Ahoy, Fellow Cruciverbalists! Welcome to Week 5 of my crossword 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: George Carlin’s stand-up routines were bitingly sarcastic — in a word, MORDANT, which was last week’s contest answer word. To get there, 38 solvers found the septet of grid entries that were one letter off from Carlin’s famous “Seven Dirty Words”: SHOT, MISS, DUCK, ROCK SUCKER, MOTHER TUCKER, TINS, and AUNT (I won’t reprint the dirty words themselves here, but the routine has its own wikipedia entry). Extracting the seven substituted letters from those entries yields, in grid order: O, M, D, R, T, N, and A, which anagram to MORDANT.
Solution grid is at left and also posted on the MGWCC Google Group:
http://groups.google.com/group/mgwcc
Join the Google Group to have the puzzle e-mailed to you right when it’s posted each Friday afternoon, or to solve the electronic Across Lite version of the puzzle.
Last week’s lucky winner is Leonard Williams of Fort Wayne, Ind., whose name was chosen at random from among the 38 correct entries. Leonard has chosen to receive an autographed copy of Gridlock as his prize.
FROM THE MAILBAG:
Contest winner Leonard Williams writes:
Carlin’s routines were so influential that I often find myself reflecting his concerns in my classes—even without doing so consciously. When I teach about liberal political theory, the ideas of Hobbes and Locke, I often talk about how their theories about people and government are rooted in ideas about getting and keeping property—also known as “stuff.” In fact, my students hear that word so much during those weeks in the semester that they soon start repeating the word as well. When I recently heard a clip from Carlin’s riff on “stuff”—how we’re obsessed with getting it, saving it, keeping it, storing it, etc.—it struck me how obviously and deeply his world view helped shaped mine.
Howard Barkin recalls:
I had the privilege of seeing George Carlin at a small theater show some years ago in NJ…He was trying out some new material and was particularly mordant that day; more angry than sarcastically comical, and I enjoyed every minute of it anyway – the guy certainly spoke his mind. It was especially fun to watch a few people in the crowd who somehow didn’t know Mr. Carlin’s act, staring in disbelief for a while before eventually walking out about 2/3 through the show. Good times.
Anne Erdmann notes that this puzzle was a:
… tough one for us innocent pure-minded types! 🙂
While Jason Feng reminisces, regarding 23-across:
We used to have a steakhouse here in town (Vancouver, BC) called Mother Tucker’s. Ah, the memories.
THIS WEEK’S INSTRUCTIONS:
Send this week’s contest answer word to me at crosswordcontest@gmail.com by noon EDT on Tuesday. (Sorry this week’s puzzle doesn’t have an Independence Day theme, wasn’t feeling the spirit of the thing this year — but Bastille Day is just around the corner, which is more suiting my mood!). 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.
Happy 4th, solve well, and be not led astray by words intended to deceive.