Good afternoon, crossword fans — welcome to Week 59 of my contest. If you’re new to the contest and would like to enter, please see the site FAQ on the left sidebar for instructions.
LAST WEEK’S RESULTS:
Several solvers e-mailed a couple of weeks ago that they’d gotten MICHAEL JACKSON as that week’s contest answer simply from the title of the puzzle (“ABC”) and the contest instructions (which informed them that the answer was a 14-letter celebrity). I was determined not to make the same mistake again, and therefore restrained myself from titling last week’s puzzle “2+2=4.” Not that anyone could have gotten the contest answer from that, but it might have given the game away a bit two much (heh-heh).
Yet even without a big title hint, 171 solvers figured out that two two-letter words combined to form one four-letter word in five theme phrases last week. They were:
SOTO SPEAK
PLEASE GOON
DOOR DIE
PENCIL MEIN (near-unanimous favorite theme entry, judging by e-mails)
BEAT PEACE
The symmetrically-placed grid entries cluing DOOR DIE were at 1-across and 69-across, JAMB CUBE, which was last week’s contest answer phrase. Note that DIE here is the rolling game piece, not the verb meaning “expire” as used in the phrase DO OR DIE. Puzzle solution at top left.
This week’s winner, whose name was chosen at random from the 171 correct entries submitted, is Matthew Perez-Stable of Fairview Park, O. Matthew has selected as his prize an autographed copy of Gridlock.
ONE THING:
I not only posted a crossword puzzle contest today, I also entered one!
THIS WEEK’S INSTRUCTIONS:
This week’s contest answer is a famous arcade game of the 1980s. (if you’re not up on your famous arcade games of the 1980s, you can find it somewhere on this list). E-mail it to me at crosswordcontest@gmail.com by Tuesday at noon ET. Please put the contest answer in the subject line of your e-mail.
To print the puzzle out, click on the image below and hit “print” on your browser. To solve using Across Lite (download the free software here), join the burgeoning Google Group (693 members!) here:
http://groups.google.com/group/mgwcc
Solve well, and be not led astray by words intended to deceive.