LAST WEEK’S RESULTS:

Doing an experimental write-up this week: every so often, solver Eric Prestemon sends me a timed, detailed explanation of his MGWCC solve. This week, in lieu of me explaining the theme, I’m just going to publish Eric’s solve in full here. I think you’ll find it as fascinating as I did; if you’d still like to see a more traditional summary, though, then Joon Pahk‘s write-up is here.

Eric Prestemon writes:

“- 0:00:00 :: Got the printout, reading the blog post.
– 0:01:03 :: Matt’s blood type. ok… (that took a while, lot to read about last week’s)
– 0:01:59 :: 1d CAM, 5d REPS 20a VASCO EREC
– 0:03:35 :: 23d GAPED GOOG ATTELL (loved that show) OTERI ERR DISS? -VOTERS TRIAGED LEADTO
– 0:05:06 :: 40a seems theme related… can’t make sense of it.
– 0:05:51 :: 52a PAVOROTTI VOWED LOW? … not sure any of that is right, bottom left isn’t working
– 0:07:16 :: 41d YURT? 55d IST STIFF TESS
– 0:09:34 :: ok, back to top. 7d SNL? can’t cross it. 13d TAPAS? LIP? ugh.
– 0:11:44 :: 34a PGA HOPTOIT OREOS LOP
– 0:14:09 :: 48d UNIFORM … or not
– 0:15:20 :: 63d NBA
– 0:16:10 :: 62a INDETENTION? 69a UBID? so 65d can be EDS?
– 0:17:22 :: 49a PETRI so 50d can be ERBIUM, I guess. 57a -BOMB, probably ABOMB ABODE ODE, dunno 71a, maybe WED?
– 0:19:12 :: 48d DRAFTED
– 0:19:32 :: 67d NED, OLE looks good next to it…making STEELE and SODDED and FORTIFIED
– 0:20:25 :: 56a AINT ANDREA REAGAN NORTON FREON OFFS SCANT
– 0:21:36 :: 30d LEW? 40a WAYTOGO? not sure. will check after
– 0:22:20 :: INSO, PHARYNGES GULAG UVA GOT OVINE DIANA DADDYO
– 0:23:36 :: 8d RAT GRAD AYE GMA
– 0:25:17 :: 6d EDUC makes 17a MANIPULATED ADORED NON- ADA? or IDA? dunno.
– 0:25:48 :: that’s the grid. googling to verify EDA, ah 1a is CENTRE. duh
– 0:26:56 :: PEEDEE is correct…. I guess I should look into the meta.
– 0:27:13 :: so, matt’s blood type. “JUST MY TYPE”, the title, may not be any more than a restatement of that…
– 0:27:41 :: possible theme answers are MANIPULATED PHARYNGES WAYTOGO PAVAROTTI and INDETENTION (plus maybe NONVOTERS and FORTIFIED)
– 0:28:18 :: WAYTOGO is the weird one…. Bright idea, given the situation… (no idea)… “(this is negative)”… also no idea. hmmm
– 0:29:45 :: HOPTOIT could also be thematic I guess.
– 0:30:30 :: (bottom left, googled and found PHLOX, as an aside)
– 0:33:18 :: there seem to be connected As, Bs, and Os in the grid… though that may not be unusual
– 0:33:37 :: like, they surround a D in the top left. and the G in WAYTOGO
– 0:35:40 :: I *guess* it’s possible that 40a is a regualr clue… but “negative” and its central location suggests otherwise…
– 0:39:45 :: Nothing seems especially theme-y anywhere. VASC- at a stretch
– 0:46:50 :: I don’t think STEEL/LEAD/ERBIUM is a thing.
– 0:49:45 :: I don’t see anything interesting except the clue for 40a, and that could be nothing. still tossing things around in my head. (DUO, TRI, TRI, etc)
– 0:57:13 :: I’m assuming the fact that RAT ARGO and IST in a column can be preceded by F isn’t a thing.
– 0:59:27 :: Jangler’s getting it in 17 minutes is disheartening… (but boy I love live leaderboards in general)
– 1:01:36 :: double letter interesting things: EE over DD, LL over EE, and OO over TT over EE over RR. unusual
– 1:17:17 :: ok, so I was looking for a way to shade 40a as the “negative”… and I noticed the clue started with B
– 1:17:39 :: I looked for other clues starting with B… and I noticed a bunch of A, B, and O words in them. let’s list them.
– 1:17:55 :: 19a ONE OF A BODILY PAIR
– 1:18:56 :: 27d BEN AFFLECK-DIRECTED FILM COMING OUT NEXT MONTH
– 1:19:05 :: 36d AMASSED TROOPS ON, AS A BORDER
– 1:19:17 :: 63d ANTHONY AND BRYANT’S ORG
– 1:19:30 :: not sure what that means yet… if anything.

– 1:20:09 :: answers are LIP ARGO FORTIFIED NBA… not great.
– 1:22:12 :: ABODE is the answer with all 3. not obviously helpful.
– 1:22:57 :: what I wanted to do is shade in WAYTOGO to make a negative sign, and following the same rule elsewhere shade in an A and a B, say. But I don’t see how
– 1:23:26 :: GOOG on the left maybe?
– 1:29:41 :: maybe it’s about typing… OPTOI and YTO in the middle are all top row… but A and G aren’t. that doesn’t work
– 1:30:43 :: MY are typed with the same finger. maybe it’s those letters. MNHYUJ
– 1:31:20 :: not promising.
– 1:33:58 :: the OROTUND and ABSENT FROM CLASS clues have brought me back to clues starting with blood types…
– 1:35:31 :: is it meaningful that August is mentioned in the PGA clue, but OCTOBER isn’t in the ARGO clue?
– 1:48:17 :: “BRIGHT IDEA, GIVEN THE SITUATION”… what situation? meta solving? blood? do we want gloves? a tourniquet? or is the 40a clue not important at all? ARGH.
– 1:48:56 :: Stopping in 5-10 minutes (if I can) to go to work. (It’s friday morning now)
– 1:53:46 :: nothing from the long answers, nothing from the centeral answer/clue, nothing from the ABO clues. … nothing from the As, Bs, Os in the grid. I think I’m done for now. no idea.
– 1:53:48 :: Ok, it’s Friday night, been looking at it for a bit….
– 1:53:58 :: the OROTUND bothers me… it can lose its leading O and still work… also noticed that 40a can lose its leading B….
– 1:54:33 :: so 40a is cluing B-negative… and 52a is cluing O?
– 1:55:06 :: 62a can lose AB… to make “sent from class”…
– 1:55:34 :: 17a can’t… oh wait it can *add* AB to the beginning.
– 1:55:45 :: and I guess 25a can add A to the beginning?
– 1:56:33 :: so, 17a can add AB, 25 can add A, 40a is B negative, 52a is remove O, 62a is remove AB… odd… are there others, across or down?
– 1:58:34 :: 3d could take an A and be Apolitical group…
– 1:59:57 :: 36d can lose an A….
– 2:02:10 :: so, the 7 theme entries are theme entries… but +AB +A, -B(negative), -O, -AB, +A, -A… means what?
– 2:04:28 :: let’s put O before ESOPHAGEAL….
– 2:04:37 :: that means we have, in order, +AB, +O, “B-“, -O, -AB, +A, -A…. that leaves out only B positive.
– 2:05:32 :: so that must be the answer.
– 2:05:56 :: AB’s symmetrical, A’s symmetrical, O’s symmetrical. the explicitly negative B- in the middle leaves only B POSITIVE. submitting.”

B+ / B POSITIVE it is! This week’s winner, whose name was chosen at random from the 80 correct entries received, is Jimmy Williams of Elgin, Ill. In addition to a MGWCC pen, pencil and notepad set, Jimmy will also receive a signed copy of Peter Gordon’s new book Sizzlingly Hard Fireball Crosswords.

ERRATUM:

Several solvers (Ephraim Vishniac was first) noticed that the clue to 24-down was wrong. [“Scary Movie” actress, 1995] was what I had for crosswords staple Cheri OTERI, but “Scary Movie” came out in 2000, not 1995.

POLITICO ANIMAL:

Should crossword constructors be voting for Obama or Romney? Find out in my not-completely-serious new article at Politico.com:

http://www.politico.com/news/stories/1012/81873.html?hp=l12

WISH I’D THOUGHT OF THAT THEME:

If you missed Neville Fogarty‘s extremely clever website puzzle last week, you can solve it here. Wish it had my name on it instead of Neville’s!

MONTHLY PRIZES:

OK, the good news is that I’ll be giving out 12 monthly prizes instead of 10 for September. That’s to make up for the bad news, which is that I had an extremely busy week and just was not able to get to the monthly prizes (and they’re a little tricky this month because of the submission form switchover).

Apologies for the delay, and I’ll have those results next week.

LEADERBOARD, PART 4:

Another casualty of my hectic week is that I haven’t had a chance to sort out the remaining leaderboard issues. There are still a few solvers whom I should have added by now but haven’t; I will get it completely straightened out by next Friday, though, so please (continue to) bear with me.

SPECIAL PRIZES ALL THIS MONTH:

My first collection of MGWCC puzzles comes out on November 6th, published by Sterling. Three things: 1) it’s been branded as “Mental Floss Crosswords” because I’m told that that will be good for sales; 2) there aren’t any new puzzles in the book, since these are all taken from the website archives, and 3) I’m not sure why there’s a candy bar on the cover, but I put my faith in people who know more about book cover design than I do.

Anyway, it’s available for pre-order now at [B&N] or [Amazon], and finally coming to the point: In addition to a MGWCC pen, pencil and notepad set, weekly winners throughout October will receive an autographed copy of Mental Floss Crosswords.

THIS WEEK’S INSTRUCTIONS:

This week’s contest answer is a Dr. Seuss book that would have made an excellent theme entry in this grid. Submit your answer in the form on the left sidebar by Tuesday at noon ET. Note: the submissions form disappears from the site promptly at noon on Tuesday.

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 (1,868 members now!) here.

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