MGWCC #339 — Friday, November 28th, 2014 — “All Around Town”

LAST WEEK’S RESULTS:

So simple, but only once you saw it. We were looking for a part of the human body, and the six theme entries each ended in one:

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17-A [Where to stab Dracula] = IN THE HEART

21-A [Both of my cats have them] = GREEN EYES

29-A [Vigilant] = ON ONE’S TOES

46-A [Grubby kid’s feature] = DIRTY NAILS

53-A [Food often braised] = SHORT RIBS

62-A [One way to be armed] = TO THE TEETH

What body part do these point to? You may have noticed that only the first body part, the heart, is singular, while the other five are plural. That’s because your standard-issue adult human gets:

1 heart
2 eyes
10 toes
20 nails
24 ribs
32 teeth

The six squares in the grid with those numbers spell out TONGUE, making that body part our meta answer.

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Eleven solvers submitted VERTEBRAE, continuing the pattern of 1-2-10-20-24-32 body parts. I wasn’t sure whether to accept this: one on hand it’s not as elegant as the TONGUE solution; but on the other hand, 33 is right after 32, so there’s no doubt that it’s the next body part in line.

I kicked it over to my three-person adjudication panel, who, for the first time ever, delivered me a 1.5-1.5 tie. Rather than convene a super-panel to break the tie, I’m going to go ahead and accept VERTEBRAE as a correct alternate answer.

Erin (a physician) solved it right away:

I’d have to ritually remove my intestines if I didn’t get an anatomy meta.

Amy Reynaldo (an editor of medical texts) also nailed it:

Got this meta so fast. It was on the tip of my grid.

And did Tyler Hinman get the meta? Read on:

This week’s winner, whose name was chosen randomly from the 174 correct entries received, is David Stein of Silver Spring, Md. In addition to a MGWCC pen, pencil and notepad set, David will also receive a copy of Patrick Blindauer’s forthcoming Outer Space Puzzlefest. Next week’s winner will receive the same.

THIS WEEK’S INSTRUCTIONS:

This week’s contest answer is the two grid entries that can combine to make an excellent fifth theme entry. 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 (2,334 members now!) here. Or you download the .puz file (you may have to right-click the link and save to your Downloads folder).

mgwcc339

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

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