Good afternoon, crossword fans — welcome to Week 215 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.
GUEST CONSTRUCTOR MONTH CONTINUES:
Week 2’s puzzle is by the guy who was the impetus for Guest Constructor Month. How meta is that? More below.
LAST WEEK’S RESULTS:
Joon Pahk led off Guest Constructor Month with a bang last week. He asked solvers to find a pair of symmetric entries that would have made a good fifth theme answer, the four given themers being:
20-a [He played John Connor in “Terminator 2”] = EDWARD FURLONG
34-a [Collection of young swingers?] = LITTLE LEAGUE
41-a [Inspector Lestrade’s employer, in Sherlock Holmes books] = SCOTLAND YARD
56-a [Emperor Zurg’s archenemy, in film] = BUZZ LIGHTYEAR
FURLONG, LEAGUE, YARD and LIGHTYEAR are all units of distance, which means we’re looking for symmetrically-placed grid entries that form a two-word phrase wherein the second word is a unit of distance.
And there it is at 16- and 64-across: LEAD FOOT, which was submitted by 467 entrants.
Don Lloyd writes:
I fathomed it.
Leo Stein submitted LEAD FOOT:
Or “Pb ft” as I like to call it.
And Adam Rosenfield notes:
If 28A had been PAR instead of TRE, it could have combined with 48A to make PARSEC (about 3.26 light-years), but that would only make it half a theme entry.
This week’s winner, whose name was chosen at random from the 467 correct entries received, is Kevin Bloom of Tallahassee, Fla. Kevin has selected as his prize an autographed copy of Sip & Solve Hard Crosswords.
TRAFFIC PATTERN:
Forgot to mention this last week, but June 2012 was the highest traffic month in MGWCC history. w00t w00t!!
JULY GRYPTICS CONTEST IS UP:
You know what to do!
LOLLAPUZZOOLA 5:
I wrote a puzzle for Lollapuzzoola 5, and will be attending to watch solvers suffer through it. It’ll be Saturday, August 4th in New York City. Details here; see you there!
THIS WEEK’S GUEST CONSTRUCTOR:
Without Pete Muller, Guest Constructor Month wouldn’t have happened: late last year he showed me a series of meta-crosswords he’d just written, which were so enjoyable that I decided we should publish one here.
He didn’t wait for July to roll around, though: in May he launched his Muller Monthly Music Meta, a music-themed meta-crossword published the first week of each month. It’s already become very popular, which isn’t surprising since it combines two of Pete’s passions, as does this.
THIS WEEK’S INSTRUCTIONS:
This week’s contest answer is a well-known game. 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 (1,816 members now!) here.
Solve well, and be not led astray by words intended to deceive.