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: “Job Search”
Instructions: This week’s contest answer is a famous movie from the 1970s.
Answer: TAXI DRIVER
Sort of a companion piece to MGWCC #554, where instead of HACK and TAXI DRIVER being grid entries, they were extracted letters and the meta solution (and that didn’t help you until you already had the idea). Just about the right # of correct entries for a Week 3 or 4 and lots of people solved it without incident, but a bunch of smallish issues added up to not everyone loving it.
We had four theme entries, and their clues had a parenthetical enumerations:
17-A [Good conductor (8)] = COPPER WIRE
29-A [Packaging material (6)] = SHRINK WRAP
45-A [Father of Wyoming’s sole member of the U.S. House of Representatives (7)] = DICK CHENEY
59-A [AutoZone buy (5)] = TAR REMOVER
First insight: the first word of each of these is slang for a kind of profession. COPPER is a police officer, SHRINK is a psychologist, DICK is a detective, and TAR is a sailor.
Second insight, much tougher: there is a famous member of each of these professions hidden in the grid as an entry + one letter. The parenthetical enumerations are the length of the entry you’re looking for. So:
Lennie BRISCOE is a police officer (on “Law & Order”), hidden at 10-D (BRIOCHES minus H)
Sigmund FREUD was a psychologist, hidden at 3-D (AUFDER minus A)
Hercule POIROT is a detective, hidden at 35-A (PORTICO minus C)
Captain NEMO was a sailor, hidden at 14-A (KOMEN minus K)
Take those in order and you’ve got HACK, which as you know now if you didn’t two weeks ago is a slang term for contest answer TAXI DRIVER.
Clear enough for many, but there are a few potential thorns:
*** Lenny Briscoe is the most famous cop from arguably the most famous cop show of all time, but he’s not a title character like Kojak or Columbo, so if you don’t know the show he was tough. I allowed for that by only putting two 8-letter entries in the grid, so you had a strong nudge on where to look, but still was tough for some. Also, the actor’s son writes crosswords!
*** NEMO was a bit tough to find since there are many 5-letter words in the grid and many sailors. Again I tried to give a nudge here, since once you’ve got HAC? you can see that you’re looking for a K, and the one in KOMEN is the only K in the grid in a 5-letter word so it had to be there. But still, a backsolve.
*** “Detective” could have been taken to meen Briscoe, since “detective” is actually his title on the show. But he’s also a cop, and once you had POIROT you knew that he had to be the detective in question. But again, this clouds the logic of things up a bit.
So a pretty good meta with a few minor issues weighing it down.
This week’s winner, whose name was chosen at random from the 152 correct entries received, is Joseph Marino of Carmichael, California.. In addition to a MGWCC pen, pencil, and notepad set, Joseph will also receive a signed copy of my book Fast & Fun Mini Crosswords.
2018 YEARLY PRIZES:
OK, here we go! Congratulations to our 2018 MGWCC yearly prize winners:
BRONZE MEDALISTS:
The following 25 solvers submitted the correct answer to 48 or 49 of the 52 metas last year, making them our 2018 Bronze Medalists:
Dan Bowden — Sydney, Australia
Ethan Budin — Deerfield, Ill.
Bunella — Lebanon, Penna.
Jared Dashoff — Washington, D.C.
Todd Dashoff — Philadelphia, Penna.
Joshua Davey — Eugene, Ore.
Justin Graham — Oakland, Calif.
Katie Hamill — Arlington, Mass.
George Herz — Sharon, Mass.
Bob Johnson — Carmel, Ind.
Heather Kennedy — Austin, Tex.
Louis Lana — New York City, N.Y.
Julian Lim — Singapore, Singapore
Craig Mazin — La Canada, Calif.
Patricia Miga — Colleyville, Tex.
Rich Pardoe — Houston, Tex.
Playethic — Indianapolis, Ind.
Eric Prestemon — Woodside, Calif.
Brett Rose — Chicago, Ill.
Marcia Rose — Milwaukee, Wisc.
Jason Shapiro — New York City, N.Y.
Alex Sisti — Whitesboro, N.Y.
David Stein — Takoma Park, Md.
Coreen Steinbach — Pompey, N.Y.
Jason Taniguchi — Toronto, Ont.
Seth Tribble — New York City, N.Y.
SILVER MEDALISTS:
The following 15 solvers submitted the correct answer to 50 or 51 of the 52 metas last year, making them our 2018 Silver Medalists:
Alan Arbizu — Foster City, Calif.
Steve Blais — Windsor, Ont.
Joe Fendel — Berkeley, Calif.
Neville Fogarty — Newport News, Va.
Jon Forsythe — Chicago, Ill.
Peter Gwinn — Chicago, Ill.
Travis Hime — New York City, N.Y.
Brian Kell — Pittsburgh, Penna.
Jeremy Koenig — Washington, D.C.
Adam Levine — Durham, N.C.
Tina Lippman — Newburgh, Ind.
Jeff Louie — Providence, R.I.
Alexander Miller — Grand Rapids, Mich.
Erich Peterson — Kentwood, Mich.
Jesse Simons — Somerville, Mass.
GOLD MEDALISTS:
The following 39 solvers submitted the correct answer to all 52 of the 52 metas last year, making them our 2019 Gold Medalists:
Evan Birnholz — Drexel Hill, Pa.
Rich Bragg — Los Altos, Calif.
Laura Braunstein — Lebanon, N.H.
Matt Breen — Madison, Wisc.
Nate Cardin — Studio City, Calif.
Eric Conrad — Peaks Island, Me.
Zen Dexter — Sydney, Australia
Adam Doctoroff — Brookline, Mass.
Meg Duvall — St. Petersburg, Fla.
Gideon Fostick — Givat Shmuel, Israel
Steve Gadd — Falls Church, Va.
Toby Golick — New York City, N.Y.
Peter Gordon — Great Neck, N.Y.
Jeffrey Harris — Nashville, Tenn.
Summer Herrick — Seattle, Wash.
Brent Holman — San Francisco, Calif.
Jeremy Horwitz — San Francisco, Calif.
Dave Hunley — Wakefield, R.I.
Ray Hunley — Manassas, Va.
Ben Jones — Yorktown Heights, N.Y.
Bill Katz — San Rafael, Calif.
Andy Keller — Apple Valley, Minn.
Barbara Koehler — Warrenton, Va.
Andy Kravis — Brooklyn, N.Y.
Jesse Lansner — Rochester, N.Y.
Jonathan McCue — Seattle, Wash.
Paul Melamud — Milford, N.J.
Scout Mitchell — Bellingham, Wash.
Rich Novo — Andover, Mass.
Al Sanders — Loveland, Colo.
Tom Tabanao — San Jose, Calif.
Peter Washington — Chico, Calif.
Cindy Weatherman — Matthews, N.C.
Maggie Wittlin — Lincoln, Neb.
C.W. — Hong Kong
Doug Zongker — Mountain View, Calif.
Congratulations to all our 2018 winners! And good luck to everyone this year — next week I’ll have the prize categories and criteria for 2019 posted.
2019-2020 FIREBALL NEWSFLASH KICKSTARTER:
Just 32 hours to go on Peter Gordon‘s 2019-20 Fireball Newsflash Kickstarter. Twenty current events crosswords by the master himself, delivered via e-mail. I occasionally test-solve these for Peter and they’re a blast.
MULLER MUSIC META:
Season 8 of Pete Muller‘s outstanding Monthly Music Meta has begun! Episode 1 must be an easy one since 383 people have already gotten it — if you’re not already a fan, try it out. I’ve blogged the first seven seasons at Crossword Fiend and am back for this one as well. These are tons of fun and extremely well crafted.
THIS WEEK’S INSTRUCTIONS:
NOTE: Due to my delay in posting, the deadline for this week’s puzzle will be Wednesday, January 30th, at 12:00 PM ET.
You must change one letter in this grid to complete this puzzle’s theme. Which letter is it, and what letter does it change to?
Solve well, and be not led astray by words intended to deceive.