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:
LAST WEEK’S RESULTS:
Title: “Pick Six”
Instructions: This week’s contest answer is a six-letter entry in the grid (you can submit either its clue number or the entry itself).
Answer: GROW BY at 45-Down
One of my favorite metas of the year, if you don’t mind me saying so. DOUBLING CUBES was the only overt theme entry, a nice opening red herring since it makes one want to take cubes like 1, 8, and 27 and double them. But no, it was the backgammon doubling cube itself that was important; its numbers are 2, 4, 8, 16, 32, and 64, and those numbers in the grid spelled out RUBIKS. Aha! RUBIKS + CUBES, so this has to be the right track.
What to do next? The same thing you did on the first step: take information from the six sides of the Rubik’s Cube, as you did with the doubling cube. The information this time is not numbers, but rather colors, which on a standard Rubik’s Cube are Green, Red, Orange, White, Blue, and Yellow, whose first letters spell contest answer GROW BY at 45-D.
I mentioned being able to submit either the entry or the clue number in the instructions so nobody would submit RUBIKS. It’s not a “grid entry” but I figured someone could argue that it’s “in the grid” so I guarded against that by mentioning explicitly that it has a clue number.
Ed writes:
I worked in France in the summer of 1982, and puzzled out Rubik’s cube there. On my trip back to the states, the customs agent (an MIT grad — maybe I shouldn’t have teased him) asked how long it took me to solve it. “About three minutes,” I said. “OK, I’ll mix it up and give you five minutes. If you can’t do it, I’m sending you back to France.”
This week’s winner, whose name was chosen at random from the 260 correct entries received, is B.T. In addition to a MGWCC pen, pencil, and notepad set, B.T. will also receive a 1-year subscription to Matt Gaffney’s Daily Crossword.
A LITTLE EARLY TODAY!
MGWCC #530 was sent out about a half-hour early today. Just a technical glitch, not part of the meta — but hey, it’s a Week 4, so folks can probably use the extra time.
THIS WEEK’S INSTRUCTIONS:
This week’s contest answer is the three-letter entry in the grid that could be an eighth theme entry.
Solve well, and be not led astray by words intended to deceive.