MGWCC #624 — Friday, May 15th, 2020 — “Now You Sea It, Now You Don’t”

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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: “Questionable Humor”
Prompt: This week’s contest answer is a two-word phrase.
Answer: DAD JOKE

NO PUN INTENDED read the longest entry in last week’s grid, clued extra-hintily as [My message to you, regarding seven clues in this puzzle]. Well, question marks are often used to indicate puns in crossword clues, and we’ve got “Questionable” in the title, and — well, wouldja look at that! Exactly seven of this puzzle’s clues end in a question mark. Let’s take a look:

20-A: [Queen’s main man?] = MERCURY, as in Freddie.
58-A: [Lose a few pounds?] = SHOP, if you’re in the U.K.
60-A: [Wind-up toy?] = KITE, with the short “i” on “Wind” there.
64-A: [Bank convenience?] = PIER, as in the bank of a river.
36-A: [Patient person?] = NURSE
43-A: [Keys on a piano?] = ALICIA
49-A: [The capital of Norway?] = KRONE, their national currency.

That last one broke it open for many solvers who said — wait, didn’t I just fill OSLO in this grid? And there it is at 31-A. And there’s the trick: de-punnify those clues, since NO PUN was INTENDED, and they answer a different entry in the grid:

[Queen’s main man] = KING
[Lose a few pounds] = DIET
[Wind-up toy] = DOLL
[Bank convenience] = ATM
[Patient person] = JOB
[Keys on a piano] = EBONIES
[The capital of Norway] = OSLO

Take the first letter of those in grid order (see grid above right) and you get a so-not-funny-it’s-sometimes-a-little-funny DAD JOKE.

Matthew G. says:

My wife likes to say the main reason I had kids was so I could make dad jokes. To which I say, nothing could be father from the truth.

I’ll stop there. You all sent some really bad ones in.

Alright, fine — we’ll do three more:

bodhipepper:

I just read a book about the history of glue. I couldn’t put it down.

Thurman8er:

I couldn’t figure out why the baseball kept getting bigger. Then it hit me.

And finally, Laura M:

In honor of my dad, who is studying physics in his retirement: Don’t trust atoms, they make up everything!

DAILY BEAST MINI-CROSSWORDS:

Hey! I’m writing a 10×10 mini-themed crossword five times a week for the Daily Beast now! Fun. They run Mon-Tue-Wed-Thu-Sun. Puzzles are here, my reasonably amusing intro to them is here.

CLEARLY A CROSSWORD!

#notacrossword? #itisnow:

I got zinged by the #notacrossword guy on Twitter for the design on my notepads not technically following crossword rules (one- and two-letter words, etc.):

But a friend saw the tweet and took care of the situation! Good to have friends who are great at grids:

PATREON UPDATE:

We’re up to 950 solvers who’ve made the jump to Patreon! Join them here. Reminder that all refunds for January, February, March, and April are now done. If you have months left on your subscription and haven’t received a refund for any of those months, please e-mail me at crosswordcontest@gmail.com and I’ll take care of it.

Note that May and June refunds will be given during the first two weeks in June. So if you see a charge from me for May and/or June and still have time left on your subscription, don’t worry — you’ll be refunded then.

THIS WEEK’S INSTRUCTIONS:

This week’s contest answer, which is 13 letters long (count carefully!), is something I hope you have with this puzzle.

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

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