IMPORTANT NOTE: As of February 2020 MGWCC is available only to subscribers at my Patreon site. A subscription costs $3/month. During January 2020 only you can download the puzzles for free on this page (see below under “This Week’s Instructions”).
LAST WEEK’S RESULTS:
Title: “Initial Public Offering”
Instructions: This week’s contest answer is a famous British author.
Answer: ARTHUR CONAN DOYLE
Five famous people formed our theme last week, but something was missing:
17-A: [“A Star Is Born” actor, 2018] = ANDREW CLAY. Except wait, his name is actually “Andrew Dice Clay”…
25-A: [He said “I see dead people”] = HALEY OSMENT. Isn’t it “Haley Joel Osment”?
39-A: [With 41-Across, she played Miss Scarlet in 1985’s “Clue”] = LESLEY/WARREN. “Lesley Ann Warren” in fact. How did anyone not like this movie?
50-A: [Pioneer of the Prairie School of architecture] FRANK (Lloyd) WRIGHT
60-A: [“In Living Color” cast member, 1990-1994] = DAVID (Alan) GRIER.
We’ve got “Initial” in the title, so let’s give each of these three-name people their full initials and see what happens:
ADC = Andrew Dice Clay
HJO = Haley Joel Osment
LAW = Lesley Ann Warren
FLW = Frank Lloyd Wright
DAG = David Alan Grier
Now what? The leap for many was noticing the similarity between HJO and HOJO in the grid. Indeed, each of these trigrams is a letter off from a grid entry.
ADC –> ACDC — extra C
HJO –> HOJO — extra O
LAW –> LAWN — extra N
FLW –> FLAW — extra A
DAG –> DANG — extra N
That spells CONAN, and it’s not tough to think of a famous British writer with that middle name: ARTHUR CONAN DOYLE, found by 451 solvers.
Amusingly, there was a slight flaw in the puzzle that centered on the entry FLAW (!). Note that either Lesley Ann Warren (LAW) or Frank Lloyd Wright (FLW) could add a letter to get FLAW. That’s an artistic imperfection indeed, though it doesn’t ruin the meta since you need LAW to accommodate FLW, so you know that LAW has to then be LAWN. But funny that this flaw was FLAW-centric.
PATREON SWITCHOVER UPDATE:
Weekly Patreon tips and updates for Janaury:
1) We’re up to 593 solvers who’ve made the switch over to Patreon! Join them at the link. Thanks to everyone who’s made the jump so far; still two weeks left to sign up without missing a puzzle. If you have any trouble with it, please e-mail me at crosswordcontest@gmail.com or via Patreon messaging.
2) Remember that you can download today’s puzzle below (under “This Week’s Instructions”) and that next week’s will be downloadable here as well, but that after that you will need to be a Patreon backer to receive MGWCC.
3) Update for those with months/years left on your MGWCC subscription: thanks for your patience on this, and here’s how we’re going to handle it:
If you have time left on your MGWCC subscription, all you need to do is sign up at Patreon (if you haven’t already) and you’re set — you will receive puzzles starting next week via Patreon and not have to pay anything additional until your subscription runs out. A couple of other things about that:
a) You may be charged for one month of Patreon at first, but I will be refunding that during February as I work through each subscriber’s account.
b) I will send you a note (via Patreon message) in February verifying the number of months you have left on your subscription.
That’s it for now! E-mail me at crosswordcontest@gmail.com or via Patreon messaging if you have any questions.
THIS WEEK’S INSTRUCTIONS:
This week’s contest answer is a seven-letter phrase.
Solve well, and be not led astray by words intended to deceive.