Good afternoon, crossword fans — welcome to Week 91 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:

The sport of BOXING was last week’s contest answer. 282 solvers sent this meta to the canvas by noticing the 2×2 same-letter boxes scattered around the grid: B, G, N and X in the corners, plus O- and I-boxes in the center. Which summer Olympics sport do those six yield? BOXING, of course — which solvers did a little of by boxing up those six sets of four letters. Solution at top left.

Anagrams take a minute to click sometimes. Before getting BOXING, Les & Sam Wagner thought the meta answer might be:

X-BOING — extreme trampolining?

This week’s winner, whose name was chosen at random from the 282 correct entries received, is Tom Ames of Phoenix, Ariz. Tom has selected as his prize an autographed copy of Sip & Solve Hard Crosswords.

TWO THINGS:

1) Congratulations to Dan Feyer, Howard Barkin and Anne Erdmann for their 1-2-3 finish at the ACPT.

2) I’m not the only one who writes crosswords with metapuzzles — Justin Smith wrote this puzzle for (and distributed it at) the American Crossword Puzzle Tournament:

http://justinspuzzles.com/metacross_puzzles/metacross_8.html

THIS WEEK’S INSTRUCTIONS:

This week’s contest answer is one of the 42 territories on a Risk board. If you don’t have a Risk board, there’s a nice picture of one here (click to enlarge photo).

E-mail your answer 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, then join the Google Group (1,095 members now!) here.

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