Good afternoon, crossword fans — welcome to Week 224 of my contest. If you’re new to the contest and would like to enter, please see the site FAQ for instructions.

MEET THE NEW SITE, SAME AS THE OLD SITE:

Matt Gaffney’s Weekly Crossword Contest has moved! After four years at www.crosswordcontest.blogspot.com — a URL so unwieldy that I had to double-check it just now — we’re settling in here at xwordcontest.com. I’m going to leave the old blog up indefinitely for the sake of nostalgia and reference, but all posts from there have been imported to the new site as well.

The other big change is that I’m overhauling the submissions process: instead of e-mailing your answer to me at crosswordcontest@gmail.com, you’ll need to fill out the submissions form on the left sidebar. It’s so easy that I won’t bother explaining it, but e-mail me (crosswordcontest@gmail.com, that’s still my e-mail account) if something’s not clear.

There are a few new features I’ll be explaining in coming weeks (new prizes starting in October, a leaderboard system so you can quantify your meta-skills, et al.) but that’s enough new stuff for today. There will probably be some growing pains over this month since I’ve migrated from Blogger to WordPress, but bear with me and the dust will settle soon enough.

I want to thank three people for their work on my new digs: Dan Easley, for designing the site; Dave Sullivan, for implementing the submissions form; and Pete Muller, for allowing/encouraging me to steal features from his Monthly Music Meta site.

LAST WEEK’S RESULTS:

126 people solved Week 1’s meta, “Digital Audio.” Not 526, not 426, not even 326. This means the meta was much too tough for a week 1 (more below about that).

The four theme entries were:

VENN DIAGRAM
PLENTY OF FISH
DIRTY DANCING
SPORTY SPICE

Number rhymes are the name of the game: VENN, PLENTY, DIRTY and SPORTY rhyme with 10, 20, 30 and 40. What rental car company does that imply? THRIFTY, since it rhymes with 50.

Now, about that low number of right answers: evidently I severely underestimated the difficulty of this meta, since 126 is more like a Week 3 or Week 4 number. Not good, and here’s what I’m doing about it: over the past year I’ve gone from 0 to 2 test-solvers, and now I’ve recruited a couple more to bring us up to 4 total. 2 is too small a sample size, but 4 plus my own opinion should eliminate airballs like this in the future.

The funny part is: today’s Week 2 puzzle was originally slated to be Week 1, but I replaced it at the last minute since I thought it was more of a Week 2. We’ll see how tough today’s is, but it’s certainly easier than last week’s, which means I replaced it with a much tougher puzzle. Oops. Moving on…

Jason Feng writes:

You do realize I met my wife online via Plenty of Fish, don’t you?

I do now…

This week’s winner, whose name was chosen at random from the 126 correct entries received, is Sam Levitin of Worcester, Mass. In addition to a MGWCC pen, pencil and notepad set (with the new URL!), Sam will also receive a signed copy of Peter Gordon’s new book Sizzlingly Hard Fireball Crosswords. Winners for the rest of the month with receive the same.

SINCE WEEK 1 WASN’T MUCH OF A WEEK 1…

Go here to see what a real Week 1 meta looks like. Took me 8:23 to solve the puzzle and the meta fell in under 2 minutes. (That’s Erik Agard‘s new site, incidentally — hey Erik, put your name somewhere on your blog!) UPDATE, 9/15, 11:40 PM: OMG, somebody listened to me! Erik’s name is now prominently displayed on his site.

THIS WEEK’S INSTRUCTIONS:

This week’s contest answer is an NFL team that should be in this grid, but isn’t. Submit your answer in the form on the left sidebar by Tuesday at noon ET. Note: the form disappears from the site promptly at noon on Tuesday.

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 (1,854 members now!) here.