LAST WEEK’S RESULTS:
Did you make it to Lollapuzzoola 6 last weekend in New York City? I did, and it was a blast. Hard to imagine the circumstances that will keep me away from LPZ7 next summer!
In addition to being an extremely fun event, LPZ6 also served as last week’s meta answer. Contest instructions asked for a famous crossword tournament, and the six theme entries were:
17-a [Person who writes an online review for every single restaurant they dine at?] = YELP ZEALOT
21-a [Discipline that deals with questions like: “What is the sound of one dandruff flake falling?”] = SCALP ZEN
34-a [Home for young animals only?] = WHELP ZOO
45-a [Shavings scraped from seaweed?] = KELP ZEST
56-a [Chug down a clear alcoholic drink?] = GULP ZIMA
63-a [Standard, poorly-described character in apocalyptic novels?] = PULP ZOMBIE
What do these goofy phrases have in common? Each contains the trigram LPZ, shorthand for Lollapuzzoola. And there are six of them, suggesting meta answer LOLLAPUZZOOLA 6, found by 532 solvers. Naturally I also accepted LOLLAPUZZOOLA without the 6 (which is what the vast majority of solvers submitted).
DannyBoy writes:
hope I spelled that right
You did! But I didn’t penalize those who didn’t (it’s an easy one to mess up).
CraigK, similarly:
I predict the highest number of wrongly spelled entries ever.
Wasn’t too bad…
Same topic, LukeTheRunner:
I had to go to the HELP ZONE (Google) for the correct spelling.
Stribbs says:
This Manhattanite is out of town this weekend, and super sad to miss it!
You missed an incredible final round, where Al Sanders claimed his first major tournament win over fellow finalists Trip Payne and Francis Heaney. See Al feeling the love from the crowd here.
Tilly and Dave write:
We’ll be in the pairs division!
As you might guess, the greatest aspect of the tournament for me is meeting so many MGWCC solvers. Shaking hands with Tilly and Dave was especially memorable this year since I’d written a crossword for their wedding earlier this summer (commissioned by their friend, MGWCC regular Steve Smith).
Bob J suggests:
Perhaps the next tournament can be held at the Lincoln Park Zoo…
And finally, OSExpert proclaims:
I was there!
So was I! And I hope to see many more of you there next year.
This week’s winner, whose name was chosen randomly from the 532 correct entries received, is Lillian Tamburic of Vancouver, B.C. In addition to a MGWCC pen, pencil and notepad set, Lillian will also receive a copy of Doug Peterson’s new book, Easy as ABC Crosswords. Next week’s winner will receive the same.
STEEL YOURSELF:
The 4th Annual Pittsburgh Crossword Tournament is tomorrow! Click here for details. I wrote a meta for it!
THIS WEEK’S INSTRUCTIONS:
This week’s contest answer is any country that could serve as a ninth theme entry in this puzzle (there are multiple correct answers). Submit your answer (one country only, please!) 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 (2,084 members now!) here.
Solve well, and be not led astray by words intended to deceive.