LAST WEEK’S RESULTS:

Tough Week 3: just 55 solvers found TONY SOPRANO as the famous fictional character requested by the instructions.

The six theme entries were:

19-a [“Please Read the Letter” singer, with Robert Plant (A)] = ALISON KRAUSS

25-a [“The Hurt Locker” director (A)] = KATHRYN BIGELOW

38-a [Dorothy Zbornak portrayer (A]) = BEA ARTHUR

53-a [Noted Don Giovanni (V)] = EZIO PINZA

66-a [She sang at the Lincoln Memorial on Easter Sunday, 1939 (V)] = MARIAN ANDERSON

76-a [First singer to sell a million recordings (V)] = ENRICO CARUSO

What’s going on? The parenthetical A in the first three clues stands for “award,” relevant since ALISON KRAUSS won the 2009 Record of the Year album for “Please Read the Letter,” KATHRYN BIGELOW won the Best Director Oscar for “The Hurt Locker,” and BEA ARTHUR won an Emmy for playing Dorothy Zbornak on “The Golden Girls.” Grammy, Oscar, Emmy — so the missing member of the four major entertainment awards is a Tony.

The last three entries are opera singers, so you might have guessed that the three V’s stand for voice. We’ve got a bass voice in EZIO PINZA, an alto (contralto) in MARIAN ANDERSON, and a tenor in Enrico Caruso. The missing member of the four main voices is SOPRANO. Put the two missing members of those quartets together and you get meta answer TONY SOPRANO, played by the recently deceased James Gandolfini.

Some solvers had a couple of problems with the meta: 1) Bea Arthur won a 1966 Tony Award, which some found confusing since it completes the awards set. I somehow had missed her Tony and would’ve used another Emmy winner if I had noticed it, but since the awards were won for the works specifically cited in the clues I didn’t feel this inelegance should have affected the meta. Read the lengthy and somewhat contentious comments section at Crossword Fiend for the arguments on both sides of this. 2) Marion Anderson is a contralto, not an alto. There seemed (and seems) to be enough ambiguity in the terms “alto” and “contralto” — they’re technically separate, but often casually conflated — so I didn’t think anyone who saw the meta idea of awards/voices would get TONY SOPRANO and then say, “but wait a second — Anderson isn’t an alto, she’s a contralto.” Music theory is over my head, so see the above-linked comments for thoughts on this as well.

Since Week 2 was more like a Week 3 this month and Week 3 was like a Week 5, today we’re backtracking: This puzzle is a Week 2 difficulty level. Next week we’ll start a new month with the usual order of difficulty.

LEADERBOARD REMINDER:

Webmaster Dave Sullivan sends along this reminder: please make sure that you keep your leaderboard username consistent each week. Usernames are case- and punctuation-sensitive, so if you’re “Zachary Z.” one week make sure you’re not “zachary z.” or “Zachary Z” (without the period) the next.

GORDON POLL:

First ever MGWCC poll! Here’s the backstory: in 2009 I ran a meta which hinted at three famous people whose names, when taken together, were pangrammatic. They were historian JACQUES BARZUN, country singer DWIGHT YOAKAM and hockey player FELIX POTVIN. I felt the 36 letters those three shared was probably as low as you could go on this, but challenged readers to do their worst. I wrote: “If anyone can beat my 36 letters I’d be very interested to hear about it. A MGWCC pen/pencil notepad set to whoever goes lowest!” No one took me up on the challenge, though….until now!

Four years later, and armed with a monster database of famous names he collected mainly for his iPhone app Celebrity: Get a Clue, Peter Gordon wheeled out his list of three celebrities whose pangramhood needs just 35 letters. If you haven’t yet solved the May 22nd Fireball puzzle using these three names but plan to, stop reading now!

Peter’s trio is rapper FOXY BROWN, quarterback JACK THOMPSON and painter DIEGO VELAZQUEZ. The poll question Peter and I want readers to settle is: should this list count as a record-breaker? There are two questions to weigh: 1) is it OK that FOXY BROWN isn’t her real name (it’s Inga DeCarlo Fung Marchand) and 2) is Jack Thompson famous enough? Vote in the poll at right and we’ll see if we have a new record. And BTW — don’t assume that Peter necessarily thinks the 35 should count or that I think it shouldn’t! I’ll reveal his and my personal views on it next week.

THIS WEEK’S INSTRUCTIONS:

This week’s contest answer is the answer to the theme question. 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. NOTE: in case you missed it above, this week’s meta is only a Week 2 difficulty level.

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 (2,063 members now!) here.

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