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Title: “Can You Find a Better Example?”
Prompt: This week’s contest answer sounds like something you’ll want to do after solving this meta.
Answer: WREST (or REST)
Correct entries: 268

14×17 grid last week, strange but necessary due to an extremely restricted set of theme entries. Which were:

15-A: [Poorly chosen attempt at clarification when spelling something out over the phone (5 letters)] = P AS IN PSALM

Poorly chosen since if you’re trying to emphasize the first letter of a word, then choosing a word where that first letter is silent is…suboptimal. The others are the similarly silly:

24-A: [Poorly chosen attempt at clarification when spelling something out over the phone (5 letters)] = G AS IN GNASH

37-A: [Poorly chosen attempt at clarification when spelling something out over the phone (3 letters) = K AS IN KNOWLEDGE

47-A: [Poorly chosen attempt at clarification when spelling something out over the phone (7 letters)] = W AS IN WRYER. A little suspicious; why is it “wryer” instead of just “wry”? (answer: just for grid symmetry)

62-A: [Poorly chosen attempt at clarification when spelling something out over the phone (4 letters)] = H AS IN HONOR

OK, so mysteries abound: why these five letters? Why these five bad over-the-phone examples? And what do those enumerations in the clues mean?

Well, let’s take a cue from the title and see if we can think of a better example for each phrase. There are many words that begin with a non-silent letter for these, so there must be a restriction on them. And that restriction is that they must be synonyms of the word in the original. So we have:

P AS IN PSALM, but could also be PAEAN
G AS IN GNASH, but could also be GRIND
K AS IN KNOWLEDGE, but could also be KEN
W AS IN WRYER, but could also be WITTIER
H AS IN HONOR, but could also be HAIL — tricky one, since “honor” is a verb there.

Now what? Find an entry that consists of that synonym plus an extra letter:

PAEAN + R = PANERA at 26-A
GRIND + E = DINGER at 46-A
KEN + W = KNEW at 21-A. Stylistic ding here — if I were rating this at Fiend I’d dock .25 for this dupe (KNEW is related to KNOWLEDGE). I saw it while constructing but there was no way around it that I could find, and believe me I looked. I don’t like taking .25 dings if I can avoid it.
WITTIER + S = TWISTIER at 58-Across
HAIL + T = LAHTI at 69-Across

In grid order that spells WREST, which sounds like “rest,” something you’d like to do after solving this meta. I decided beforehand to take both REST and WREST, since it’s not 100% clear no matter how I phrase it which one I’m looking for.

One solver sent in ROOST, which I also accepted, since the letters in theme entry order spell REWST! Amusing.

THIS WEEK’S INSTRUCTIONS:

This week’s contest answer is a many-times winner of the U.S. Open tennis tournament.