Title: “Four Score”
Prompt: This week’s contest answer is a country in Africa.
Answer: MOZAMBIQUE
Correct entries: 664 overall, of which 641 were solo solves

The Tenth Month puzzles begin! Is this one of those connected suites of crosswords, you may wonder, where you lay all the puzzles out at month’s end and search for the big reveal?

It is not. The puzzles are meant to be enjoyed separately, with only time and the number 10 connecting them.

I took inspiration for this from my recent Zoom talk with the great Pete Muller, where I asked him if he’d ever felt constrained by having all the metas in his magnificent series necessarily music-related. His elegant response was that “the constraint adds to the creativity,” which I liked so much that I wanted to try it out right away with a random constraint. We’ll see how it goes…

In our inaugural puzzle we had four 10-letter entries in a pinwheel:

16-A: [Whimsical patchwork] = CRAZY QUILT
11-D: [Funny and bizarre, as a song] = ZAPPAESQUE. Making its puzzle debut, I think? Anyone seen it before?
30-A: [Largest metropolis in the Philippines] = QUEZON CITY
66-D: [Stress ball’s cousin] = SQUEEZE TOY

And then a Week 1/5 nudge at the central across:

42-A: [Value carried by two certain letters in Scrabble, both of which are seen in this puzzle’s theme entries] = TEN. Those two 10-pointers are Q and Z, which are both found in each of our four theme entries. The African nation that fits the bill here is MOZAMBIQUE, also ten letters long, so a potential theme entry. But as a member of a well-defined set (African nations) its destiny was to be the meta answer (although its supervocality made it a theme entry-ish thing this puzzle).

Mikey G says:

E-Z one…

DIS wonders:

Did I pass the quiz?

MikeM000 writes:

I do hope Zhouqin Burnikel is the first person to solve this week…

Ale M writes:

Extra-fun solve because I just got home from Africa (Rwanda & Tanzania)

mjsandler has lunch plans:

Off to get a celebratory sandwich at Quiznos.

Evan asks:

Wondering if you’ll accept the full French names of République de Zambie or République du Zimbabwe as alternates.

Non!

And finally, Tyler Hinman notes:

Too bad MAP doesn’t really work at 64D or you could read MAPUTO down there.

I’m a geography geek, Hinman! Don’t try to OUTMAP me.

THIS WEEK’S INSTRUCTIONS:

Which entry in this grid is the hidden sixth theme entry?

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