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LAST WEEK’S RESULTS:
Title: “Quartet Quest”
Instructions: This week’s contest answer is a familiar quartet.
Answer: the ACES in a deck of cards
Instead of me explaining the process of solving last week’s meta, let’s have Crossword Fiend commenter Dave do it:
You know you are looking for quartets from the title and the meta prompt.
Based on the parenthetical numbers, you know what the theme entries are, and it is reasonable to assume that these are the “first” entries in the quartets:
MANHATTAN, UZBEKISTAN, ZECHARIAH, EXXONMOBIL
If these are the first entries, then it is also reasonable to assume that we are looking for 4 TV shows, 4 countries, 4 Bible books, and 4 companies.
It’s fairly quick work to find the “second” entries in the grid:
ELLEN, BELGIUM, ROMANS, GEICO
Now, how do you find the “third” entries? Well, that’s where it gets harder, but it is a week 4, so you’ve got to work a bit for it. We know from 37-D that the third entries have to cross the first entries, so just look at all of the grid entries that cross MANHATTAN and try to find a TV show, then look at those that cross UZBEKISTAN and try to find a country, etc. Well, there aren’t any just laid out for you, so try to manipulate the words a bit, and you see that AVON can become NOVA, and then you realize that you need to anagram (or, if you looked at the hint, you already know this), so you eventually find ALGERIA, ACTS, and ATARI.
Now, your groups are, in order:
TV shows: MANHATTAN ELLEN NOVA
Countries: UZBEKISTAN BELGIUM ALGERIA
Bible books: ZECHARIA ROMANS ACTS
Companies: EXXONMOBIL GEICO ATARI
So, you need a 4th entry to make a quartet. This is a bit tricky and maybe the weak link here, but still pretty cool. Just look at those countries, and it’s not a giant leap to see CUBA from UBA (the first letters of each country), so CUBA is our “fourth” in the country quartet. Once you see one, you only need to use the same trick to find the others, and you have:
AMEN
CUBA
EZRA
SEGA
This give you ACES, which is a familiar quartet. Lots of steps, but that’s the fun of puzzles, isn’t it?
This week’s winner, whose name was chosen at random from the 171 correct entries received, is Eric Klis of Saint Louis Park, Minn. In addition to a MGWCC pen, pencil, and notepad set, Eric will also receive a 1-year subscription to Matt Gaffney’s Daily Crossword.
NOT A WEEK 5 THIS WEEK:
Good thing that last week was really a Week 5, since my planned Week 5 for today blew up last night. I virtually always check before starting a meta to make sure that no one’s done the idea before, but I either forgot to for this one or just missed it, because yesterday I discovered that my planned theme for today had been done in 2016 in the New York Times. It wasn’t done as a meta there, but it was prominent (my consigliere remembered it) and fairly recent so I decided I shouldn’t run mine.
The toughest one I have in my current meta-stash is the one I’m presenting today, which is more like a Week 3. So my apologies for that and now maybe I shouldn’t have given that hint last week after all. (BTW, I don’t want to say which 2016 Times puzzle it was since there’s a way I can redo it to reduce the similarities, so it will probably appear here at some point in the near future).
If you’d like a second meta after polishing off this one, try today’s WSJ here. And I owe you a Week 5 now, so the September 28th puzzle is going to be crazy tough.
THIS WEEK’S INSTRUCTIONS:
This week’s contest answer is a familiar geographical region.
Solve well, and be not led astray by words intended to deceive.