Title: “CIRCLE Dances”
Prompt: This week’s contest answer is a five-letter word.
Answer: ORBIT
Correct entries: 149 overall, of which 53 were solo solves

Five circles populated last week’s theme entries, with a curious property: they contained zero, one, two, three, and then finally four letters in them, from top-to-bottom. They were:

16-A: [Taurus, Virgo, or Capricorn] = EART()H SIGN, with nothing in that circle
26-A: [Use two or more names on a discussion board to make it look like your viewpoint is more popular than it really is = SOC(K) PUPPET, with a K in the circle
35-A: [Healthful] = SALUBR(IO)US, with IO in the circle
49-A: [Highly pessimistic talk] = (DOO)M AND GLOOM, with DOO in the circle
60-A: [It comes with a doubling cube] = BACKG(AMMO)N SET, with AMMO in the circle. Fun fact: I enjoy playing backgammon almost as much as chess.

All of these also took their circle’s content on the downs as well — SE()M, BIGS(K)Y, S(IO)N, IN(DOO)R CAT, M(AMMO)TH.

Now what? A subtle pair of hints lay in the puzzle’s title, where the word CIRCLE is in capital letters, emphasizing the letters in the word rather than the word itself. And “Dances” would be a cryptic crossword-style for anagrams, so let’s look at it through that lens:

CIRCLE + no extra letters anagrams to CLERIC
CIRCLE + K anagrams to CLICKER
CIRCLE + IO anagrams to LICORICE
CIRCLE + DOO anagrams to CROCODILE
CIRCLE + AMMO anagrams to COMMERCIAL

How does this help us? Because each of these five answers can also answer a different clue in the grid:

45-D: [Person who has dedicated their life to serving God] = OBLATE, but also CLERIC
12-D: [TV channel changer] = REMOTE, but also CLICKER
9-D: [Chewy type of candy] = BLOW POP, but also LICORICE
13-A: [Animal found in the Nile] = IBIS, but also CROCODILE. Joon wondered why I needed junky SE()M there at the 4-D in his review at Fiend last week. I actually had RHINO and SO()B there at first, but at the eleventh hour (literally — it was 11:45!) I realize that the Nile has RHINOs in it, which would have screwed everything up royally. So I did a quick change and didn’t have time to maximize the quick fix.
39-D: [Play stopper in the NBA or NFL] = TIME-OUT, but also COMMERCIAL.

Take the first letters of those pre-anagram clues and they spell ORBIT, circle-y and fitting for a meta answer.

In one of the greatest solver notes I’ve ever received, Abide writes:

I’m guessing you got this idea while in a Circle K?

That is, in fact, exactly how I got this meta idea. There is a Circle K gas station/convenience store here in Staunton, which looks like this:

For years, every time I drive past it I think “clicker,” as Merl thought “Unkind Donuts” whenever he passed a Dunkin Donuts. Then finally, on the hundredth pass, it finally dawned on me that this could be a meta. Took long enough! They had even circled the extra letter for me…

THIS WEEK’S INSTRUCTIONS:

This week’s contest answer is a modified version of this puzzle’s title.

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