of the meta, just left those solvers who noticed it scratching their heads a bit and unsure that JACK was correct. But considering both the ace=13 problem and missing Jay's lovely meta improvement, I'm glad this puzzle escaped with a 4-star rating at Crossword Fiend!

Joel Horn noted a coincidence:

Cute to follow the B-52s puzzle with a cards puzzle. What's next--a puzzle about weeks in a year?

This week's winner, whose name was chosen at random from the 198 correct entries received, is Larry Spencer of Ocala, Fla. Larry has selected as his prize an autographed copy of Sip & Solve Hard Crosswords.

TIP JAR HAUL:

The MGWCC tip jar overflowed last week as 184 solvers chipped in $5,386.84. That's almost double last year's total ($2,875), a trend I can certainly live with. Big thanks to all who contributed -- you paid for Portugal with quite a few euros left over!

THIS WEEK'S INSTRUCTIONS:

This week's contest answer is the opposite of the five-letter word referenced by the theme entries. E-mail it to me at crosswordcontest@gmail.com by Tuesday at noon ET. Please put the contest answer word in the subject line of your e-mail.

To print the puzzle out, click on the image below and hit "print" on your browser. To solve using Across Lite either solve on the applet below or download the free software here, then join the Google Group (1,523 members now!) here. To solve with friends at Team Crossword, click here.

Solve well, and be not led astray by words intended to deceive.

MGWCC #158 -- Friday, June 10th, 2011 -- "Cut the Deck"

2011-06-08T15:32:00.010-04:00

Good afternoon, crossword fans -- welcome to Week 158 of my contest. If you're new to the contest and would like to enter, please see the site FAQ on the left sidebar for instructions.

***THE MGWCC TIP JAR CLOSES AT MIDNIGHT TONIGHT!***

Record-setting tip jar week! With eleven hours left our total stands at $4,728.34, dwarfing last year's haul ($2,875). The jar closes at midnight tonight, not to open again until summer of 2012. Chip in via PayPal or a credit card by clicking the "donate" button:

[UPDATE, 6/11, 10:10 AM ET: Tip jar now closed for 355 days! Thanks, everyone.]

LAST WEEK'S RESULTS:

291 people solved it till they had their fill, just like a pneumatic drill. They noticed the ridiculous number of B's in last week's puzzle grid, then counted them, as prompted by the puzzle's title. 52 of said letter could only mean The B-52's, the second-greatest band to emerge from the 1970s music scene in Athens, Georgia...and last week's contest answer group.

ABBA was a popular answer as well, as the A's and B's swirling around the grid (and the groups's very appearance at 19-across) proved irresistible to 32 solvers. One of which was MGWCC's only Swedish solver; I didn't have the heart to tell him his answer was wrong (sorry, G.B.!). But G.B. will receive an overseas shipment of one blue (Swedish flag color) MGWCC pen to ease the sting.

Julie Stern writes:

I had completed the grid late Sunday night but was too tired to bother with the meta. The following a.m. I was awakened by a phone call from my mother's doctor's office (I look after her), telling me that she should start taking vitamin B12. I wrote this down in a sleepy haze on the bottom of my puzzle printout. Later while drinking my a.m. coffee and getting on to the meta, I knew it had to do with "B's". Looking at the title again "Be Counted", the B12 at the bottom of the page gave me my Aha moment. It's funny how often serendipity (one of my favourite words) comes into play when working on puzzles.

This week's winner, whose name was chosen at random from the 291 correct entries, is Dan Feyer of New York City, N.Y. Dan has selected as his prize an autographed copy of Literary Crosswords.

THIS WEEK'S INSTRUCTIONS:

This week's contest answer is a four-letter word. E-mail it to me at crosswordcontest@gmail.com by Tuesday at noon ET. Please put the contest answer word in the subject line of your e-mail.

To print the puzzle out, click on the image below and hit "print" on your browser. To solve using Across Lite either solve on the applet below or download the free software here, then join the Google Group (1,517 members now!) here. To solve with friends at Team Crossword, click here.

Solve well, and be not led astray by words intended to deceive.

MGWCC #157 -- Friday, June 3rd, 2011 -- "Be Counted"

2011-06-02T16:13:00.016-04:00

Good afternoon, crossword fans -- welcome to Week 157 of my contest. If you're new to the contest and would like to enter, please see the site FAQ on the left sidebar for instructions.

THE MGWCC TIP JAR IS NOW OPEN -- THIS WEEK ONLY!

Tip jar open! Friday at midnight it closes again, not to re-open until summer 2012. Click the "donate" button to tip, or scroll down for more info.

LAST WEEK'S RESULTS:

172 solvers found TABLETOP as last week's contest answer. Contest instructions asked only for an eight-letter word, and two of the puzzle's three theme entries told them that it was a PERFECT PLACE TO / PLAY BOARD GAMES. The third theme entry, left unexplained beyond its clue, was a Scrabble board's TRIPLE WORD SCORE.

Did you ever notice that a Scrabble board, like a daily crossword grid, is 15x15 letters in size? That was the key to unlocking this meta: mentally overlay the solved crossword onto a Scrabble board, and the eight squares on Triple Word Score spaces spell out TABLETOP (beginning at the T in Triple and proceeding clockwise).

This was a real "magic eye" meta, where you either saw it quickly or only after great effort (or not at all). Not a whole lot of middle ground.

Searching for an eight-letter place to play board games, Jared Dashoff writes:

You mean it isn't FACEBOOK?

Simon McAndrews had a typical "magic eye" solving experience:

I was stumped the whole weekend and finally decided to take one last look at it tonight - and suddenly saw it in 30 seconds!

Lance Nathan did the math:

This week's answer is worth 78,732 points, of course--12 points for TABLETOP, times eight triple-word scores.

And finally, Toby Berla made this puzzle a family event:

With due credit to my father, Mike Berla, and my son, Julian Berla. We collaborated on the meta -- 3 generations of puzzle solvers on one couch!

This week's winner, whose name was chosen at random from the 172 correct entries received, is Arnold Reich of Bronxville, N.Y. Arnold has selected as his prize an autographed copy of The Pocket Idiot's Guide to Super Sudoku.

MAY WAS A WILD RIDE:

I aim for a smooth, downward progession of correct entries throughout the month, but May was a wild ride for solvers: 341 right answers the first week, a plunge to 140 the second week, back up to 224 for the third week, and down again to 172 for week four.

Many solvers commented on this, but none more entertainingly than Matthew Grieco, who submitted this as his answer last week (click image to enlarge):

MONTHLY PRIZES:

56 solvers submitted the correct contest answer to all four of May's challenges (MAURA JACOBSON, ST. LOUIS, BESTSELLER, TABLETOP). The following ten lucky and skillful winners, chosen randomly from that group, will receive a MGWCC pen, pencil and notepad set:

Peter Abide -- Biloxi, Miss.

Eugene Faba -- New York City, N.Y.

Pancho Harrison -- Denver, Colo.

Andy Kravis -- New York City, N.Y.

Tom Lincoln -- Seattle, Wash.

Karen Paxton -- Burlington, Ky.

Joe Sampson -- New Hampton, N.H.

Jim Sempsrott -- Raleigh, N.C.

Jason Shapiro -- New York City, N.Y.

Mark Taylor -- Seattle, Wash.

Congratulations to our ten winners, and to everyone who went 4-for-4 in May.

MGWCC TIP JAR OPEN -- THIS WEEK ONLY!

My website turns three years old this week -- congratulations, Matt! At this time each year I open the tip jar for eight magical days, after which the lid goes back on the jar for another four seasons.

Chip in via PayPal below, or e-mail me if you'd prefer to send a check. Note that you *don't* need a PayPal account to donate via PayPal; you can send a tip with a credit card by clicking the "donate" button below (e-mail me if you're having trouble making that option work).

THIS WEEK'S INSTRUCTIONS:

This week's contest answer is a well-known musical group. E-mail it to me at crosswordcontest@gmail.com by Tuesday at noon ET. Please put the contest answer group in the subject line of your e-mail.

To print the puzzle out, click on the image below and hit "print" on your browser. To solve using Across Lite either solve on the applet below or download the free software here, then join the Google Group (1,514 members now!) here. To solve with friends at Team Crossword, click here.

Solve well, and be not led astray by words intended to deceive.

MGWCC #156 -- Friday, May 27th, 2011 -- "Marginal Effort"

2011-05-27T12:17:00.012-04:00

Good afternoon, crossword fans -- welcome to Week 156 of my contest. If you're new to the contest and would like to enter, please see the site FAQ on the left sidebar for instructions.

LAST WEEK'S RESULTS:

What was the common thread among the five literary works in last week's puzzle theme? 224 solvers found it: each of the five were written by authors who use two initials instead of a first name:

17-a GOOSEBUMPS (R.L. Stine)
22-a STUART LITTLE (E.B. White)
23-d RAGTIME (E.L. Doctorow)
49-a THE WASTELAND (T.S. Eliot)
58-a RUMBLE FISH (S.E. Hinton)

Is there a 10-letter book-related word you can make from those five authors' initials? Sure is: BESTSELLER, which was last week's contest answer word.

Erica Pannen writes:

A little thinking SHEW'D me the answer (Stine, Hinton, Eliot, White, Doctorow).

Christy Meisler found an Easter Egg:

We see you hiding there (last letter of 5-down through last letter of 24 down :)

Bob Lundegaard says:

I thought at first you were going for belles-lettres, but you were a TEL short.

And finally, Noam Elkies conjures up one way he might have solved the meta:

5 theme entries to get a 10-letter answer, so I guess I'll want to get
two letters from each one. Looks like they're all of even length,
so they have a two-letter center:

EB from 17A:GOOSEBUMPS,
TL from 24A:STUART_LITTLE,
ST from 49A:THE_WASTE_LAND,
LE from 58A:RUMBLEFISH

looks like it's going to anagram to BESTSELLER, which fits with the
puzzle title. But 23D:RAGTIME has odd length. OK, so I'll take
the first and last letters instead for the missing RE.

Uh-oh, this gives me one S and two T's rather than other way around.
Well, it's a good guess anyway. Maybe I'm supposed to anagram the
initials of the authors' names or something.

This week's winner, whose name was chosen at random from the 224 correct entries received, is Lance Nathan of Arlington, Mass. Lance has selected as his prize an autographed copy of Gridlock.

ISN'T IT IRONIC?

Ed Brody didn't submit an answer to MGWCC #154. Here's why:

Sorry I missed last week's puzzle. Was on the way to attend my daughter's college graduation in ... ST LOUIS.

THIS WEEK'S INSTRUCTIONS:

This week's contest answer is an eight-letter word. E-mail it to me at crosswordcontest@gmail.com by Wednesday (note extra day) at noon ET. Please put the contest answer word in the subject line of your e-mail. [UPDATE, 2:50 PM, 5/27: Peter Gordon points out that the clue at 45-down is incomplete. It's supposed to read {Super Bowl XI winning coach}.

To print the puzzle out, click on the image below and hit "print" on your browser. To solve using Across Lite either solve on the applet below or download the free software here, then join the Google Group (1,505 members now!) here. To solve with friends at Team Crossword, click here.

Solve well, and be not led astray by words intended to deceive.

MGWCC #155 -- Friday, May 20th, 2011 -- "Popular Fiction"

2011-05-17T21:26:00.016-04:00

Good afternoon, crossword fans -- welcome to Week 155 of my contest. If you're new to the contest and would like to enter, please see the site FAQ on the left sidebar for instructions.

LAST WEEK'S RESULTS:

Rough sailing for Week 2: Just 140 solvers -- compared to 341 for the previous meta -- found ST. LOUIS as last week's contest answer city. The only two hints in the grid came at 2-down and 30-down, which was clued as "instructions on where to meet" and yielded I WILL BE AT A CONFLUENCE.

59 solvers submitted PITTSBURGH as a major American city at a confluence of two (or three, as locals claim) rivers, but there was more to the mix. See solution grid below: the MISSOURI and MISSISSIPPI rivers flow through the center-right of the grid in geographically correct routes, meeting at the I in square 37. The I in I WILL BE AT A CONFLUENCE is literally the letter I, then, and the big city built at the confluence of those two rivers is of course ST. LOUIS.

This week's winner, whose name was chosen at random from the 140 correct entries received, is Becky Anderson of Roy, Washington. Becky has selected as her prize an autographed copy of Sip & Solve Hard Crosswords.

1,500 GOOGLE GROUP MEMBERS:

We just hit 1,500 members this morning. w00t!! Click on image to enlarge:

SPORCLE QUIZ...WITH META!

You just gotta play Joon Pahk's new Sporcle quiz. It has a metapuzzle...and it's already been played 37,000+ times. I solved it with 2:11 remaining from the original 8 minutes -- beat that!

THIS WEEK'S INSTRUCTIONS:

Literary February redux! -- this week's contest answer is a ten-letter book-related word. E-mail it to me at crosswordcontest@gmail.com by Tuesday at noon ET. Please put the contest answer word in the subject line of your e-mail.

To print the puzzle out, click on the image below and hit "print" on your browser. To solve using Across Lite either solve on the applet below or download the free software here, then join the Google Group (1,500 members now!) here. To solve with friends at Team Crossword, click here. NOTE: mysterious Across Lite issues today and I can't get it to give me a printable JPEG like normal. If anyone can get one from the AL file, e-mail it to me and I'll post -- thank you in advance! [UPDATE, 2:05 PM ET: That was quick! Thanks to Leo Stein for the JPEG, which appears below.]

Solve well, and be not led astray by words intended to deceive.

MGWCC #154 -- Friday, May 13th, 2011 -- "Meeting Place"

2011-05-13T12:54:00.006-04:00

Good afternoon, crossword fans -- welcome to Week 154 of my contest. If you're new to the contest and would like to enter, please see the site FAQ on the left sidebar for instructions.

LAST WEEK'S RESULTS:

A cruciverbal era draws to an end: the great MAURA JACOBSON has announced her retirement from New York Magazine's crossword page after more than three decades.

The meta wasn't tough -- Maura's name was simply the answer to 69-across -- but there was a gimmick, too: 341 solvers found the letters in MAURA in consecutive circles in the puzzle's theme entries:

PARAMUS, NEW JERSEY
TUPAC AMARU
AQUAMARINE
FUTURAMA EPISODES
SAMURAI WARRIOR
MASKED MARAUDER
MAURA JACOBSON
And then finally TRAUMATIZED at 38-down, clued as {What 69-across's fans are, now that she's retiring}.

Eric Berman writes:

She’s retiring? I AM traumatized.

Jeffrey Harris had an early theme guess:

Before I got any letters for the central down entry, I thought it was going to be D-MAURA-LIZED.

Dan White:

My wife Sue and I volunteer teach at an inner city boy’s college prep high school. Yesterday was the commitment ceremony, where students announce where they will go to college.

A young English teacher, an NYU grad, was sitting near us. Sue was working on your puzzle, which I had finished. Our colleague said, “Did you know that my favorite
crossword constructor is retiring?” I snatched your puzzle from Sue and asked our colleague to look at the clue and answer to 69 across. She was delighted.

Small world.

Stephen Fineman reminisces:

Greatly enjoyed the trivia-style clues and the many, many 80's references brought me back to the days of watching Mom solve the New York Magazine crossword every week, then helping her, and eventually splitting the crossword in half (including a dotted line in the center row or column). Perfect for Mother's Day!

And finally, Hugh Murphy sings the lady's praises:

Maura Jacobson has been a favorite of mine (and everyone else) for as long as I can remember. Her first Sunday NYT was in 1955 and she has had one puzzle in each ACPT since its inception. One of my favorite of her clues was Sex on the reservation in a puzzle entitled "Movies You May Have Missed." The answer: LUST OF THE MOHICANS. Another ACPT puzzle with a Noah's Ark theme had GNU ARK, GNU JERSEY as an entry.

I've done, and enjoyed, hundreds of her classics over the years.

Congratulations to Maura on her long and stellar run at New York Magazine. The magazine's crosswords will henceforth be written by Cathy Allis, a fine and deserving choice of successor.

This week's winner, whose name was chosen at random from the 341 correct entries received, is Katie Bates of Somerville, Mass. Katie has selected as her prize an autographed copy of The Pocket Idiot's Guide to Brain Games.

THIS WEEK'S INSTRUCTIONS:

This week's contest answer is a major U.S. city. E-mail it to me at crosswordcontest@gmail.com by Tuesday at noon ET. Please put the contest answer city in the subject line of your e-mail.

To print the puzzle out, click on the image below and hit "print" on your browser. To solve using Across Lite either solve on the applet below or download the free software here, then join the Google Group (1,495 members now!) here. To solve with friends at Team Crossword, click here.

Solve well, and be not led astray by words intended to deceive.

MGWCC #153 -- Friday, May 6th, 2011 -- "New York's Finest"

2011-05-05T18:55:00.009-04:00

Good afternoon, crossword fans -- welcome to Week 153 of my contest. If you're new to the contest and would like to enter, please see the site FAQ on the left sidebar for instructions.

LAST WEEK'S RESULTS:

170 solvers found a SEVEN AND SEVEN waiting as the contest answer, though many of them -- perhaps half -- solved the meta without fully understanding the trick lurking beneath the surface (BTW, long story but no solution file today; I'll have it up next week, but click here for now).

The puzzle's four theme entries each contained a successive number from two to five:

GOING TWO AT A TIME
THREE POUND ROAST
COST FOUR DOLLARS
FIVE PERCENT RULE

What's the logic of these four phrases? In each case, the number is followed by the symbol sharing its key on a computer keyboard: 2 @ A TIME, 3 # ROAST, COST 4 $, and 5 % RULE.

What next? Contest instructions asked for an alcoholic drink with thirteen letters in its name. SIX CARET something seems like a good place to start, but no drink begins that way (maybe a six-carrot smoothie?). Besides, the clue for SIX at 66-across tells the solver to skip SIX.

Which means we're looking for a 13-letter alcoholic beverage beginning with SEVEN AND, since 7 shares its key with the ampersand. Drinky types and skilled Googlers alike quickly found our contest answer, the SEVEN AND SEVEN (or, if you prefer, 7 & 7).

Doug Peterson says:

You're a shifty one, Matt.

Jeffrey Harris writes:

You did one bang-up job on this puzzle...solid as a six-caret diamond. Eight stars!

Getting SEVEN AND SEVEN was easy for Jimmy Dale:

I had three of them last night!!

He wasn't alone. Jim Sempsrott:

Oddly enough, that is what I am drinking right now. You'll never catch me in a Starbucks!

Cory Oldweiler:

I really hope this is right as I'm a bartender

And finally, three detailed solves. The first is Todd Dashoff:

I solved the grid and had no clue. “!@#$%^&*()”, I said. “That Gaffney, he’s done it to me again in the last week of the month! I stared @ the puzzle for a while, but still nothing came to mind. I decided to let my subconscious work on it. No success. I #ed my head against the wall – why can’t I get this meta?

I’d be better off spending my hard-earned $ on lottery tickets; I’d probably have a better chance of winning. Every month it’s the same. Get 75 % of the puzzles, and fail on the last week.

Then I had a paradigm SHIFT. I’d finally figured it out; time to reward myself with a well- deserved 7&7.

Eric Prestemon's entire solving log is worth a look:

http://solvingpuzzles.tumblr.com/post/5220352620/mgwcc-152-drinking-game

And last but not least, Robert Hartford:

Took a break and said to my wife "Gaffney has me totally stumped, I can't even get a toehold". When I came back, I wrote 3lb, 4$ and 5% on my scratch pad. Lucky for me I was sitting at my computer, happened to glance down and finally saw it. OK skip 6, so where is the AND? Well, you can sorta get an AND starting at 43 across (4+3=7) by going NE then down, but that's pretty darned inelegant. Hmm. 7 and, 7 and, 7 and .... I don't know how many times I said "7 and" to myself before I heard what I was saying - but it was a lot.

This week's winner, whose name was chosen at random from the 170 correct entries received, is Jim Silvestro of Hasbrouck Heights, N.J. Jim has selected as his prize an autographed copy of Gridlock.

MONTHLY PRIZES:

87 solvers submitted the correct contest answer to all five of April's challenges (BALTIMORE ORIOLES, PORTUGAL, TOXIC, STARBUCKS, 7&7). The following ten lucky and skillful winners, chosen randomly from that group, will receive a MGWCC pen, pencil and notepad set:

Jeffrey Harris -- Norwalk, Conn.

Brent Holman -- San Francisco, Calif.

Don Lloyd -- Point Reyes Station, Calif.

Mike Marcus -- New Haven, Conn.

Chip Prince -- New York City, N.Y.

Dean Scungio -- Johnston, R.I.

Josh Shellman -- Fuquay-Varina, N.C.

Dan & Sue White -- Manhattan Beach, Calif.

Larry Wasser -- Louisville, Ky.

R.W.

Congratulations to our ten winners, and to everyone who went 5-for-5 in April.

CROSSWORDS L.A. PUZZLES:

Last weekend's Crosswords L.A. tournament crowned Jordan Chodorow champion and Eric LeVasseur and Eric Maddy runners-up. If you'd like to solve the event's puzzles for the nominal fee of $5 (which goes to a charity called Reading to Kids), visit this link on Alex Boisvert's website:

http://alexboisvert.com/

THIS WEEK'S INSTRUCTIONS:

This week's contest answer is the name of a well-known crossword constructor. E-mail it to me at crosswordcontest@gmail.com by Tuesday at noon ET. Please put the contest answer constructor in the subject line of your e-mail.

To print the puzzle out, click on the image below and hit "print" on your browser. To solve using Across Lite either solve on the applet below or download the free software here, then join the Google Group (1,490 members now!) here. To solve with friends at Team Crossword, click here.

Solve well, and be not led astray by words intended to deceive.

MGWCC #152 -- Friday, April 29th, 2011 -- "Drinking Game"

2011-04-29T08:27:00.007-04:00

Good afternoon, crossword fans -- welcome to Week 152 of my contest. If you're new to the contest and would like to enter, please see the site FAQ on the left sidebar for instructions.

LAST WEEK'S RESULTS:

218 Double Skim Caramel Macchiato Latte fans found STARBUCKS as last week's contest answer. They noticed that the four main sizes of that company's fine coffee beverages concealed themselves in the theme entries:

AT ALL TIMES
GRAND ENTRANCE
I'M JUST VENTING
BOAT RENTAL

Tricky for a hidden-word meta, since the only English one of the four is the unremarkable TALL, and the eye doesn't tend to scan for foreign words.

Matthew Grieco writes:

Boy did I get this one in a roundabout way at the last minute! I was stumped, and decided to start anagramming the theme entries for lack of a better idea. One anagram of AT ALL TIMES is A LATTE SLIM. That got me thinking of Starbucks, and then, bam, the clue in the title "Size Matters" hit me, and a quick scan of the grid revealed TALL, GRANDE, VENTI and TRENTA.

I'd wondered if anyone would happen to do this puzzle while in a Starbucks. Jerry Rosman came through:

I solved this while sitting in a Starbucks at the Silverton Casino in Las Vegas killing time while my wife gambled.

This week's winner, whose name was chosen at random from the 218 correct entries received, is Herb Kaplan of Woodland Hills, Calif. In addition to a MGWCC pen, pencil and notepad set, Herb will also receive an autographed copy of Patrick Jordan's new book Crafty Crosswords. Next week we return to regular book prizes.

THIS WEEK'S INSTRUCTIONS:

This week's contest answer is an alcoholic drink with thirteen letters in its name. E-mail it to me at crosswordcontest@gmail.com by Tuesday at noon ET. Please put the contest answer drink in the subject line of your e-mail.

To print the puzzle out, click on the image below and hit "print" on your browser. To solve using Across Lite either solve on the applet below or download the free software here, then join the Google Group (1,486 members now!) here. To solve with friends at Team Crossword, click here.

Solve well, and be not led astray by words intended to deceive.

MGWCC #151 -- Friday, April 22nd, 2011 -- "Size Matters"

2011-04-22T11:58:00.011-04:00

Good afternoon, crossword fans -- welcome to Week 151 of my contest. If you're new to the contest and would like to enter, please see the site FAQ on the left sidebar for instructions.

LAST WEEK'S RESULTS:

Form followed function in last week's crossword: five letters of the alphabet served not only their standard function as letters, but also took the form of their own shape in the grid: T, O, X, I and C, each letter comprised of itself, snaked clockwise around the grid (see solution at right). This led 274 solvers to correctly peg the contest answer as Britney Spears' 2004 hit TOXIC.

Laura Dove thought the puzzle was:

v     v   eeeee   rrrr   y   y            ccc   ooo     ooo    l
 v   v    e       r   r   y y            c     o   o   o   o   l
  v v     eeeee   rrrr     y             c     o   o   o   o   l
   v      e       r   r    y              ccc   ooo     ooo    llllll
          eeeee   r    r   y

(OK, I'm not sure this shows up properly formatted on all browsers, but Laura spelled out VERY COOL in the manner of the puzzle theme.)

I didn't pick this song title as the keyword because I especially like it or am especially interested in Britney (I swear!). Rather the choice of keyword was extremely limited: you can only get a good, clear shape for about 10 letters in a 3x3 box maximum, and a few of those can't fit into a grid. For instance, you can make a nice H with seven H's, but then you've got to come up with three entries that have three consecutive H's in them apiece.

At the end of the winnowing process the best letters available were C, D, I, L, O, T and X. I certainly wanted to use the X and five letters seemed like the maximum number of these to fit in a 15x15 grid, especially since I expected the X-section to be tricky.

Which it was, but the T turned out to be the real trouble spot. To my surprise the only triple-T entries I could come up with were SCOTT TUROW and MATT TURK, both of whom I used, plus a couple of other less-famous Matt T.'s (Taibbi, e.g.) and SCOTT T.'s (Thompson, e.g.). I also found British band MOTT THE HOOPLE, who are famous enough to use for sure, but at 13 letters prohibitively awkward to fit in the grid.

None of the few uncapitalized English words that end in -tt (butt, mitt, putt, watt) yielded a decent three-T phrase, but Joon Pahk at Crossword Fiend did find PITT THE ELDER and PITT THE YOUNGER.

This week's winner, whose name was chosen at random from the 274 correct entries received, is David Howorth of Oxford, Miss. In addition to a MGWCC pen, pencil and notepad set, David will also receive an autographed copy of Patrick Jordan's new book Crafty Crosswords.

HARD LUCK CONTEST WINNER:

Just eight entries in the Hard Luck Contest, and the winner hands-down on points is Joel Berghoff of San Rafael, Calif. Joel writes that he's been eligible for about 75 weekly prizes and 12 monthly prizes but has yet to win anything at all. Quite tragic:

I'm generally a lucky person, which makes this even
more frustrating. I won an NCAA bracket contest last
year (believe me, it was luck) and I've won at least
100 call-in radio contests in my life.

There's my sob story. Waah waah.

For his pain, Joel will receive a MGWCC pen, pencil and notepad set.

Here's another sad tale from M.M.:

If it weren't for bad luck I would have no luck at all. Statistics? People with my streak of luck don't believe in statistics, we believe what Homer Simpson said about them "Oh, people can come up with statistics to prove anything, Kent. 14% of people know that." What I have is a relationship with the first correct answer I ever provided in your contest "Aesop" as I am the proverbial tortoise. Your A List of solvers don't know the pain of another 3 for 4 month or worse the 4 for 5 months. You see, my bad luck means that I have no shot to win a weekly contest. I lose to people who are simply known as P.G. from some random city or worse from whereabouts unknown. So I plod along each and every month hoping to be one of the few who qualify for that coveted pen and pencil...Statistics? Don't need 'em, save them for other folks. My luck knows no odds.

M.M. is our second-place winner, for which he will receive -- not a damn thing! When it rains, it pours.

BOSTON CROSSWORD TOURNAMENT IS TOMORROW:

The Third Annual Boston Crossword Tournament is tomorrow! That's Saturday, April 23rd from 1-5 PM at the Harvard University Science Center. Check it out if you're in the area, details here:

http://www.bostoncrosswordtournament.org/

THIS WEEK'S INSTRUCTIONS:

This week's contest answer is a major American corporation. E-mail it to me at crosswordcontest@gmail.com by Tuesday at noon ET. Please put the contest corporation in the subject line of your e-mail.

To print the puzzle out, click on the image below and hit "print" on your browser. To solve using Across Lite either solve on the applet below or download the free software here, then join the Google Group (1,479 members now!) here. To solve with friends at Team Crossword, click here. [UPDATE, 4/22, 1:50 PM ET: Joshua Kosman points out that the clue for 23-across is incorrect. It should read {Carlo preceder}.]

JORDAN TWOPEAT:

Once again: in addition to a MGWCC pen, pencil and notepad set, next week's winner will receive an autographed copy of Patrick Jordan's new book Crafty Crosswords.

Solve well, and be not led astray by words intended to deceive.

MGWCC #150 -- Friday, April 15th, 2011 -- "Form Follows Function"

2011-04-13T16:46:00.007-04:00

Good afternoon, crossword fans -- welcome to Week 150 of my contest. If you're new to the contest and would like to enter, please see the site FAQ on the left sidebar for instructions.

LAST WEEK'S RESULTS:

Bom dia! 310 solucionadores descobriram que era a palavra PORTUGAL na semana passada a resposta de concurso. They noticed that the eight letters in that country's name were the only letters used in the entire puzzle grid.

Which made, as you might imagine, for some less-than-stellar fill: Lake POOPO, composer TORU Takemitsu, BMW co-founder Franz Josef POPP, and the palindromic Bolivian city of ORURO (which lies almost directly on Lake POOPO, in case you didn't know!).

Silver lining: picking up on the meta helped solvers unravel the tough fill, since there were only eight letters any given square could be! Besides, one person's mystery entry is another's grid highlight, as classical music author/aficionado Joshua Kosman illustrates:

And of course I love the inclusion of Takemitsu!

Hitting all four theme entries, Len Elliott reminisces:

Ah, Portugal...my wife and I went on a Rick Steves tour of Spain and Portugal in 2009. Our vacation from our vacation was a day on the beach at Cabo Sao de Vicente. We enjoyed the Fado Museum in Lisbon, the tour (and tasting) at the Sandeman Winery in Porto, and sardines and other fish at restaurants in Coimbra.

Matthew Perez-Stable asks:

think you might run into nosferatu there?

And finally, Jon Delfin cleverly pretended to miss the meta by wishing me:

Good luck on the LPGA TOUR.

This week's winner, whose name was chosen at random from the 310 correct entries received, is Wayne Jones of Worcester, N.Y. Wayne has selected as his prize an autographed copy of Gridlock.

HARD LUCK CONTEST:

It's that time again! Have your faithful and diligent efforts at MGWCC gone heretofore unrewarded? Have you been eligible for weekly and monthly prizes more times than you can count, yet never had your name picked from the hat? Then now is your time for redemption -- and prizes!

Send me your hard luck story of MGWCC prizelessness at crosswordcontest@gmail.com by noon ET on Tuesday. A paragraph or two will suffice -- outline your tale of woe, supplemented with facts and figures ("I've been eligible to win the monthly prize 17 times...") and we'll see if this isn't your lucky week. Don't be shy about using words like "heartbreaking," "crushed," and "crestfallen." These can only help your cause!

The solver with the hardest luck story will win a MGWCC pen, pencil and notepad set. The solver with the second-hardest luck story will receive nothing and feel even worse than they did before the hard luck contest started!

THIS WEEK'S INSTRUCTIONS:

This week's contest answer is the title of a 2000s pop song. E-mail it to me at crosswordcontest@gmail.com by Tuesday at noon ET. Please put the contest answer song in the subject line of your e-mail.

To print the puzzle out, click on the image below and hit "print" on your browser. To solve using Across Lite either solve on the applet below or download the free software here, then join the Google Group (1,478 members now!) here.

SPECIAL PRIZE THIS WEEK AND NEXT:

In addition to a MGWCC pen, pencil and notepad set, weekly prize winners this week and next will receive an autographed copy of Patrick Jordan's new book Crafty Crosswords. My copy is still en route but I'm very much looking forward to this one!

Solve well, and be not led astray by words intended to deceive.

MGWCC #149 -- Friday, April 8th, 2011 -- "Eight Is Enough"

2011-04-08T12:38:00.008-04:00

Good afternoon, crossword fans -- welcome to Week 149 of my contest. If you're new to the contest and would like to enter, please see the site FAQ on the left sidebar for instructions.

LAST WEEK'S RESULTS:

"Mind your P's and Q's," the saying goes. But in last week's puzzle, solvers needed to mind their O's (including the apostrophe and s!).

Three boxes in the grid took an O'S instead of a single letter, and in each of the three cases the O'S was used in a different way:

As a classic apostrophe:

17-a TW(O'S) COMPANY
3-d WH(O'S) IN

In a surname:

38-a GILBERT (O'S)ULLIVAN
26-d JIM (O'S)HEA

As a possessive:

58-a CARLIT(O'S) WAY
46-d GEN(O'S)

Which Major League baseball team does this theme point to? The AL East-leading (!) Baltimore Orioles, nicknamed the O's, which 344 solvers submitted. "Baltimore Orioles," "Orioles" or simply "The O's" were all naturally accepted as correct.

Four solvers sent in a clever alternate answer which I'm also counting as correct. Peter Gwinn was first, so I'll let him explain:

RED SOX / BOSOX

That's what I get from putting OS in one BOX.

Isn't that nice? True, this answer ignores the three apostrophes, but the cryptic crossword logic of B(OS)OX is so elegant that I'm accepting these four entries as correct.

This week's winner, whose name was chosen at random from the 348 correct entries received, is Monica Krausse of El Paso, Tex. Monica has selected as her prize an autographed copy of Sip & Solve Hard Crosswords.

ANATOMY OF A THEME:

Last week's theme had a recent and intriguing provenance. At the ACPT last month, solver Jan O'Sullivan asked me to sign her copy of my book Gridlock. I always sign this book on the title page, which features a crossword grid I can fill appropriately.

There was no 9- or 10-letter space for Jan's surname, however, so I was forced to fit the O, apostrophe and S all in one square, rebus-style. Immediately my theme antennae began going crazy, and with baseball season around the corner I knew we had a first-of-April theme.

Jan was kind enough to scan the page, and here it is (click to enlarge):

Proof that theme inspiration can strike anywhere, anytime!

THIS WEEK'S INSTRUCTIONS:

This week's contest answer is the country in which I'll be vacationing for a week this summer. E-mail it to me at crosswordcontest@gmail.com by Tuesday at noon ET. Please put the contest answer country in the subject line of your e-mail.

To print the puzzle out, click on the image below and hit "print" on your browser. To solve using Across Lite either solve on the applet below or download the free software here, then join the Google Group (1,477 members now!) here. To solve with friends at Team Crossword, click here.

Solve well, and be not led astray by words intended to deceive.

MGWCC #148 -- Friday, April 1st, 2011 -- "Opening Day"

2011-04-01T10:38:00.006-04:00

Good afternoon, crossword fans -- welcome to Week 148 of my contest. If you're new to the contest and would like to enter, please see the site FAQ on the left sidebar for instructions.

LAST WEEK'S RESULTS:

March's first three metas were on the easy side, with 364, 302 and 288 solvers figuring them out. Last week's finale was anything but easy, as just 47 entrants submitted the correct six-letter surname, which was NEWTON.

The puzzle's four theme entries read:

17a GO HOLLYWOOD
11d BE CREATIVE
30d IN ADDITION
58a AD CAMPAIGNS

Two-word phrases beginning with two-letter words? Seems suspicious. Grid with a lot of names in it? Also suspicious. But how does it all tie together?

Each of those two-letter words is in fact the initials of a famous person referenced by the second word in the phrase. So actor GARY OLDMAN is a Hollywood G.O. -- and both his first and last names are found in the grid (at 13-d and 10-d).

Similarly we find music pioneer BRIAN ENO at 40-a and 61-a, while three-term U.S. senator ALFONSE D'AMATO hides in plain sight at 25-d and 45-d.

But what of the fourth entry, IN ADDITION? We see ISAAC crossing it at 38-across...but there's no suitable surname hidden in the grid. Who could an "Isaac N." known for addition be? None other than the great mathematician (among other things) Isaac NEWTON, making his surname our contest answer.

This week's winner, whose name was chosen at random from the 47 correct entries received, is Bob Klahn of Wilmington, Del. Bob has selected as his prize an autographed copy of The Pocket Idiot's Guide to Brain Games.

ERRATUM:

Tim Platt points out that my clue for 4-down is wrong: THO can be either a conjunction or an adverb, but it's not a preposition. Whoops -- I bet everyone put ERE in there.

MONTHLY PRIZES:

42 solvers submitted the correct contest answer to all four of March's challenges (SALT, PASTA, JOHN McNEILL, NEWTON ). The following ten lucky and skillful winners, chosen randomly from that group, will receive a MGWCC pen, pencil and notepad set:

Jared Banta -- Superior, Colo.

Howard Barkin -- Hillsborough, N.J.

Abby Braunsdorf -- Lafayette, Ind.

Jason Chan -- Urbana, Ill.

Roy Denham -- Capon Bridge, W. Va.

Julian Lim -- Singapore, Singapore

Annette Otis -- Alexandria, Va.

Ned Robert -- Los Gatos, Calif.

Jane and Armand Van Nimmen -- Vienna, Austria

Kirsten Weiblen -- Yellow Spring, W. Va.

Congratulations to our ten winners, and to everyone who went 4-for-4 in March.

BLINDAUER BRAIN DUEL:

Check out this highly original new crossword from Patrick Blindauer. It features an extremely clever theme concept I wish I'd thought of myself. Took me 10:02 to solve -- beat that!

THIS WEEK'S INSTRUCTIONS:

This week's contest answer is a Major League Baseball team. E-mail it to me at crosswordcontest@gmail.com by Tuesday at noon ET. Please put the contest answer team in the subject line of your e-mail.

To print the puzzle out, click on the image below and hit "print" on your browser. To solve using Across Lite either solve on the applet below or download the free software here, then join the Google Group (1,476 members now!) here.

Solve well, don't get fooled, and be not led astray by words intended to deceive.

MGWCC #147 -- Friday, March 25th, 2011 -- "What's In a Phrase?"

2011-03-25T13:02:00.008-04:00

Good afternoon, crossword fans -- welcome to Week 147 of my contest. If you're new to the contest and would like to enter, please see the site FAQ on the left sidebar for instructions.

LAST WEEK'S RESULTS:

Easy meta for Week 3, and 288 solvers were all over it. Six normal phrases were given a bizarre second life with the St. Patrick's Day insertion of an Mc- name prefix. They were:

17-a SPARE MCRIB
20-a PAST MCMASTER
28-a INSIDE MCJOB
40-a PLAY IT MCCOY
52-a WHITE MCQUEEN
55-a EAU DE MCVIE

Scouring the list of ACPT champs, only 1984 winner JOHN McNEILL has the relevant prefix on his surname making him last week's contest answer.

This week's winner, whose name was chosen at random from the 288 correct entries received, is Adam Rosenfield of Cambridge, Mass. Adam has selected as his prize an autographed copy of Sip & Solve Hard Crosswords.

ACPT NOTES:

*** Congratulations to Dan Feyer, Tyler Hinman and Anne Erdmann for their 1-2-3 finish in the A finals. Dan has now won two in a row; can he duplicate Tyler's fivepeat, or will Tyler strike back in 2012 (as the Mayan calendar has prophesied)? Anne made her second finals in a row, a fine achievement as well.

*** Congratulations also to tournament director Will Shortz and tournament coordinator Helene Hovanec for yet another successful event.

*** I hadn't been a judge since 2007 and the scoring has changed dramatically for the better since then. Matt Ginsberg deserves special mention for devising the computerized scanning system we use now (and that saves us lots of time). Doug Heller and Nancy Parsons also deserve recognition as the duo in charge of scanning logistics -- they didn't get out of the Judges' Room until midnight on Saturday, even with the new scanning technology!

*** And finally: what a kick to meet so many MGWCC solvers in Brooklyn, so thanks to all of you who found me and introduced yourselves. Whether we had a quick hello or an entire conversation, it adds enormously to my enjoyment of the blog to put people to the names I see in my mailbox each week. Hope to meet many more of you in 2012!

THIS WEEK'S INSTRUCTIONS:

This week's contest answer is a familiar six-letter surname. E-mail it to me at crosswordcontest@gmail.com by Tuesday at noon ET. Please put the contest answer surname in the subject line of your e-mail.

To print the puzzle out, click on the image below and hit "print" on your browser. To solve using Across Lite either solve on the applet below or download the free software here, then join the Google Group (1,473 members now!) here. To solve with friends at Team Crossword, click here.

Solve well, and be not led astray by words intended to deceive.

MGWCC #146 -- Thursday, March 17th, 2011 -- "Got Any Irish In Ya?"

2011-03-17T12:01:00.009-04:00

Good afternoon, crossword fans -- welcome to Week 146 of my contest. If you're new to the contest and would like to enter, please see the site FAQ on the left sidebar for instructions.

LAST WEEK'S RESULTS:

302 solvers found a type of PASTA in each of this puzzle's four theme entries:

17-a OPEN NET GOAL -- penne
11-d BORZOI PACK -- orzo
29-d QUARTZITIC -- ziti
54-a PEROTINITIS -- rotini

Nice little theme, eh? Except for one minor problem: it's "peritonitis," not PEROTINITIS. Which means that I have committed the slightly embarrassing act of misspelling a theme entry! Oof.

I rushed to send out an e-mail correction and post updates on the blog lest solvers think the misspelling was part of the meta. How could I make such a mistake? While surveying lists of pasta shapes, I thought that there must be some word that completely contains ROTINI. I couldn't come up with one, so I checked onelook.com to see if it had any suggestions, which it did -- the misspelled PEROTINITIS! Despite looking it up to check its precise meaning, I didn't notice the incorrect spelling until solvers began pointing it out. That the O and first I sounds are the same in "peritonitis" didn't help.

How did solvers react to the mistake? Finn Vigeland tried using the meta's flaw to crack it:

Whew, that meta was a lot harder than I thought it was going to be. Took me about ~7? minutes of just staring at those words. I tried to use your mistake to help me, seeing what would be different about PEROTINITIS if it were spelled PERITONITIS, and why that wouldn't make the meta work, but that wasn't helping. Then I just started looking for 5-letter features about the words, and looked at the first five letters and tried anagramming them. I started off with PENNO (from OPENN) which looked so much like PENNE—then saw the title, and then saw that those five letters were in a row right in front of me. The rest followed. Tough for a second week, methinks!

Nancy Pilla suggested:

Maybe we should get out an EXTRA VIOLIN for the poor guy who can't spell!

Math teacher David Stein was there with me:

You and I are having similar days. Corrections on a test I gave today:

#1. Change "longer" to "shorter"
#4. Change "equal" to " not equal"
#6. Skip, as there is no right answer.

Good thing we're not brain surgeons!

Michael Doran has seen better:

When I was in high school our superintendent sent a letter out to all parents in the district talking about cuts in the pubic school budget. At least your gaffe doesn't produce a mental image like that.

Mitch Smith declares:

I sure loves me some RITONI pasta!

While submitting PASTA, Jim Sherman adds:

In sympathy with your misspelling, I have swapped the vowels in my answer.

Mark Halpin gets the last word:

Indeed, the erratum can be put behind us; after all, it's in the pasta.

So no rotini jokes at the tournament!!

This week's winner, whose name was chosen at random from the 302 correct entries received, is Carol Noack of Port Arthur, Tex. Carol has selected as her prize an autographed copy of Sip & Solve Hard Crosswords.

THIS WEEK'S INSTRUCTIONS:

March Madness begins today, but Munch Madness ends. Thanks to Mark Halpin for the idea to do a month of food puzzles, but I got knocked out in the second round by a couple of schwa sounds.

This week's contest answer is the name of a past winner of the American Crossword Puzzle Tournament. If you don't have the champs memorized, you can find a list of past winners here (scroll down to "Tournament History"). E-mail this crossword solver to me at crosswordcontest@gmail.com by Wednesday (note extra day) at noon ET. Please put the contest answer solver in the subject line of your e-mail.

To print the puzzle out, click on the image below and hit "print" on your browser. To solve using Across Lite either solve on the applet below or download the free software here, then join the Google Group (1,464 members now!) here. To solve with friends at Team Crossword, click here.

Solve well, and be not led astray by words intended to deceive.

MGWCC #145 -- Friday, March 11th, 2011 -- "You'd Better Shape Up"

2011-03-10T13:16:00.007-05:00

Good afternoon, crossword fans -- welcome to Week 145 of my contest. If you're new to the contest and would like to enter, please see the site FAQ on the left sidebar for instructions.

[UPDATE, 1:35 PM ET -- Whoops! Big blunder! I misspelled the theme entry at 54-across in today's puzzle. Sort of messes up the theme but...see if you can get the meta anyway!]

LAST WEEK'S RESULTS:

A double theme in last week's MGWCC: the first theme was a three-part funny in the three 15-letter entries, where I noted that an EVERYTHING BAGEL, because IT'S SO MESSY TO EAT, should rightly be called an EVERYWHERE BAGEL. The second theme scattered four of an ET bagel's five classic toppings around the grid:

GARLIC at 16-a
ONION at 30-a
POPPY SEEDS at 35-d and 19-a
SESAME SEEDS at 66-a and 19-a

The missing ingredient was SALT, which a record (!? -- see below) 364 solvers found. The toppings used on an ET bagel aren't set in stone, but these five are the most common set. To guard against other answers (such as CARAWAY SEEDS) I put a beta-blocker in the instructions: "Hint: it's the shortest of this food's five classic toppings."

The most popular incorrect answer was LOX, with 17 entries. It's shorter than the others, but 1) it's not an integral part of the bagel like the toppings on an ET, and 2) ET bagels aren't paired with LOX more often or notably than other bagel varieties.

Full credit to my girlfriend, Kristin, for coming up with the quip in this theme. A few months ago I was eating a 17-across and she commented that it should indeed be known as a 63-across. I noticed that both had 15 letters and my theme antennae went crazy.

RECORD OR NO RECORD? RECORD!

The previous MGWCC record was 361 correct entries. This week we had 359 correct entries come in before the deadline, which left me crestfallen (it had looked all weekend like we were gonna break it).

But then five more correct answers came in after the deadline. Though late entries are naturally not eligible to win prizes, I do count them as part of the overall total -- so a record it is!

SOLVER E-MAILS:

Jay Giess:

Just what my unhealed wounds from last week's puzzle need!

Similarly, James Melman:

Missing two in a row really stings. Thanks for pouring salt on the wound!

Frederic J. Gruder:

I solved it while eating an everything bagel with light veggie cream cheese and a slice of nova.

Also eating the right food for the solve, Steve Tolopka:

True story: I printed off a copy of this week’s puzzle, grabbed my newspaper, and headed down the street to Sunrise Bagels (our neighborhood bagel joint) for breakfast. So I was munching away as this week’s theme emerged. Too bad I was eating sesame with salmon mousse instead of an Everything at the time.

Make your own bagel, says David Moulton:

Yay, you left the salt off! Every Monday morning we have bagels
at work, and I would take the everythings, but they're too salty.
So I have to make my own, starting with an onion bagel, speading
cream cheese, and then sprinkling poppy seeds, sesame seeds,
and garlic that fell off the other bagels in the bag!

Eric Prestemon's solving log is always interesting. Here is this week's:

http://solvingpuzzles.tumblr.com/post/3764128650/mgwcc-144-a-million-little-pieces

This week's winner, whose name was chosen at random from the 359 correct entries received before the contest deadline, is Reynolds Smith of Chama, N. Mex. Reynolds has selected as his prize an autographed copy of Sip & Solve Hard Crosswords.

LITERARY FEBRUARY PRIZES:

Apologies to the 50 winners -- with overlapping puzzle deadlines this week I haven't had time to send your prizes out. But they're all going in the mail this afternoon.

ACPT:

I'll be attending the American Crossword Puzzle Tournament in Brooklyn next weekend and am looking forward to meeting MGWCC solvers there. I'll be one of the judges, so please come say hello if you see me around.

THIS WEEK'S INSTRUCTIONS:

"Munch Madness" continues! This week's contest answer is a five-letter food. E-mail it to me at crosswordcontest@gmail.com by Tuesday at noon ET. Please put the contest answer food in the subject line of your e-mail. [UPDATE, 1:35 PM ET -- Whoops! Big blunder! I misspelled the theme entry at 54-across in today's puzzle. Sort of messes up the theme but...see if you can get the meta anyway!]

To print the puzzle out, click on the image below and hit "print" on your browser. To solve using Across Lite either solve on the applet below or download the free software here, then join the Google Group (1,462 members now!) here. To solve with friends at Team Crossword, click here.

Solve well, and be not led astray by words intended to deceive.

MGWCC #144 -- Friday, March 4th, 2011 -- "A Million Little Pieces"

2011-03-03T16:25:00.010-05:00

Good afternoon, crossword fans -- welcome to Week 144 of my contest. If you're new to the contest and would like to enter, please see the site FAQ on the left sidebar for instructions.

LAST WEEK'S RESULTS:

I briefly considered naming last week's puzzle "Torture Devices," since the meta was tough and literary devices took center stage.

Indeed just 82 solvers puzzled out the correct answer, the literary term TMESIS, of which the puzzle's title is an example (apologies for the semi-vulgarity in the title, but such constructions are by far the most common uses of TMESIS in English!).

Successful metapuzzlers noticed that the six theme clues/answers each referenced a literary device:

16-a HATERS GONNA HATE -- tautology
19-a LIFE IS A HIGHWAY -- metaphor
28-a MANY YEARS LATER -- ellipsis
39-a THAT'S JUST GREAT -- sarcasm
51-a DIED THE NEXT DAY -- irony
57-a COOL AS A CUCUMBER -- simile

The first letters of these six literary devices, emboldened above, spell out our contest answer.

I expected most solvers who got this to break through on metaphor, sarcasm, irony and simile and then backsolve the last two. That's pretty much the route people described.

Something completely unexpected was the number of solvers who pegged the probable contest answer as TMESIS right off the bat from the title, and who backsolved from that advanced point! In fact, I thought I was in some trouble after receiving 15 correct answers in the first couple of hours with accompanying e-mail chiding me for giving too much away with the title. I thought I might be sending out 100+ stationery sets! Fortunately for me things settled down a bit.

This week's winner, whose name was chosen at random from the 82 correct entries received, is Tom Viscelli of Kabul, Afghanistan. Tom has selected as his prize an autographed copy of Sip & Solve Hard Crosswords.

LITERARY FEBRUARY WINNERS:

50 solvers went 4-for-4 in Literary February, stumped not by Michael CRICHTON, RABBIT ANGSTROM, UNCLE VANYA nor even by the evil TMESIS. Each will receive a MGWCC pen, pencil and notepad set. They are:

Don Albright -- West Chester, Penna.

Jared Banta -- Superior, Colo.

Lorraine Barg -- Fairfield, Conn.

Ross Beresford -- Kingsley, Penna.

Alex Boisvert -- Los Angeles, Calif.

Ed Brody -- Cambridge, Mass.

Foggy Brume -- Phoenix, Ariz.

Jimmy Dale -- Hastings-on-Hudson, N.Y.

Roy Denham -- Grand Junction, Colo.

Noam Elkies -- Cambridge, Mass.

John Farmer -- Woodland Hills, Calif.

Andrew Feist -- Newport News, Va.

Neville Fogarty -- Brooklyn, N.Y.

Nathan Fung -- Brighton, Mass.

Peter Gordon -- Great Neck, N.Y.

Peter Gwinn -- Brooklyn, N.Y.

Mark Halpin -- Cold Spring, Ky.

Charles Hamlett -- Apex, N.C.

Peter Hammond -- Silver Spring, Md.

Jeffrey Harris -- Norwalk, Conn.

Robert Hartford -- Stow, Mass.

Tyler Hinman -- San Francisco, Calif.

Bob Klahn -- Wilmington, Del.

John Lenning -- Irvine, Calif.

Jeff Louie -- Cambridge, Mass.

Timothy Mitchell -- Snohomish, Wash.

Mike Nothnagel -- Poughkeepsie, N.Y.

Jon Olsen -- New York City, N.Y.

Joon Pahk -- Somerville, Mass.

Jill Palmer -- Leverett, Mass.

Eric Prestemon -- Sunnyvale, Calif.

Marcia Rose -- Delray Beach, Fla.

Jeffrey Schwartz -- New York City, N.Y.

Jed Scott -- Rockford, Mich.

Dan Seidman -- Watertown, Mass.

Jim Sherman -- Falls Church, Va.

Dave Shukan -- San Marino, Calif.

Jim Silvestro -- Hasbrouck Heights, N.J.

Matt Soule -- Duluth, Minn.

David Stein -- Silver Spring, Md.

Dave Sullivan -- Boston, Mass.

Gerry Tansey -- Florissant, Mo.

Mark Taylor -- Seattle, Wash.

Mike Weepie -- Cedar Rapids, Ia.

Kirsten Weiblen -- Yellow Spring, W. Va.

Bill Weinstein -- Belmont, Mass.

Scott Weiss -- Walkersville, Md.

Sue White -- Manhattan Beach, Calif.

David Wild -- Washington, D.C.

John L. Wilson -- Shoreview, Minn.

Congratulations to our winners, and thanks to everyone for playing Literary February! I hope you enjoyed it as much as I did.

ERRATUM/ERRATA(?):

Regarding 48-across, Peter Gordon writes:

There is no Yahtzee category called ONES. It's called ACES.

Aha -- true, that's the official term on the scoresheet. However, no one playing the game says "I still need aces" or "How many aces do you need to get the bonus?" You normally say "ones."

So is this an error? I'm going to weasel out by saying 1) it's not an error but 2) next time I'll add a "casually" tag to the clue. Q.E.D. (quod erratum demonstrandum...)

Robert Hartford writes re 31-down:

Rau became president of Germany in 1999, not 1994.

No weaseling here, that's just an error. Entschuldigung!

WHY WAIT UNTIL FRIDAY FOR MGWCC ANSWERS?

No need to wait until Friday for crossword and metapuzzle answers -- each Tuesday at noon ET, right as the contest deadline passes, Joon Pahk publishes an entertaining write-up of the puzzle over at Diary of a Crossword Fiend. You can also vent rage regarding/give qualified praise to/deplore the existence of/point out quibbles with/or just plain marvel at that week's MGWCC with other solvers in the comments section. Check it out!

THIS WEEK'S INSTRUCTIONS:

This week's contest answer is the classic topping missing from 17-across. Hint: it's the shortest of this food's five classic toppings. E-mail it to me at crosswordcontest@gmail.com by Tuesday at noon ET. Please put the contest answer title in the subject line of your e-mail.

To print the puzzle out, click on the image below and hit "print" on your browser. To solve using Across Lite either solve on the applet below or download the free software here, then join the Google Group (1,462 members now!) here. To solve with friends at Team Crossword, click here.

Solve well, and be not led astray by words intended to deceive.

MGWCC #143 -- Friday, February 25th, 2011 -- LITERARY FEBRUARY PUZZLE #4 -- "Un-freaking-believable!"

2011-02-23T14:08:00.013-05:00

Good afternoon, crossword fans -- welcome to Week 143 of my contest. If you're new to the contest and would like to enter, please see the site FAQ on the left sidebar for instructions.

LAST WEEK'S RESULTS:

113 solvers said "uncle" last week....well, they actually said Anton Chekhov's UNCLE VANYA, the classic play that served as our contest answer. These solvers noticed a pattern among the puzzle's four ten-letter theme entries:

17-a AUDIO BOOKS
32-a EDNA FERBER
50-a INIGO JONES
64-a ORAL POETRY

See it? The first word of each theme entry begins with a vowel, and the second word begins with the letter following that vowel. After A, E, I and O, then, we must be looking for a "well-known literary work" with the initials U.V. Only UNCLE VANYA fits that bill, though Malcolm Lowry's Under the Volcano, submitted by four solvers, comes close. Leslie Wagner was one of those four, and mentions another possibility:

We liked Odds Isee and Isle Ladd for odyssey & Iliad!

Indeed there were several intriguing (and unintentional) red herring patterns in this grid. Dan Seidman mentions another one:

I thought it was Moby Dick when the initials of the first six across answers spelled out "Call me", but I couldn't find Ishmael anywhere.

Armand Van Nimmen spotted one as well:

I know that I goofed with the “One thousand and one nights”...I wanted to point out, however, the three hints that led me to the wrong conclusion. I recognized, indeed the three main characters out of Arabian Nights in your puzzle:

1. Alibaba, of course was a first hint. This by itself was a bit too obvious.

2. The “Ladd” smack in the middle, combined with the “A” from Alibaba and the “In” from “Inigo Jones”, together with the “Lamp” and the “Light” made me recognize Aladdin. Things began to solidify, but I was not convinced yet.

3. What finally made me sure to have found the answer was that in reading “miracle” backwards I recognized “El Carim”, the famous antagonist of Sinbad!!

On another note, Barbara Friedman envisioned this production of Uncle Vanya starring me and my cat:

And finally, the great Jon Delfin claims an exotic relative:

My Uncle Vanya used to live in Upper Volta....

This week's winner, whose name was chosen at random from the 113 correct entries received, is Ed Sills of Austin, Tex. Ed has selected as his prize an autographed copy of Gridlock.

THIS WEEK'S INSTRUCTIONS:

78 solvers are still alive in Literary February! That's a lot of stationery, so this meta might be tough...

This week's contest answer is a six-letter literary term. E-mail it to me at crosswordcontest@gmail.com by Tuesday at noon ET. Please put the contest answer title in the subject line of your e-mail.

To print the puzzle out, click on the image below and hit "print" on your browser. To solve using Across Lite either solve on the applet below or download the free software here, then join the Google Group (1,458 members now!) here. To solve with friends at Team Crossword, click here.

Solve well, and be not led astray by words intended to deceive.

MGWCC #142 -- Friday, February 18th, 2011 -- LITERARY FEBRUARY PUZZLE #3 -- "Light Reading"

2011-02-18T11:07:00.012-05:00

Good afternoon, crossword fans -- welcome to Week 142 of my contest. If you're new to the contest and would like to enter, please see the site FAQ on the left sidebar for instructions.

LAST WEEK'S RESULTS:

202 solvers identified Harry "Rabbit" Angstrom as LitFeb Week 2's "well-known character from American literature." The puzzle's four (literary) theme entries were:

17a -- INITIAL PRINT RUN
26a -- PHINEAS REDUX
40a -- ADRIENNE RICH
51a -- DON'T READ THE REST

Successful metapuzzlers noticed that the R-words at the end of each entry also serve as the last word of each novel in John Updike's Rabbit tetrology -- Rabbit, Run, Rabbit Redux, Rabbit Is Rich, and Rabbit at Rest -- making that great antihero last week's contest answer.

Besides "Harry 'Rabbit' Angstrom," acceptable entries also included "Harry Angstrom," "Angstrom," "Rabbit Angstrom," or simply "Rabbit."

Many solvers mentioned needing a while to get the title, or not getting it at all. David Schooler explains:

Ah, initials. An a-HA moment.

My original title had been "Dear John," but I felt that gave too much away and decided to change it at the last minute.

Rachel Park noticed that the meta was:

To celebrate the year of the Rabbit!

Huge number of fascinating e-mails this week describing solvers' paths to getting the meta (or, frequently, to not getting the meta). Here are six:

Lorraine Barg:

I was going nowhere fast looking for clues to Huck Finn, Jay Gatsby, Hester Prynne, etc. Thank God REDUX is such an odd, and infrequently-used, word. My eyes kept coming back to it again and again, until finally RICH intruded and the juxtaposition of both screamed "Rabbit, you idiot!"

Hugh Murphy:

Originally, I had tried to fit HESTER PRYNNE in as the meta with HAwthorne, but it was just not a neat enough fit. Thought of, and quickly discarded, CAPTAIN AHAB, too. Then I put it down and went to bed.

Woke up during the night with the Updike character firmly in my mind. I think it was the Redux that sold me. It's funny how the subconscious mind works.

Quite true, as Adam Rosenfield can testify:

It took me a lot of pondering, but the solution finally came to me last night in my sleep -- I realize all of the last words
of the theme answers started with R's (I wanted to throw them into Google, but that had to wait until I woke up, since I've not yet perfected the art of googling in my sleep).

Karen Horn:

After I filled in most of the puzzle, I had "Don't read the last" for the fourth theme entry, which I took as an instruction. That really screwed me up on the meta, since it was the last word of each entry that turned out to be the key. Once I fixed that one, with "redux" subconsciously reminding me of something, I stared at the word "run" and Rabbit sprang to mind.

Simon McAndrews took a roundabout route to meta nirvana:

I got this by accident - I interpreted "Initial Print Run" to mean the character had the initials PR. So I thought of Peter Rabbit, and then it suddenly clicked.

While Joel Alderson caught a fortuitous break that made the meta easy:

I was on a ski vacation until last night. The book I took along? Rabbit, Run.

And finally: check out this photo from Garrett Hildebrand, who did not get the meta, but certainly not for lack of effort! This is one of my favorite solver pics in MGWCC history (click on image to enlarge):

This week's winner, whose name was chosen at random from the 202 correct entries received, is Neal Felsinger of Akron, O. Neal has, appropriately for the month, selected as his prize an autographed copy of Literary Crosswords.

THIS WEEK'S INSTRUCTIONS:

This week's contest answer is the title of a well-known literary work. E-mail it to me at crosswordcontest@gmail.com by Tuesday at noon ET. Please put the contest answer title in the subject line of your e-mail.

To print the puzzle out, click on the image below and hit "print" on your browser. To solve using Across Lite either solve on the applet below or download the free software here, then join the Google Group (1,451 members now!) here. To solve with friends at Team Crossword, click here.

Solve well, and be not led astray by words intended to deceive.

MGWCC #141 -- Friday, February 11th, 2011 -- LITERARY FEBRUARY PUZZLE #2 -- "HA-HA-HA-HA!"

2011-02-10T10:11:00.010-05:00

Good afternoon, crossword fans -- welcome to Week 141 of my contest. If you're new to the contest and would like to enter, please see the site FAQ on the left sidebar for instructions.

LAST WEEK'S RESULTS:

"There's More to This Tale..." read last week's puzzle title, and indeed there was. The puzzle's four theme entries each consisted of two five-letter words comprised of TALE + one other letter:

17a -- LEANT LATER
11d -- OLETA ECLAT
29d -- CLEAT LATHE
62a -- EILAT LATTE

314 solvers noticed that the extra letters, emboldened above, anagram to the surname of the late Michael CRICHTON, who was last week's contest answer.

This was a slightly tricky meta for a month opener, and several very solid veteran metapuzzlers missed it. Due to Literary February announcement links from Rex and Amy, this was the heaviest traffic week by far in MGWCC history; with a slightly gentler meta I think we would have broken the record for correct entries (361). But with only four weeks in a theme month I had to start tough(ish)!

The two most popular incorrect answers were Nathaniel HAWTHORNE with 8 entries and Charles DICKENS with 5. The former entrants were aiming at the Twice-Told Tales angle, while the latter noticed cities at 1-a and 69-a, and figured this might be A Tale of Two Cities.

This week's winner, whose name was chosen at random from the 314 correct entries received, is Parker Lewis of Kirkland, Wash. Parker has selected as his prize an autographed copy of Sip and Solve Hard Crosswords.

MONTHLY PRIZES:

61 solvers submitted the correct contest answer to all four of January's challenges (OTIS, 2/10, FEMUR MURMUR, SLASH). The following twelve lucky and skillful winners, chosen randomly from that group, will receive a MGWCC pen, pencil and notepad set:

Erik Agard -- Gaithersburg, Md.

Noam Elkies -- Cambridge, Mass.

Nancy Fay -- Garden City, N.Y.

Pam Fowler -- Rough and Ready, Calif.

Ben Hassenger -- Lansing, Mich.

David Hirschhorn -- Mt. Pleasant, S.C.

James Layland -- Blue Springs, Mo.

Matt Matera -- New Haven, Conn.

Charles Montpetit -- Montreal, Que.

Dunn Miller -- Oakland, Calif.

Ann Reneris -- Sunderland, Mass.

Maggie Wittlin -- New Haven, Conn.

Congratulations to our twelve winners, and to everyone who went 4-for-4 in January.

LITERARY FEBRUARY RULE REMINDER:

I didn't mention this in last week's rules for the month, but since it's now black-letter MGWCC law let me remind everyone: just one answer per week per solver, please! If you submit more than one answer your first answer will be the one that counts.

Now it's time for Round 2...good luck!

THIS WEEK'S INSTRUCTIONS:

This week's contest answer is a well-known character from American literature. E-mail it to me at crosswordcontest@gmail.com by Tuesday at noon ET. Please put the contest answer character in the subject line of your e-mail.

To print the puzzle out, click on the image below and hit "print" on your browser. To solve using Across Lite either solve on the applet below or download the free software here, then join the Google Group (1,445 members now!) here. To solve with friends at Team Crossword, click here.

Solve well, and be not led astray by words intended to deceive.

MGWCC #140 -- Friday, February 4th, 2011 -- LITERARY FEBRUARY PUZZLE #1 -- "There's More to This Tale..."

2011-02-04T02:53:00.008-05:00

Good afternoon, crossword fans -- welcome to Week 140 of my contest. If you're new to the contest and would like to enter, please see the site FAQ on the left sidebar for instructions.

LAST WEEK'S RESULTS:

Brutal crossword, easy meta last week: 257 solvers found a SLASH as the quadruply-missing piece of punctuation. They noticed that the rebus theme required four squares in the grid to be filled with the letters ANDOR, as such:

18-a PORTL(AND OR)EGON
9-d GR(AND OR)IENTS
28-a B (AND O R)AILROAD
2-d EARL V(AN DOR)N
48-a FRESHM(AN DOR)MS
44-d P(ANDOR)A'S BOX
58-a COMM(ANDO R)OLLED
36-d WITH C(ANDOR)

Since the conjunction pair AND/OR are always seen with a slash, successful entrants realized that that had to be the contest answer punctuation. I accepted as correct either the symbol /, or the word SLASH, or its variant FORWARD SLASH, or the technical term VIRGULE, and even the term SOLIDUS, although that is more often used to describe the slash between the numerator and denominator of a fraction. Those who submitted the entire phrase AND/OR also had their entries counted as correct, since the right punctuation mark is there in the answer.

Since it was the fourth week of the month and the meta was pretty straightforward I decided to make the puzzle itself extremely tough to solve. How tough? It took 2010 ACPT champion Dan Feyer 16:35 to finish the grid! To provide some context, here are Dan's times for the five most recent New York Times Saturday puzzles:

4:28
4:23
7:51
5:14
6:56

http://dandoesnotblog.blogspot.com/search/label/Saturday

So don't feel bad if you struggled with it!

While submitting SLASH, Rocky Schwarz explains:

To be clear, that's my answer, not what I wanted to do to this puzzle numerous times during the solving process.

Jason Feng had an interesting false start:

The sick part of this puzzle was I knew where Matt Groening was born but I put PORTLANDOR and went nowhere for days.

While the great Al Sanders broke into the puzzle quickly:

We're big Elf fans at our house, plus Alvar Aalto designed a dorm at MIT, so believe it or not ICEFLOE/AALTO was my entry into the puzzle. (Eero Saarinen and I. M. Pei had buildings there too, completing the crossword architect trifecta).

Walt Blue commemorated his solve with some Ogden Nash-style poetry:

Again my entry's surely rash:
I think it is the forward slash.
And I can note with no compunction
That it's a true conjunction junction!!
I hope this is no sleight of hand/or
Trick fobbed off with less than candor!

This week's winner, whose name was chosen at random from the 257 correct entries received, is Cindy Follick of Piedmont, Calif. Cindy has selected as her prize an autographed copy of Gridlock.

HOWE'S BAYOU? PRETTY GOOD:

Ben Henri informed us in December that, though he'd never eaten there, he lives two minutes from MGWCC #133 contest answer HOWE'S BAYOU. Update from Ben:

Finally went to Howe's Bayou last Friday night. Food was amazing, and if I'd stayed a little later, I probably would have been treated to some excellent blues. The band was loading in just as I was leaving.

MONTHLY PRIZES:

Whoops, I spaced this week on picking monthly prize winners for January. My apologies -- I'll have them next week, and will pick 12 winners instead of the usual 10 to atone for the delay.

LITERARY FEBRUARY:

It's cold out there, so what else to do but read books? Well, I could write some crosswords about books, and you could solve them...so let's do it. In the grand tradition of Hell Month and May-hem, we here at MGWCC hereby announce Literary February!

Here are the rules:

1) Every solver who submits the correct answer to all four puzzles during Literary February will receive a MGWCC pen, pencil and notepad set.

2) You may use references to help you solve the crosswords, but no discussing the metas with any other solver! No nudges or winks, no dropped hints or "you might wanna..."-s or anything of the sort. As with Hell Month and May-hem, the only correct response to appeals for meta assistance during Literary February is:

"I'm sorry [awful cheater's name here], but that's against the rules, and I won't be a party to this!"

And away we go...

THIS WEEK'S INSTRUCTIONS:

This week's contest answer is the last name of a well-known novelist. E-mail it to me at crosswordcontest@gmail.com by Tuesday at noon ET. Please put the contest answer novelist in the subject line of your e-mail.

To print the puzzle out, click on the image below and hit "print" on your browser. To solve using Across Lite either solve on the applet below or download the free software here, then join the Google Group (1,417 members now!) here. To solve with friends at Team Crossword, click here.

Solve well, and be not led astray by words intended to deceive.

MGWCC #139 -- Friday, January 28th, 2011 -- "Conjunction Junction"

2011-01-28T11:01:00.009-05:00

Good afternoon, crossword fans -- welcome to Week 139 of my contest. If you're new to the contest and would like to enter, please see the site FAQ on the left sidebar for instructions.

LAST WEEK'S RESULTS:

A red herring in last week's puzzle: solvers were tasked with discovering "the two grid entries which, when combined, would complete this puzzle's theme pattern." The four theme entries were:

17-a SITAR TARTAR
11-d TOKEN KENKEN
51-a SOCHI CHICHI
25-d GABON BONBON

The pattern is clear -- Five-letter words followed by six-letter words that duplicate that last three letters of the first word. Quickly spotting PECAN CANCAN across the center and top of the grid -- prominently placed on purpose -- many solvers tumbled for it right away and sent those two entries in as their answer. What else could it be, after all?

Answer: FEMUR MURMUR, less prominently placed in the grid, but using the same pattern. This couldn't be a coincidence -- but which one to choose, PECAN CANCAN or FEMUR MURMUR? The other four grid entries repeated the vowels A, E, I and O in their answers, meaning only FEMUR MURMUR, with its repeated U's, "completes this puzzle's theme pattern."

For the second week in a row I got some pushback on the meta, though much less than with MGWCC #137. See comments here, but the thrust of the argument was that the A-E-I-O-U link was a bit tenuous. In my view no one proposed a convincing pattern completed by PECAN CANCAN, though -- but judge for yourself at the link. Incidentally, 168 solvers submitted PECAN CANCAN as their answer, compared to 135 who sent in FEMUR MURMUR.

John Farmer writes:

I just want to say that PECAN CANCAN does not rhyme with PE-TEN TENTEN.

Several solvers submitted suggestions for cluing FEMUR MURMUR. Tim Noonan's idea is:

{Casting call?}

Maggie Wittlin's is:

{A rumor that's got legs?}

While Joe Fendel came up with:

{Thigh will be drone}

This week's winner, whose name was chosen at random from the 135 correct entries received, is Mike McCormick of Hockessin, Del. In addition to a MGWCC pen, pencil and notepad set, Mike will also receive a one-year subscription to Peter Gordon's outstanding Fireball Crosswords. Next week we will return to regular book prizes.

THIS WEEK'S INSTRUCTIONS:

This week's contest answer is the piece of punctuation you need to use four times to solve this crossword. E-mail it to me at crosswordcontest@gmail.com by Tuesday at noon ET. Please put the contest answer punctuation in the subject line of your e-mail.

To print the puzzle out, click on the image below and hit "print" on your browser. To solve using Across Lite either solve on the applet below or download the free software here, then join the Google Group (1,419 members now!) here. This week's puzzle is NOT available in Team Crossword, but next week's will be.

Solve well, and be not led astray by words intended to deceive.

MGWCC #138 -- Friday, January 21st, 2011 -- "Three-Piece Suite"

2011-01-21T12:40:00.007-05:00

Good afternoon, crossword fans -- welcome to Week 138 of my contest. If you're new to the contest and would like to enter, please see the site FAQ on the left sidebar for instructions.

LAST WEEK'S RESULTS:

162 entrants successfully negotiated last week's rather problematic meta. The contest answer was a number from 1 to 10, and the puzzle's four theme entries -- all related to sports, for no real reason -- contained a total of ten words. They were:

17-a SCORE A RUN (4, 1)
61-a/69-a HEAVEN CAN / WAIT (7, 10, 8)
11-d LINE DRIVE (9, 5)
34-d FREE KICKS (3, 6)

The parenthetical numbers above show that, with the exception of the word "a" in SCORE A RUN, nine of the ten numbers between 1-10 are rhymed by words in the puzzle's theme. The only unrhymed number was 2, which made it last week's contest answer number.

Does TEN rhyme with CAN? I got massive pushback from solvers -- especially those with roots in New England or New York -- who adamantly insisted that they don't rhyme, even with CAN unstressed as in "Can I help you?" or (most importantly) "Heaven Can Wait." Most of these solvers submitted 10 as their answer, finding COUP at 35-a as the rhyme for 2.

There were many arguments on both sides, expressed passionately and intelligently in comments here:

http://www.crosswordfiend.com/blog/2011/01/18/mgwcc-137/

So, what to do as MGWCC referee? On the one hand, it's a bit random to hunt for the 2 rhyme in fill when the other rhymes are all in theme entries. Besides, Merriam-Webster backs me up on the rhyme:

http://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/can

http://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/ten

On the other hand, WAIT is placed asymmetrically in the grid, which may be construed as a license to look beyond the four longest entries. The "a" in SCORE A RUN was also viewed as weird by solvers; I'd intended it to be the tenth theme entry word unrhymed with "two," but in retrospect it would have been far more elegant if the four theme entries contained just nine words, each with a number rhyme.

Besides, MGWCC metas should click immediately, not be subject to various pros and cons of two competing meta possibilities -- and even many solvers who submitted 2 as their answer said they had a hard time choosing between it and 10.

Since both the meta and the alternative answer 10 each have their issues, I'm going to impose the Solomon-like solution of commenters Mark and Norm C at the above Crossword Fiend link: those who submitted 10 as their answer were not eligible for the weekly prize on MGWCC #137, but remain eligible for January's monthly prizes. And you can also keep intact any personal streaks you had going (several solvers mentioned they didn't want an imperfect meta like this to snap their streaks!).

Chris Shaw writes:

As an actual professional mathlete, it would be really embarrassing if
I got this week wrong. Hopefully all those MIT puzzlers are too busy
this weekend and I'll have better odds for a drawing this week.

David Stein -- and no other solver -- found an Easter Egg in the grid:

So when I started this one, I really wanted the answer to be pi. Then the directions said 1-10 inclusive, so I looked at the letters in squares 1 and 10 and voila! They were P and I. Meta solved, pi it is!

But then I did the puzzle and there was this rhyming issue. Darn, maybe it's not pi...I so want it to be pi, but I sadly submit 2.

This week's winner, whose name was chosen at random from the 162 correct entries received, is Jason Shapiro of New York City, N.Y. In addition to a MGWCC pen, pencil and notepad set, Jason will also receive a one-year subscription to Peter Gordon's outstanding Fireball Crosswords. Next week's winner will receive the same.

THE EXTREMELY HIDDEN SECRET TO DOWNLOADING MGWCC ACROSS LITE FILES:

Guda Venkatesh writes to point out that the Across Lite file for MGWCC puzzles can be downloaded on the AL application below, underneath the grid where it says "Download Crossword for Across Lite." That simple, eh?

NEW MGWCC RULE: ONE ENTRANT, ONE ANSWER

In the past I've been lenient about accepting correct second answers from entrants who've submitted incorrect first answers. This has gotten a little out of hand lately (it's tricky to track, for one), so beginning this week at MGWCC, each entrant is allowed exactly one answer per puzzle. So please think twice before submitting your answer!

THIS WEEK'S INSTRUCTIONS:

This week's contest answer is the two grid entries which, when combined, would complete this puzzle's theme pattern. E-mail them to me (the actual entries in the grid, not their clue numbers) at crosswordcontest@gmail.com by Tuesday at noon ET. Please put the contest answer in the subject line of your e-mail.

To print the puzzle out, click on the image below and hit "print" on your browser. To solve using Across Lite either solve on the applet below or download the free software here, then join the Google Group (1,412 members now!) here. To solve with friends at Team Crossword, click here.

Solve well, and be not led astray by words intended to deceive.