Good afternoon, crossword fans — welcome to Week 155 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:
Rough sailing for Week 2: Just 140 solvers — compared to 341 for the previous meta — found ST. LOUIS as last week’s contest answer city. The only two hints in the grid came at 2-down and 30-down, which was clued as “instructions on where to meet” and yielded I WILL BE AT A CONFLUENCE.
59 solvers submitted PITTSBURGH as a major American city at a confluence of two (or three, as locals claim) rivers, but there was more to the mix. See solution grid below: the MISSOURI and MISSISSIPPI rivers flow through the center-right of the grid in geographically correct routes, meeting at the I in square 37. The I in I WILL BE AT A CONFLUENCE is literally the letter I, then, and the big city built at the confluence of those two rivers is of course ST. LOUIS.
This week’s winner, whose name was chosen at random from the 140 correct entries received, is Becky Anderson of Roy, Washington. Becky has selected as her prize an autographed copy of Sip & Solve Hard Crosswords.
1,500 GOOGLE GROUP MEMBERS:
We just hit 1,500 members this morning. w00t!! Click on image to enlarge:
SPORCLE QUIZ…WITH META!
You just gotta play Joon Pahk’s new Sporcle quiz. It has a metapuzzle…and it’s already been played 37,000+ times. I solved it with 2:11 remaining from the original 8 minutes — beat that!
THIS WEEK’S INSTRUCTIONS:
Literary February redux! — this week’s contest answer is a ten-letter book-related word. E-mail it to me at crosswordcontest@gmail.com by Tuesday at noon ET. Please put the contest answer word 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 (1,500 members now!) here. To solve with friends at Team Crossword, click here. NOTE: mysterious Across Lite issues today and I can’t get it to give me a printable JPEG like normal. If anyone can get one from the AL file, e-mail it to me and I’ll post — thank you in advance! [UPDATE, 2:05 PM ET: That was quick! Thanks to Leo Stein for the JPEG, which appears below.]
Solve well, and be not led astray by words intended to deceive.