LAST WEEK’S RESULTS:

Title: “Make Womb”
Prompt: This week’s contest answer is a five-letter word.
Answer: TWINS found by 366 solvers, 296 of which were solo solves

A little tricky for a Week 2 of 5! I won’t call it a Week 2 Curse puzzle, but it was W2C-adjacent.

Five long theme entries, probably important considering the prompt. They were:

17-A: [It has many synonyms] = ROGET’S THESAURUS. Thesaurus has no synonyms or antonyms. Isn’t it ironic?

23-A: [Surveys] = TAKES A POLL OF

37-A: [It stands beside a pyramid] = THE LOUVRE MUSEUM

48-A: [Tepidity] = LUKEWARMNESS. Do we need two words for this? We are wasting a whole word with this nonsense!

58-A: [TV or radio ad buys] = BROADCAST ORDERS

A scan of those may reveal that each conceals one of a famous set of twins:

17-A: ESAU (in THESAURUS), whose twin is JACOB
23-A: APOLLO (in A POLL OF), whose twin is ARTEMIS
37-A: REMUS (in LOUVRE MUSEUM), whose twin is ROMULUS
48-A: LUKE (Skywalker) (in LUKEWARMNESS, whose twin is (spoiler alert) LEIA
58-A: CASTOR (in BROADCAST ORDERS), whose twin is POLLUX

Sneaky next step: find said twin hidden in a clue, like so:

11-A: [Bonaparte mission, often] = WAR
65-A: [Santa Barbara or Sebastopol luxury] = SPA
67-A: [It may get its shape from ulus] = IGLOO
33-A: [Muntjac observer, often] = THAI
55-A: [You might spot one when observing the Pleiades] = NOVA

In the usual grid order (see graphic by Gridmaster J above) these spell out contest answer TWINS.

Burak says:

I liked how it was straightforward enough to be a Week 2 but also made you work for it.

Thank you for saying! I hope you will feel the same way about this week’s challenge…

THIS WEEK’S INSTRUCTIONS:

This week’s contest answer is an animal you may need to imitate to solve the meta.