LAST WEEK’S RESULTS:
What foreign language did 296 solvers locate in last week’s grid? The theme entries (starred for clarity since the middle 7-letter entry was theme as well) were:
17-A [Sentry’s (rather naive) question*] = FRIEND OR FOE
11-D [Hardly a thoroughfare*] = SIDE STREET
29-D [River stuff*] = SWEET WATER. This is a synonym for “fresh water” as opposed to brackish or saline.
61-A [Bananarama hit used in “The Karate Kid”*] = CRUEL SUMMER
39-A [Famous African boy*] = KING TUT. Born in Arizona, moved to Babylonia.
What’s going on here? One word in each theme entry is, when translated, a crossword-familiar French word — and look here, each of those words crosses its English translation in the grid:
AMI crosses FRIEND
RUE crosses STREET
EAU crosses WATER
ETE crosses SUMMER
ROI crosses KING
Which makes FRENCH our meta answer. Solution grid at right is stolen from MGWCC web guru Dave Sullivan, who guest-blogged MGWCC at Crossword Fiend last week since Joon Pahk is in Brazil for some sporting event.
MJMA writes:
Very intresting.
And similarly, ember:
Thank you for being merciful in Week 3.
This week’s winner, whose name was chosen randomly from the 296 correct entries received, is Barbara Hartwell of Framingham, Mass. In addition to a MGWCC pen, pencil and notepad set, Barbara will also receive a one-year subscription to Peter Gordon’s new Kickstarter campaign, Fireball Newsflash Crosswords. Only two days left on it and it’s just a few hundred bucks from getting funded, so pitch in if you can!
THIS WEEK’S INSTRUCTIONS:
This week’s contest answer is an appropriate four-letter piece of crosswordese. 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 (2,270 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.