LAST WEEK’S RESULTS:

Tricky for Week 2: a lowish 274 solvers found TESTY as the word describing how some people get while working metapuzzles (I won’t name names!).

They noticed two things: first, that the five theme entries were two-word phrases where both words start with the same three letters. Second, they noticed that there was another four-letter word in the grid beginning with that same trigram. Take the fourth letter of those extra words, as nudged at by the title, and you get the meta answer:

CHARLIE CHAPLIN — CHAT

MARY MARTIN — MARE

SIMPLE SIMON — SIMS

CANDY CANES — CANT

ALLIGATOR ALLEY — ALLY

This week’s winner, whose name was chosen randomly from the 274 correct entries received, is C.D. In addition to a MGWCC pen, pencil and notepad set, C.D. will also receive a copy of the intriguing new Team 23 contest crossword from the AVCX gang, which just dropped yesterday. Read more about this intriguing $5 creature here.

TIP JAR ROUNDUP:

The final results are in: $10,955 was the grand total of the 2013 MGWCC Tip Jar Week. That’s a 21% increase over last year’s haul — very nice, and thank you to all 362 who chipped in! Year 6 starts now.

CROSSWORDESE AND LEGALESE:

Newly-minted law school graduate Andy Kravis has a new weekly crossword blog out. They’re not law-themed, so don’t worry! New puzzle every Saturday — here’s one I particularly enjoyed.

THIS WEEK’S INSTRUCTIONS:

This week’s contest answer is a famous fictional character. 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 (2,060 members now!) here.

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