Good afternoon, crossword fans — welcome to Week 65 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:
What do the Egyptian god THOTH, the city of MIAMI, the surnames of crossword writer Harvey ESTES and actress Anne HECHE, and the car make VOLVO all have in common?
None of them have ever been in Cliff Clavin’s kitchen, true — but each is also a five-letter word featuring the letter pattern 1-2-3-1-2. Other theme words in this category were SALSA, VERVE, UNFUN, TONTO, SENSE, ONION, and EDGED.
Solvers were asked to find a famous author whose surname fits this pattern — as well as the surname of one of that author’s characters, which also fits. 179 entrants found the pair and the contest answer phrase: KAFKA SAMSA, referring to Prague-born Franz Kafka and his semi-autobiographical character Gregor Samsa (from The Metamorphosis). Solution at top left.
This week’s winner, whose name was chosen at random from the 179 correct entries submitted, is Tony Antonakas of Ellicott City, Md. Tony has selected as his prize an autographed copy of Sip & Solve Hard Crosswords.
E-MAIL OF THE WEEK:
Anne Erdmann writes:
Ever do one of those crosswords where it seems like every entry is about you? This one was kind of like that for me. I’ve been to the Stans, geol. is my earth sci. career, I’m hoping my next trip is to Ethiopia where I can see the Blue Nile falls, I’ve spent the night in Lome, and a guy I dated briefly in college was a student of Ahmed Zewail’s (who let me tell you I NEVER thought I would see in a crossword!, and which was my first answer in this one).
TWO THINGS:
1) Looks like my Daily Beast 21×21 will be a weekly feature running on Friday mornings. Here is this week’s puzzle:
2) I’ll also be posting a current events-based word puzzle series every Thursday at the Faster Times. Here is the debut puzzle from yesterday:
http://thefastertimes.com/puzzles/2009/08/27/puzzle-1-can-ub-serious/
THIS WEEK’S INSTRUCTIONS:
Last puzzle of the month — and I can’t tell how tough the meta is. So far in August we’ve had 245, 202 and 179 correct entries, and anything between 75 and 150 wouldn’t shock me this week. So let’s see…
The five theme entries in this week’s puzzle are not in their correct order. This week’s contest answer is their correct sequence.
Note that I have labeled each theme entry with a number from 1-5 based on its position in the grid. So if, for example, you think theme entry #4 should be first, #3 should be second, #5 should be third, #1 should be fourth and #2 should be fifth, you would submit as your entry 4-3-5-1-2.
Please separate the numbers in your entry with hyphens as I did in this example. E-mail your entry to me at crosswordcontest@gmail.com by Tuesday at noon ET.
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, then join the Google Group (823 members now!) here.
Solve well, and be not led astray by words intended to deceive.