Good afternoon, crossword fans — welcome to Week 184 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:

Well, that was easy! 409 solvers — 1 shy of the MGWCC record — found QUITO as our contest answer capital last week. They got there by speaking the first word of each theme entry aloud:

CUE VIOLINS (Q)
YOU SAID IT (U)
EYE OF THE TIGER (I)
TEA LEAVES (T)
OH NO, MR BILL! (O)

Put ’em all together and you’ve got that capital city high in the Andes Mountains.

I laughed when I saw Eric Maddy‘s entry:

— — · — · · — · · — — — —

MGWCC’s one Swedish solver, Gunnar Bergvall, missed SWEDEN in last week’s tough meta. While submitting QUITO this week, he writes:

It seems to be easier for me to spot a Latin American capital than my own home country…

Jeff Schwartz didn’t need much of the puzzle to suss out the meta:

I love the beginning of the month. I saw the “cue” and just knew:

Finally, Leigh Newman had no trouble getting the meta since she and her husband were in Quito just a couple of weeks ago. Here they are on the equator, right outside the city:

This week’s winner, whose name was chosen at random from the 409 correct entries received, is Simon McAndrews of New York City, N.Y. In addition to a MGWCC pen, pencil and notepad set, Simon will also receive a copy of Patrick Blindauer’s forthcoming Musical Puzzlefest, which drops on Dec. 15th. Next week’s winner will receive the same.

MATT GAFFNEY’S DAILY CROSSWORD (MGDC):

For the past couple of months I’ve been writing a daily 11×13 puzzle. They’re free, they go live at 6 AM ET Mondays thru Fridays, have mini-themes, get tougher as the week goes on, and will continue until we’ve done 10,000 of them (we’re on #0058 now).

Here are a couple of the recent ones I like best:

http://mattgaffneydaily.blogspot.com/2011/12/mgdc-0055-tuesday-dec-6-2011.html

http://mattgaffneydaily.blogspot.com/2011/12/mgdc-0056-wednesday-dec-7-2011.html

UPDATE, 12/9, 1:40 PM ET:

Dan Feyer writes:

If I want a little warmup in the morning before solving the rest of the day’s offerings, I’ll zip through a week of MGDCs (average time, about 60 seconds each).

Wow — beat that!

THIS WEEK’S INSTRUCTIONS:

This week’s contest answer is a famous actor/comedian you might watch on 33-down. E-mail it 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 either solve on the applet below or download the free software here, then join the Google Group (1,611 members now!) here. To solve with friends at Team Crossword, click here.

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