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Title: “She Takes the Opening Set”
Prompt: This week’s contest answer is a many-times winner of the U.S. Open tennis tournament.
Answer: MARTINA NAVRATILOVA
Correct entries: 655

Six theme entries last week, starred since two of them were only 8 letters long:

17-A: [*Two-color dessert] = MARBLE CAKE. I was unaware of this many-times US Open champ’s existence, but it doesn’t explain the other five entries so I couldn’t count it as correct for the four solvers who submitted it.

21-A: [*Elton John song with the line “You’ll marry a music man”] = TINY DANCER

35-A: [*Dijon Bee and Joe Biden, for example] = ANAGRAMS

43-A: [*French for “really”] = VRAIMENT

57-A: [*Carnival ride that can make you nauseous] = TILT-A-WHIRL

66-A: [*West Wing workspace] = OVAL OFFICE

With a nudge from the title, Czech out those first three letters of each theme entry: they spell out many-times U.S. Open champ MARTINA NAVRATILOVA. I read her autobiography long ago, which, in addition to the tennis stuff, was also an interesting portrait of growing up behind the Iron Curtain in Czechoslovakia.

https://youtu.be/Zp2hwgPHkAc?t=391

THIS WEEK’S INSTRUCTIONS:

This week’s contest answer is an eight-letter word.