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LAST WEEK’S RESULTS:

Title: “Search Party”
Instructions: This week’s contest answer is an eight-letter name.
Answer: LANCELOT

Such a fine line between stupid and clever, but I’m afraid last week’s puzzle fell on the wrong side of that line for many solvers. This was a surprise for me — I expected it to receive good ratings and comments at Fiend, but it turned out to be something like the 3rd-worst received MGWCC of all time. Some of the comments are a bit painful to read; solvers invest a lot of time and energy into a meta, especially a late-month one, working with the trust that they’ll either get the meta or feel like they should’ve gotten it. If they feel that trust has been misplaced by an inelegant or unfair meta, then they’re understandably irritated (I’ve been on both sides of that so understand the sentiment). So let’s take a look at what happened.

This was a five-step meta, with virtually all of the displeasure directed at the 4th step. My intended solving path was:

Step 1: Solver notices that there are a lot of rhyming clues; 16 to be exact. In fact, all the two-word clues rhyme, and 8 are Acrosses and the other 8 are Downs. They are:

9A [Pipe type]
16A [Blue hue]
25A [Hound sound]
68A [Hot spot]
91A [Great hate]
96A [School tool]
103 [Horses’ courses]
109A [Bay, say]

9D [Stewed food]
13D [“Wings” things]
14D [Don John]
27D [Grape shape]
30D [Funny bunny]
44D [Scanning Manning]
81D [“Scandal” handle]
87D [Dome home]

2) Step 2: Let’s take the first letter of each of those answers. First, the Acrosses:

PVC
AZURE
GRR
OVEN
BILE
ERASER
RACETRACKS
INLET

That’s PAGOBERI, which isn’t much. So let’s look at the Downs:

PRUNES
AIRPLANES
GOTTI
OVAL
BUGS
ELI
RHIMES
IGLOO

Well that’s PAGOBERI again, so that can’t be a coincidence — and we’re looking at PAGO PAGO and BERIBERI.

3) What next? Well beriberi is also called “thiamine deficiency” and Pago Pago is the capital of American Samoa, and there are THIAMINE DEFICIENCY and AMERICAN SAMOA in the grid. So again, this has to be the right path. Now what?

4) Here’s the fateful step. But before we get to that: the original concept of this meta was that I thought it’d be interesting to start with 16 of something in the puzzle, then winnow it down to 8 in the next step, then 4 in the next, then 2, then 1, and that 1 would be the meta answer. That’s what happened here (16 rhyming clues, 8 letters of PAGOBERI, 4 words in AMERICAN SAMOA / THIAMINE DEFICIENCY, 2 entries in LAST DANCE / LAST DOT, 1 final name in LANCELOT). In fact, one of my original title ideas was “16-8-4-2-1” and one of my working titles in the test phrase was “Narrow Your Search.”

Well, those titles didn’t make it to the page, but that idea was still in my head, so here at the “4 stage,” where you have four words (AMERICAN SAMOA THIAMINE DEFICIENCY), it might’ve been helpful to know you were looking for two words now. In my mind I’d already told you, but that 16-8-4-2-1 progression is not possible to see unless it’s pointed out, and none of those hints made it to the page. So this was one factor in the disconnect between constructor and solvers on this step.

Anyway, the idea was: from Pago Pago and beriberi, take AMERICAN SAMOA / THIAMINE DEFICIENCY. Extract their initials ASTD, and note that there are two entries in the grid, which cross one another, that have this string: LAST DANCE and LAST DOT.

5) Remove the ASTD from those and you’re left with LANCELOT, an 8-letter name who is the title “Search Party” due to his search for the Holy Grail.

So returning to Step 4 now: solvers called foul on this primarily because they felt it was too arbitrary. The two main arguments being 1) extracting initials from a series of words is a common first step in a meta, but not a common step mid-meta, and 2) there was no hint that this mechanism was to be used at all.

My reasoning was that there are only a certain number of things you can extract from those four words, and that initials would be one of the first you’d think of; write ASTD on your paper, let your eyes wander around the grid for a moment, and they had to land on those two crossing strings, especially since LAST DOT was such a marginal answer. Plus in a Week 5 you wouldn’t necessarily expect too many nudges; “notice something peculiar” is a common step in metas, so I didn’t think it was really out of place here, though many solvers and commenters disagreed.

Another sticking point I hadn’t anticipated: some solvers noticed the rhyming in Step 1 and the reduplication in Step 2, and figured this would be a running theme throughout the meta. This was not my intention at all; I envisaged the meta as five logical but unrelated steps along the way. Reduplication and rhyming are close but not the same thing, and Step 3 didn’t feature either of those, but I can still see how some might have thought that Step 4 and beyond would have to do with this same idea.

So, what else to say? I felt awful reading some of these comments, since as a meta constructor you hate to lose solvers’ trust in investing their time with your puzzles. Week 5s are by nature tough and are the most likely candidates to step over the line between what is perceived as fair and unfair. As I said I didn’t even realize I was flying this close to the sun on this one; the reactions came as a surprise to me. Even with all the solver feedback it was still tricky for me to pinpoint exactly what the thought processes were (my own and yours) that caused such a disconnect. I of course don’t want solvers to feel as though they’ve been on a wild goose chase so if you were one of those solvers on this puzzle, I owe you a beer at a crossword tournament in the future. Or an extra MGWCC pen next time you win a prize. Or a big hug if you’re a hugger. You’re the wronged party, you choose the prize! Within reason. Moving along now…but yeah, I’m sorry to anyone who felt bamboozled on this one.

This week’s winner, whose name was chose at random from the 78 correct answers, is Heather Kennedy of Austin, Tex. In addition to a MGWCC pen, pencil, and notepad set, Heather will also receive a signed copy of my book Pint-Size Crosswords.

MAY WINNERS:

Congratulations to the following 10 winners, whose names were chosen at random from the 68 solvers who sent in the correct contest answer to all five of May’s challenges (ROBIN WILLIAMS, COBALT, OLIVER!, CHORUS, LANCELOT). Each will receive a MGWCC pen, pencil, and notepad set:

Matt Breen — Madison, Wisc.

Cindy Weatherman — Matthews, N. Car.

Congratulations to all our winners, and to everyone who went 5-for-5 in May.

THIS WEEK’S INSTRUCTIONS:

This week’s contest answer is a well-known breakfast cereal.

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