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:

We were looking for a 5-letter capitalized word, and our title was “Lost in Translation.” Did that give too much away for a Week 4? Maybe…

Our five theme entries were:

18-A [Creole breakfast dish] = EGGS SARDOU
24-A [Activity] = THING TO DO
38-A [Many movies revolve around them] = ROAD TRIPS
54-A [Second-greatest TV program of all time, per TV Guide] = I LOVE LUCY
60-A [“I hate saying this, but…”] = TO BE HONEST

Successful solvers noticed that the beginning of each of these translated to Latin as a common crossword entry:

EGGS = OVA
THING = RES
ROAD = ITER
I LOVE = AMO
TO BE = ESSE

And each of those can be found in a grid entry, minus one letter:

OVA = OVAL
RES = ARES
ITER = TITER
AMO = AMOI
ESSE = ESSEN

These added letters spell out contest answer LATIN, found by 239 solvers.

Did the title give too much away? My consigliere and I debated the one I wound up using against the tougher “What’s Another Word for…?”, but in the end I figured a) puzzles 3 and 4 from January were tougher than intended, so ease up a little, especially since it’s early in the year b) it’s Share the Love Month, so be nice, c) there’s a Week 5 coming up in March. So that’s how that happened.

Katie Miller writes:

Looking up Eggs Sardou, I found that it was invented by THE Antoine at Antoine’s for a visit by dramatist Victorien Sardou. Then I read about Sardou, who was famous for the “well-made play”, thought by some to be formulaic. One of the critics was George Bernard Shaw, who invented the dismissive term “Sardoodledom” to describe his plays. Sardoodledom is one of my favorite moments in Spelling Bee history.

I especially like the question at 1:56.

This week’s three winners, whose names were chosen at random from among the 239 correct entries received, are:

Each will receive a MGWCC pen, pencil, and notepad set, plus a 1-year subscription to Matt Gaffney’s Daily Crossword.

SHARE THE LOVE MONTH WINNERS COMING NEXT WEEK:

Logistical error on my part (forgot to ask webmaster Dave to reconfigure the prizewinner-choosing mechanism for STL month’s unique specs) so I will announce those lucky 24 next week.

THIS WEEK’S INSTRUCTIONS:

This week’s contest answer is something on my schedule for today.

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