Good afternoon, crossword fans — welcome to Week 134 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:
How’s by you? Probably pretty good if you’re eating Cajun food at the restaurant pictured above, since it gets four stars on Yelp. It also served as this week’s contest answer.
299 solvers ate up the five real-life restaurant names in the grid:
3-d — WHAT THE PHO
21-d — AESOP’S TABLES
7-d — BREWED AWAKENING
9-d — THE BEST WURST
32-d — FRYING NEMO
Instructions told them to form a 10-letter Midwest Cajun restaurant’s name from two grid entries, so searching for puns they went. BAYOU at 23-across seemed like a good start, being both a Cajun restaurant and a strong candidate for wordplay hijinks. HOWES at 69-a finished the job, and HOWE’S BAYOU was indeed our restaurant of the week.
Ben Henri is close to the meta:
I live about 2 minutes from that place! I’ve never been, but I think I’ll have to go now.
Jim Sempsrott is 3-for-3 in December and writes:
I’m still in the running, by gumbo!
This week’s winner, whose name was chosen at random from the 299 correct entries received, is Seth Canetti of Larchmont, N.Y. Seth has selected as his prize an autographed copy of Gridlock.
ANATOMY OF A SOLVE:
You already know that Joon Pahk posts a detailed critique of MGWCC each Tuesday at Crossword Fiend. Now Eric Prestemon joins in with a weekly log of his own solve (my favorite comments this week are at 0:22 and 28:46):
http://solvingpuzzles.tumblr.com/post/2433930111/mgwcc-133-edible-complex
ARIES PUZZLES:
If you’re a fan of Rows Garden puzzles, check out Andrew Ries‘s new site, where he’s posting one new Rows Garden per week:
THIS WEEK’S INSTRUCTIONS:
This week’s contest answer is the name of a Christmas carol. E-mail it to me at crosswordcontest@gmail.com by Wednesday (note extra day!) at noon ET. Please put the contest answer carol 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 either solve on the applet below or download the free software here, then join the Google Group (1,402 members now!) here. To solve with friends at Team Crossword, click here.
Solve well, and be not led astray by words intended to deceive.