LAST WEEK’S RESULTS:
A different kind of “Scavenger Hunt” last week; instead of hunting like scavengers, you had to hunt for scavengers. They were hiding in each theme entry, where a noted scav could replace the last word to form a familiar phrase:
17-A EATING RAOUL becomes eating crow.
23-A THE DAY OF THE DEAD becomes the classic 1970s novel/film “The Day of the Jackal.”
34-A CULTURE CLUB becomes culture vulture.
43-A LAUGHING DISEASE becomes laughing hyena.
50-A ROCKY BALBOA becomes Rocky Raccoon, from the White Album.
Now what? Each clue came with parenthetical instructions. Matching our scavengers to those, we solve the meta:
CROW — (take 2 of what you find)
JACKAL — (take 2 or 5 of what you find)
VULTURE — (take 1 of what you find)
HYENA — (take 3 of what you find)
RACCOON — (take 7 of what you find)
Taking the letters indicated from each, we reach our ominous sign: a RAVEN.
bschoner writes:
Nevermore will I say I’ve been unable to solve a Week 4 puzzle!
This week’s winner, whose name was chosen randomly from the 124 correct entries received, is John L. Wilson of Shoreview, Minn. In addition to a MGWCC pen, pencil and notepad set, John will also receive a one-year subscription to Peter Gordon’s new Kickstarter campaign, Fireball Fortnightly News Crosswords.
MONTHLY PRIZES:
Oops, I blanked on awarding monthly prizes again. Can’t anyone send me a reminder??
We’ll do them next week, and, for delay atonement, I’ll send out a dozen prizes instead of the usual 10.
THIS WEEK’S INSTRUCTIONS:
What kind of sea creature occupies the center of this crossword grid? 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 (2,246 members now!) here. Or you can download the .puz file (you may have to right-click the link and save to your Downloads folder).
Solve well, and be not led astray by words intended to deceive.