IMPORTANT NOTE: As of January 2015 MGWCC is a subscribers-only crossword. The cost is $26 per year, and you can subscribe (or get a free trial month first) here:

http://www.mgwcc.com/

LAST WEEK’S RESULTS:

Simple, but certainly not easy! Solvers were tasked with finding a familiar acronym, and the five grid-spanning (or close to it) entries were:

16-A [Event covered by the Wall Street Journal] = CORPORATE MERGER
19-A [Field that Amazon entered in 2006] = CLOUD COMPUTING
34-A [Honesty and trustworthiness, some might say] = RARE COMMODITIES
48-A [Plans to sell a business, e.g.] = EXIT STRATEGIES
55-A [Arizona National Monument I visited in 2000 (a fact which doesn’t have anything to do with the meta)] = MONTEZUMA CASTLE

Odd that the first four are business-related and the fifth clearly isn’t, but that turned out to be irrelevant. The key here is spotting the five world leaders hiding in the theme entries: Brazil’s Michel TEMER, Russia’s Vladimir PUTIN, India’s Narendra MODI, China’s Jinping XI, and South Africa’s Jacob ZUMA. Those are, in order, the five BRICS countries, making that acronym our contest answer.

ASB says:

I’m not sure how familiar that acronym is.

Well, I thought that some solvers might not be familiar with it, but if you see the leaders you will figure it out, since typing their five names into Google leads to many results for BRICS. The rule there is that it should be very easy to Google if it’s not familiar, and I think this passed the test, since I don’t know of anyone who found the leaders but didn’t find BRICS. And once you find BRICS you know it must be correct, since the five countries are in the correct order in the grid.

Ian Livengood knew it:

That’s all you’ve got for Week 4?!? If you learn one thing in in b-school, it’s the acronym BRICS

bwouns inquires:

Did you support the recall in Brazil just so you could make this puzzle?

Support it? I caused it. The things I do to keep MGWCC subscribers happy.

And finally: I figured most people would break in on PUTIN and/or ZUMA, since XI is only two letters and MODI is well-hidden and TEMER is just not well-known. But Evan bucked the trend:

Damn, that was hard. Thank goodness I’ve been seeing a bunch of articles in my Twitter feed about Michel TEMER, otherwise I don’t think this one would ever have emerged for me.

This week’s winner, whose name was chosen at random from among the 73 correct entries received, is B.K. In addition to a MGWCC pen, pencil, and notepad set, B.K. will also receive a 1-year subscription to Matt Gaffney’s Daily Crossword.

MONTHLY WINNERS:

The following ten winners were chosen at random from among the 64 people who sent in the correct contest answer to each of October’s four puzzles (I SEE, MAX SCHERZER, CHARLES RICHTER, BRICS):

Greg Anderson — Middleton, Wisc.

Marcia Rose — Mequon, Wisc.

Congratulations to our ten winners, and to everyone who went 4-for-4 in October.

THIS WEEK’S INSTRUCTIONS:

This week’s contest answer is the answer to the trivia question herein.

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