MGWCC #588 — GUEST CONSTRUCTOR MONTH, PUZZLE #1 — Friday, September 6th, 2019 — “Call to Order” by Emily Cox and Henry Rathvon

IMPORTANT NOTE: As of January 2015 MGWCC is a subscribers-only crossword. The cost is $26 per year, and you can subscribe (or get a free trial month first) here:

http://www.mgwcc.com/

LAST WEEK’S RESULTS:

Title: “Reverse Engineering”
Instructions: This week’s contest answer is a nine-letter word.
Answer: BACKSOLVE

Underwhelming final puzzle last month so I was determined to come back strong on August’s Week 5. It all worked out and everybody dug it, so we’re back on track heading into Guest Constructor Month.

The trick was: nine clues, when read in reverse, clued another entry in the grid. Like so:

28-A: [Single journey] = ONE WAY TRIP, but read as “Journey single” it clues LIGHTS.

36-A: [Music of India] = RAGA, but read as “India of music” it clues ARIE, as in India.Arie.

49-A: [“What,” say] clues PRONOUN, but reversed as [“Say what?”] it clues COME AGAIN.

60-A: [Make discontinued] = CANCEL, but read as “Discontinued make” it clues OLDSMOBILE.

63-A: [Dash dash dash, dot dash dash, dot, decoded] = OWE, but if you reverse the Morse code action you get EGO. Most people who expressed an opinion loved this oddball clue, but there were a few detractors as well. Polarizing! I thought it was hilarious, and can’t take credit for it — my Consigliere came up with the idea when I complained that I needed a really flexible clue that could be any letter since finishing off the word BACKSOLVE was proving tricky.

81-A: [Dish polish] = GLAZE, but read as “Polish dish” it clues BIGOS. This was the entry point for many solvers.

27-D: [“Oliver!” director] clues CAROL REED, who won an Oscar for it, but read as [Director Oliver] you get STONE.

30-D: [Example for children] is a ROLE MODEL, but read as [Children, for example] it clues KIN.

43-D: [DDE, vis-à-vis RMN] = PREZ, but reverse the initials and it clues VEEP.

Take the first letters of those new words in grid order and you’ve got the fitting contest answer, BACKSOLVE. Many solvers had to backsolve a few of these clue/entry pairs, and a number of those mentioned noticing how apt that was.

This week’s winner, whose name was chosen at random from the 142 correct entries received, is R.L. In addition to a MGWCC pen, pencil, and notepad set, R.L. will also receive a signed copy of my book Pint-Size Crosswords.

AUGUST WINNERS:

Congratulations to the following 10 winners, whose names were chosen at random from the 108 solvers who sent in the correct contest answer to all five of August’s challenges (ARIZONA, PRIUS, DOWNSIDE, ROSS PEROT, BACKSOLVE). Each will receive a MGWCC pen, pencil, and notepad set:

Ethan Budin — Deerfield, Ill.

Eric Conrad — Peaks Island, Me.

Jeff Davidson — Mountain View, Calif.

Jeffrey Harris — Nashville, Tenn.

Jeremiahs Johnson — Lafayette, Calif.

Jesse Lansner — Rochester, N.Y.

Paul Melamud — Milford, N.J.

Lance Nathan — Arlington, Mass.

D.O.

Hector Pefo — San Francisco, Calif.

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

GUEST CONSTRUCTOR MONTH 2019, PUZZLE #1:

Guest Constructor Month 2019 starts now, and it’s a real thrill to have the great Emily Cox and Henry Rathvon kicking things off.

Emily and Henry are known for many things — among them, writing the Boston Globe Sunday Crossword, the Atlantic Monthly cryptic, and the Wall Street Journal cryptic. They live in Lemoyne, Pa., where their hobbies include rock climbing, gardening, and astronomy.

To me, Emily and Henry will always loom large for their work at GAMES Magazine, where they contributed an incredible array of puzzles that helped make that magazine what it was. I mentioned one of my favorites to them on the phone last year: it was a “photocrime” puzzle they had created, where a hidden camera in a posh country home yields pictures you must put in proper order to reveal the culprit. Sadly, I can’t find this mini-murder mystery online anywhere and my issues are buried in storage, but I did find its listing in the magazine’s table of contents!

Here’s a link to the cover of the magazine as well.

Anyway the point of all this is to say that when I mentioned this mystery puzzle to them on the phone last year, they could barely remember it! Now that’s impressive — when you’ve done so much incredible puzzlemaking that a gem like this doesn’t even register.

OK, enough fanboy exuberance: here are Cox & Rathvon leading off GCM 2019. Have fun! Oh wait, one other thing: the photo of them above is in front of the Cedar Grove, New Jersey home of Arthur Wynne, whom you know as the inventor of the crossword puzzle. Nice!

THIS WEEK’S INSTRUCTIONS:

This week’s contest answer is a two-word phrase.

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

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