LAST WEEK’S RESULTS:

Week 5 means tough! Solvers were tasked with finding a European capital, and the theme entries’ identities weren’t totally clear. The 9 and 10 pairs of the pinwheel looked like theme, but what about the two 8s in the middle? Turns out all six were:

17-a [Doesn’t just sting] = HURTS SO BAD

27-a [Pac-12 squad] = UTAH UTES

46-a [Kid kin] = YOUNG ‘UNS

59-a [It’s on the flag of the proposed nation of Cascadia] = DOUGLAS FIR

11-d [Text about sex (and other things, too)] = KAMA SUTRA

34-d [LOLcat sound] = NOM NOM NOM

What’s going on here? The trick is straightforward, but well-concealed: each of the six theme entries contains a word that anagrams to a day of the week minus -DAY. So UNS yields SUNday, NOM yields MONday, UTES yields TUESday, HURTS yields THURSday, FIR yields FRIday, and SUTRA yields SATURday. What’s missing is WEDNESday, which yields our meta-answer, STOCKHOLM, SWEDEN.

THE PETER PRINCIPLE:

I based this meta on Peter Gordon‘s recent Fireball contest puzzle, “Capital Capital” (can’t link to it since it’s subscription-only, but my Fiend writeup is here). Spoilers to follow, so if you plan to solve it skip the next couple of paragraphs.

Only 9 people solved that meta, which amazed me since I’d gotten it in about two minutes. True, I had a head start since I’d messed around with the same theme idea before (though never published it). But still, the idea there (anagramming words from theme phrases to get Greek letters, like OMICRON from the first word of MORONIC INFERNO) did not seem very hidden or difficult or novel. Since I’d always envisioned Week 5-difficulty metas as necessarily intricate, it intrigued me that a meta so straightforward could be so brutal.

The three key tougheners of Peter’s meta are replicated here: 1) title that is unhelpful until after you’ve already gotten the idea (some didn’t care for my title, though; see discussion in comments here); 2) anagrams to a familiar but still slightly unusual set (my set was unusual because you were anagramming to parts of words, not full words; Peter’s was unusual because many of the anagrams were only two or three letters, like EAT for ETA and U.N. for NU); and 3) the big one, making it unclear exactly what was theme and what wasn’t. A minor quibble I had with Peter’s puzzle was that there was fill longer than theme, so here I made the longest fill in the grid 7 letters so it wouldn’t step on the toes of UTAH UTES and YOUNG ‘UNS.

Well, it worked, since just 29 solvers found STOCKHOLM (and 3-4 of those were Hail Marys, which count both in football and here at MGWCC).

Tahnan nailed it quickly:

It’s nice to finish on a Firday and not have it drag out until Unsday or Nomday.

As did Projectyl, who had a fascinating head start:

Got memories of Encyclopedia Brown to thank for this one – the words “NOM UTES SWEDEN HURTS” have been rattling around in my head since I was a kid.

Here’s the full Encyclopedia Brown story, which I don’t have an active memory of but which I’m sure I read as a kid.

This week’s winner, whose name was chosen at random from the 29 correct entries received, is Walt Blue of Saint Paul, Minn. In addition to a MGWCC pen, pencil and notepad set, Walt will also receive a copy of editor Ben Tausig‘s new “Twenty under Thirty” project.

MONTHLY WINNERS:

27 solvers submitted the correct contest answer to all five of March’s challenges (PIG, PHYSICS, GEORGIA, POPE JOHN XXIII, STOCKHOLM). The following ten lucky and skillful winners, chosen randomly from that group, will receive a MGWCC pen, pencil and notepad set:

Joe DeVincentis — Salem, Mass.

Steve Williams — Holbrook, Mass.

MULLER MONTHLY MUSIC META FOR APRIL:

Is up. Puzzle took me 8:21 and the meta 5 minutes.

THIS WEEK’S INSTRUCTIONS:

This week’s contest answer is a well-known American novel. Submit your answer in the form on the left sidebar by Tuesday at noon ET. Note: the submissions 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 (2,020 members now!) here.

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