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: “Now You Sea It, Now You Don’t”
Prompt: This week’s contest answer, which is 13 letters long (count carefully!), is something I hope you have with this puzzle.
Answer: A WHALE OF A TIME
Correct entries: 432

Where to start on this one? Just one overt hint, which for some reason was completely overlooked by a non-trivial number of solvers: 85-A was [Ghost ___ (the Mary Celeste, the Flying Dutchman, the Black Pearl…or any of 13 herein)]. Spooky!! Let’s scan the horizon looking for them…

Longest entries are APPRENTICE, ACQUAINTANCE, ENTREPRENEUR, and TO DO IS TO BE. Well, three of those four can take a relevant suffix: apprenticeship, acquaintanceship, and entrepreneurship. That’s probably not a coincidence, so let’s assume those are 3 of the 13 and seek out the other ten. Spyglasses out!

There they are! WORKMAN, HARD, LEADER, OWNER, FLAG, AUTHOR, TWIN, INTERN, MEMBER, EDITOR. Read them in clue number order and they spell A WHALE OF A TIME, which I certainly hope you had. The reason for the “(count carefully!)” warning in the title was so nobody overlooked the first A in ACQUAINTANCE.

Really wanted all 13 of these to not be actual ships, adding to their ghost-like qualities (they’re both missing from the grid *and* not really ships). But there was a lot of theme pressure on the fill and I eventually had to cave and allow FLAGship in there, as opposed to the FELLOW or FRIEND I was aiming for. But at least “flagship” has a strong non-literal meaning as well, so I could try to claim total victory on that front, but probably won’t.

Gwinns shouts:

I’M THE KING OF THE WORLLLLLLLD!!!!

Laurabrarian commands:

sink that Pequod!

DIS wonders:

Is this an attempt to win an Orca?

Jed says:

AHAB would approve.

You people don’t miss a trick!

And finally, jefe with a leftover DAD JOKE from last week:

What did the ocean say to the whale? Nothing; it just waved.

SPONTANEOUS 3-MONTH SUBSCRIPTION GIVEAWAY WENT GREAT!

Something very cool happened here last week: a MGWCC backer (who wishes to remain anonymous) told me to offer ten free 3-month subscriptions to prospective meta-fans, which he would pay for. That was awful nice, I thought, and posted to all of my Patreon people to let me know if they knew of a solver they think would be a likely convert to meta-madness.

The next 120 minutes were…awesome. Those ten were claimed in the first 18 minutes…but then another anonymous MGWCC fan said he’d like to sponsor another 10 three-month subscriptions…which were then claimed in another 20 minutes or so…and then another angel supporter stepped in to sponsor 10 more…and so on for the next two hours…

End result: 55(!) three-month subscriptions generously sponsored by six backers, all of whom have chosen to retain their anonymity. Huge thanks to them, and also to the dozens of you who recommended family and friends who you suspect might want to become meta-fans.

Looks like it’s working! JAlli23 writes:

My daughter C. was excited to see her trial subscription and we were able to work on this great puzzle together. Thanks again!

On behalf of the sponsors, you’re welcome!

DAILY BEAST MINI-CROSSWORDS:

Reminder that 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, intro to them is here.

I’m also writing a short recap of the week’s highlights there starting on Sunday, so I’ll link to that here next week. Mostly riffing of tweets that solvers write to the crossword’s hashtag, #beastxword. I wrote the first one yesterday, and it’s about a 7.5 on the funny scale. Link when I get it.

PATREON UPDATE:

We’re up to 957 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 is a 68-Across lyric that sounds like it’s about solving meta-crosswords.

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