Good afternoon, crossword fans — welcome to Week 114 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:
A “magic eye” meta last week — some saw it right away, others stared at it for days and nothing happened. In the end just 68 entrants pegged E FLAT as the off-note in last week’s puzzle, and about 25% of those were lucky guesses who hadn’t noticed the meta trick.
Seven clues in the puzzle read {Notable note} leading to the answers B FLAT, A SHARP, G SHARP, D NATURAL, E FLAT, MIDDLE C, and HIGH C. Instructions asked solvers to determine which of these notes was off. Musically-inclined solvers followed a variety of musical meta ideas, such as humming the notes (or playing them on the piano) to see if they formed a familiar song with one off-note.
But the meta turned out not to have any relation to music at all; rather, the seven notes served as literal descriptions of the words they crossed at the note letter. So we had:
a BOARD is a B FLAT (i.e., a flat thing that begins with B)
an AXE is an A SHARP
a GENIUS is a G SHARP
DIRT is a D NATURAL
CORE is a MIDDLE C
CHEECH Marin is a HIGH C (the favorite theme entry of almost all solvers who expressed an opinion — and mine, too)
Our round EARTH, however, is famously not an E FLAT, which made this the “off-note” — and last week’s contest answer.
This week’s winner, whose name was chosen at random from the 68 correct entries received, is Barbara Hartwell of Framingham, Mass. Barbara has selected as her prize an autographed copy of Gridlock.
MONTHLY PRIZE WINNERS:
52 solvers submitted the correct contest answer to all five of July’s puzzles (YES, DEAR, BAD MOOD, PHONETIC, 1066 and E FLAT). The following ten lucky winners, chosen randomly from that group, will receive a MGWCC pen, pencil and notepad set:
Abby Braunsdorf — Lafayette, Ind.
Ed Brody — Cambridge, Mass.
David Graham — Portland, Ore.
Garrett Hildebrand — Irvine, Calif.
David Howorth — Oxford, Miss.
Geoff Mitelman — New York City, N.Y.
Garo Sassouni — Los Angeles, Calif.
Rebecca Soble — Istanbul, Turkey
Leo Stein — Cambridge, Mass.
Mark Taylor — Seattle, Wash.
Congratulations to our ten winners, and to everyone who went 5-for-5 in July.
PATRICK BLINDAUER’S NEW SITE:
Here’s the clever inaugural crossword from Patrick Blindauer’s new site. He’ll be posting an original puzzle there each month. A welcome addition to the Crucisphere!
THIS WEEK’S INSTRUCTIONS:
This week’s contest answer is a popular cocktail. E-mail it to me at crosswordcontest@gmail.com by Tuesday at noon ET. Please put the contest answer drink 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 (1,288 members now!) here.
Solve well, and be not led astray by words intended to deceive.