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LAST WEEK’S RESULTS:
Title: “Back to the Start” by Will Pfadenhauer and Malaika Handa
Prompt: This week’s contest answer is things that often end up where they started.
Answer: DETOURS
Correct entries: 431 overall, of which 366 were solo solves
Off to a nice start, aren’t we? Will and Malaika delivered the goods with a nifty Week 2, and Gridmaster J gave it the solution grid it deserves — check out that graphic above!
No overt theme entries, but if you Magic Eye the grid for a few minutes (i.e., stare at it and let your brain waves flow) you might notice a pattern. Just three long entries (and those only 9 letters, and on the downs) but they don’t seem to have much in common, so maybe that’s not it? But wait, those sevens going across are many and seem to have a common thread…
And there it is: take a look at those seven 7-letter entries:
LIED FOR / FOREMAN / MANTLES / LESOTHO / THOUING / INGRAIN / AINSLIE
That last three letters of each is also the first three letters of the next, with AINSLIE looping back to LIED FOR. Lowlighting them yields the meta answer:
LIED FOR / FOREMAN / MANTLES / LESOTHO / THOUING / INGRAIN / AINSLIE
Those unused central letters spell contest answer DETOURS, which often loop you all over town just to deposit you 10 yards away from your original spot (at least where I live — YMMV, literally).
Ed puts this meta in a category:
TOURS DE FORCE
Jonesy writes:
really elegant, congrats to the two co-constructors!
Joe Ross writes:
Fun! Thank you, Malaika & Will!
Raygirl writes:
Nice! Some great clues too.
MegB points one out:
George Foreman grill clue made me laugh out loud
PhilB:
Wow once I saw it, that was a fantastic click. Really elegant construction!
And finally, Mike W writes:
Brilliant puzzle. The use of [landlocked] Lesotho as the center word provides double meaning for “surrounded letters”.
Agree with all of the above, and a reminder that you can solve more from Malaika here and Will here. Big thanks to both!
GUEST CONSTRUCTOR MONTH 2022, WEEK 3:
My two main testers here at MGWCC are those I have called Consigliere and Supertester, each preferring the cloak of anonymity to the blinding, unrelenting spotlight of MGWCC fame.
But no longer! Today we reveal the identity of Supertester — he’s today’s Guest Meta writer, Yossi Fendel.
Back in 2014, MGWCC #296 ended up being significantly more difficult than I anticipated. A few days later, I got an email from mild-mannered guy offering his assistance with “difficulty calibration” on future puzzles, and from that day forward he’s been known to me by his hero name, Supertester. Over the past eight years, Yossi’s been helping make tweaks to titles, instructions, and other aspects of MGWCC puzzles to help me keep the difficulty estimation in line with the release week. He’s so good at this that I coined the term “Fendelian Adjustment” for these clever doses of fine-tuning, and they’ve improved many of the metas you’ve grappled with over the years.
Yossi was born in Berkeley and still lives there today with his wife Tamar. They have three children (Shoshana, Ari, and Amir). The baby in second photo is Amir, whose Bar Mitzvah is next month; the top pic is what Papa looks like 12 years later (i.e. now). And when he’s not testing meta-crosswords, Yossi works in data analytics for Kaiser Permanente Human Resources.
Yossi has constructed cryptic crosswords, but until today he has never published his own “non-cryptic” crossword puzzle. So I’m thrilled to share his debut — let’s get to it!
THIS WEEK’S INSTRUCTIONS:
This week’s contest answer is the two-word phrase you seek.
Solve well, and be not led astray by words intended to deceive.