IMPORTANT NOTE: As of February 2020 MGWCC is available only to subscribers at my Patreon page. A subscription costs $3/month.
LAST WEEK’S RESULTS:
Title: “A Quiet Place”
Instructions: This week’s contest answer is 14 letters long.
Answer: SELF-QUARANTINE
Number of correct entries: 275
Rather disappointing puzzle for me; I was excited about it upon publication, but a too-large number of solvers didn’t get a loud enough click at the end. The number of correct entries (275) was pretty much perfect for a Week 3 of 4, but some of those weren’t as sure as they should’ve been, and a number of others found the idea but struggled with finding the answer. The meta path should be clearer than that, needless to say, so let’s take a look.
Three theme entries spelled out the idea at 20-A, 38-A, and 54-A, clued as Parts 1, 2, and 3 of the titular “quiet place”: A NOOK INTO / WHICH YOU AND YOUR / GANG CAN GO. Mysterious!
The last letter of Part 3, that O, is the door to the nook in question: astute solvers noticed that that circumscribed lower-right corner is composed entirely of the letters E, F, L, and S. What’s more, those four letters appear nowhere else in the grid. So you might say those letters, which anagram to “self,” are in SELF-QUARANTINE, which was our contest answer. Six solvers submitted SELF-DISTANCING, one SOCIAL DISTANCE, and one SELF-SEPARATION, which I deemed as being close enough and marked as correct.
Some solvers also found the language in the three theme entries confusing. Awkward to convey things accurately without using S, E, L, or F, and I wanted the phrase to acknowledge that one can self-quarantine either solo or with family/roommates/et al.; hence the “gang” part. I had wanted “fam” at first since it covers relatives and friends both, but then there’s that pesky F. Anecdotally, I also don’t think many solvers noticed the O in “GO” marking the entrance to the nook, so that little touch doesn’t look like it amounted to much.
Well, I feel a little better about it after typing this out and giving it another look. The vast majority of solvers who got it seemed to get it without any/much doubt. Oh well. Still probably won’t put it in the Greatest Hits volume. One suggestion from a tester was to have the prompt ask for “a 14-letter word containing a Q.” That might’ve been the way to go to make the path a little clearer.
Tom Tabanao writes:
Hello from California. Stay safe!
As a number of other puzzle writers have, Tom wrote a crossword about our current crisis. Solve it here as a PDF or here in Across Lite.
UPDATE ON VARIOUS THINGS:
1) We’re up to 877 solvers who’ve made the switch over to Patreon! Join them at the link. Thanks to everyone who’s made the jump so far; If you have any trouble with it, please e-mail me at crosswordcontest@gmail.com or via Patreon messaging.
2) Almost all of January and February’s refunds are done for those who have months left on their pre-Patreon subscriptions. Almost there!
3) I’ve had to delay Patreon swag and 2019 prizes until this crisis has passed. Sit tight and I’ll have them out to you as soon as I can when all this is done.
THIS WEEK’S INSTRUCTIONS:
This week’s contest answer is a famous athlete.
Solve well, and be not led astray by words intended to deceive.