Title: Listen Till the End
Prompt: This week’s contest answer is a 10-letter word I hope you’ve heard of.
Answer: AUDIOPHILE
Correct entries: 155

Four theme-looking entries last week, which were:

17-A: [Noted strait (watch the pronunciation on this one)] = GIBRALTAR. So that’s a strange parenthetical, since the pronunciation of “Gibraltar” is pretty straightforward.

30-A: [“Do the Right Thing” co-star] = OSSIE DAVIS

47-A: [Texas city] = SAN ANTONIO. To my amusement, a number of solvers described this clue as suspicious (due to its vagueness). You know you’re a meta veteran when you (correctly) find [Texas city] to be a suspicious clue for SAN ANTONIO.

64-A: [Regular soldiers, as opposed to officers] = THE TROOPS

So, as meta solvers often ask themselves, “Now what?” Scanning the grid often helps, but the big first clue here was elsewhere: 1) we’ve got “Listen Till the End” as the title, plus 2) “…I hope you’ve heard of” in the prompt, so we’re thinking about sound. A look at the grid shows that we’ve got eight clues ending with a comma and the word “say.” That’s a common crossword clue formation, and two or three wouldn’t raise suspicion in a puzzle of this size. But with eight, and with the title and prompt both nudging you to sound, then it’s worth a look. They are:

6-A: [Mini or Pro, say] = MAC
20-A: [Queen or drone, say] = BEE
50-A: [Macpherson or King, say] = ELLE
51-A: [Pour or sprinkle, say] = RAIN
67-A: [Ramada or Clarion, say] = INN
11-D: [Flour and lard, say] = ROUX
54-D: [Hail Mary or screen, say] = PASS
63-D: [Jennings or Watanabe, say] = KEN

All one-syllable words, which suggests we might be onto something. Now what? Well there are eight of them, and we have four theme entries, so that suggests using two of them for each themer. Does that lead anywhere?

Aha! ROUX + BEE Is “Ruby,” who was not only 36-Across’s real-life wife but also his co-star in “Do the Right Thing.” Full name Ruby Dee of course. So we’re taking two of the sounds extracted from the “say” clue answers and adding a third to complete an alternate answer to the theme entries. Fits in with the title “Listen Till the End,” but do the others work? Of course they do! They are, in grid order of theme entry:

MAC + INN + (AW sound) = straits of Mackinac, but pronounced “Mack-in-aw,” hence the cryptic parenthetical in the clue. Those are the straits separating the Upper and Lower Peninsulas of Michigan.

ROUX + BEE + (DEE sound) = Ruby Dee

ELLE + PASS + (OH sound) = El Paso, another [Texas city]

RAIN + KEN + (FILE sound) = rank and file, a.k.a. “the troops”

Take those extracted four sounds and you get contest answer AUDIOPHILE, found by 155 solvers.

A number of solvers mentioned not liking the last one, stating that RANG would have sounded more close to “rank and file” than RAIN. I went back and forth on RANG vs RAIN when writing the puzzle, saying both aloud many times, and couldn’t find a reason to choose one over the other. But sorry if that gave you pause (although I don’t think anyone got that far without submitting the correct entry, because it just had to be right since you had RAIN and KEN and you knew it had to be synonymous with the clue, plus it had to be a five-letter sound that made an appropriate word when attached to “audio-“).

2019 MGWCC PRIZES:

Here it is, October, and I’m finally able to announce the prizewinners for last year. Hey, that’s 2020 for you.

We have six categories: Gold, Silver, and Bronze winners in the Solo and Group solve categories. Solo means you solved every puzzle without help, and Group is everyone else. Anyone eligible for a prize in both categories received the Solo prize; so if you got all 52 metas correct last year, say, but had help on 2 of them, you will receive the Silver Solo prize instead of the Gold Group prize. This may sound odd, but the Solo prizes are better because, while Group solving metas is still not easy, Solo solving for the whole year at medal level is truly a remarkable achievement. So congrats in advance to our six categories of champion, and here they are:

GOLD MEDAL, SOLO:

Jeffrey Harris — Nashville, Tenn.

Paul Melamud — Milford, N.J.

Yup, just two winners! Congratulations to Jeffrey and Paul. An incredible achievement to go 52/52 with no hints of any kind, all year. I haven’t ordered prizes yet (doing that this weekend and announcing them next week) but I’m thinking a 2021 Porsche or something for these two. Bravo.

SILVER MEDAL, SOLO:

Travis Hime — New York City, N.Y.

Brent Holman — San Francisco, Calif.

Jeremiahs Johnson — Lafayette, Calif.

Louis Lana — New York City, N.Y.

Peter Washington — Chico, Calif.

Yup, just five solvers got 50 or 51 of last year’s puzzles without any help. You can tell by the numbers how difficult that was to pull off. 2021 Jeep Wrangler for each of these five. No more cars after this, though.

BRONZE MEDAL, SOLO:

A.M.

D.B.

Rich Bragg — Los Altos, Calif.

Peter Gordon — Great Neck, N.Y.

Tyler Hinman — San Francisco, Calif.

Jeremy Horwitz — San Francisco, Calif.

Jonathan McCue — Seattle, Wash.

Brett Rose — Chicago, Ill.

Dan Seidman — Watertown, Mass.

Jason Taniguchi — Toronto, Ont.

Scott Weiss — Walkersville, Md.

Maggie Wittlin — New York City, N.Y.

Congratulations to our dozen Bronze Solo medalists, who got 48 or 49 of last year’s 52 metas with no outside help.

And congrats again to our 19 Solo Medalists for 2019. Amazing achievements all around!

And now for our Group medalists, who solved 52 (for gold), 50 or 51 (for silver), or 48 or 49 (for bronze) with help on some or all of 2019’s puzzles:

GOLD MEDAL, GROUP:

Alan Arbizu — Foster City, Calif.

Evan Birnholz — Drexel Hill, Penna.

Matt Breen — Madison, Wisc.

Eric Conrad — Peaks Island, Me.

Jared Dashoff — Alexandria, Va.

Zen Dexter — Kellyville, N.S.W, Australia

Adam Doctoroff — Brookline, Mass.

Meg Duvall — St. Petersburg, Fla.

Gideon Fostick — Givat Shmuel, Israel

Justin Graham — Oakland, Calif.

Summer Herrick — Seattle, Wash.

Kathy Johnescu — Alameda, Calif.

Bill Katz — San Rafael, Calif.

Andy Keller — Apple Valley, Minn.

Jeremy Koenig — Washington, D.C.

Jesse Lansner — Rochester, N.Y.

Craig Mazin — La Canada, Calif.

Pat Miga — Southlake, Tex.

Rich Pardoe — Houston, Tex.

Tom Tabanao — San Jose, Calif.

Beth Tyrpin — Quincy, Ill.

Cindy Weatherman — Matthews, N. Car.

Cynthia Wong

And now for our Silver Group Medalists, who got 50 or 51 of last year’s metas correct:

SILVER MEDAL, GROUP:

Peter Abide — Biloxi, Miss.

Megan Amram — Los Angeles, Calif.

Deepak Bal — Verona, N.J.

Todd Dashoff — Philadelphia, Penna.

Yossi Fendel — Berkeley, Calif.

Peter Gwinn — Chicago, Ill.

Ben Jones — Yorktown Heights, N.Y.

Brian Kell — Munich, Germany

Heather Kennedy — Austin, Tex.

Nathaniel Lee — Pleasanton, Calif.

Alex Sisti — Whitesboro, N.Y.

David Stein — Takoma Park, Md.

Coreen Steinbach — Pompey, N.Y.

Doug Zongker — Seattle, Wash.

BRONZE MEDAL GROUP:

Jon Forsythe — Chicago, Ill.

Ray Hunley — Manassas, Va.

Chris Kochmanski — Saline, Mich.

Julian Lim — Singapore, Singapore

Tina Lippman — Newburgh, Ind.

Scout Mitchell — Bellingham, Wash.

Tom M. — Cincinnati, O.

Marcia Rose — Mequon, Wisc.

Jesse Simons — Somerville, Mass.

Congrats to all of our group medalists! And thanks to everyone for playing in 2019, medalist or not. These are incredibly fun for me to write and it’s gratifying how the series has continued to grow over the years. If you keep solving these, I’ll keep writing 356 more of them. Deal?

THIS WEEK’S INSTRUCTIONS:

This week’s contest answer is a beverage.