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LAST WEEK’S RESULTS:

Title: “My Cup Runneth Over” by Will Nediger
Prompt: This Week’s contest answer is a beverage.
Answer: RUM
Correct entries: 155 overall, of which 63 were solo solves

This was one of my very favorite metas of the entire MGWCC series, guest-constructed or not. Even after scanning it over for the tenth time just now, I marvel: how did he conceive of this, and then how did he make it work in a 16×15 grid? Pure wizardry.

Insight #1: First thing to notice on the mystery beverage hunt: there’s something missing from this puzzle. The grid looks a bit weird at first, and that weirdness comes from the total lack of I’s and L’s in the grid. Two of the most common letters in the language, so extremely unlikely to be chance.

Insight #2: What now? Well, that same certain weirdness extends to the clues, which contain only a very few of those two common letters — and they always appear in the same word, separated by a single letter. Spine-tinglingly mysterious! Six times to be precise:

1-A: [Tie-in, often] = TOY
23-A: [Recommenders of rest or Rolaids] = MDS
34-A: [Queen of the fairies] = MAB
38-A: [Structures affected by bursitis] = SACS
41-A: [Elsie ___ cow] = THE
1-D: [Part of a plait] = TRESS

The spine-tingling continues as we realize we must be on the right path, with three I?I strings and three L?I strings. Now what?

Insight #3: You can remove the I/I or L/I from those six clue words to reveal a grid entry. Yet another novel and intriguing step. How is all this fitting in a 15×15 grid? And we’re not even close to being done yet. They are:

Tie-in — remove the i-i to get TEN at 43-Across
Rolaids — remove the l-i to get ROADS at 63-Across. I’m cracking up at my desk as I’m writing this out of disbelief that this all works…
Fairies — remove the i-i to get FARES at 60-Across
Bursitis — remove the i-i to get BURSTS at 24-Across
Elsie — remove the l-i to get ESE at 46-Across
Plait — remove the l-i to get PAT at 29-Across

Insight #4:

Circle those six entries in the grid and you see that they are placed atop one another, in pairs. Wow. This is surreal and obviously not a coincidence. But what now?

Insight #5: He’s just showing off now. Another novel, beautiful, and and completely logical step: put the L’s and I’s back into their words in the grid (!!), forming a “cup” shape three times in the grid. Holy Toledo/moly/guacamole/cow etc. See Gridmaster’s J’s diagram above:

The I’s in BURSiTiS and the L-I in PAT form the first cup
The I’s in TiEiN and the the L-I in ElSiE form the second cup
The I’s in FAiRiES and the L’s ROlAiDS form the third cup

Insight #6: Sure, why not — how about one more novel, logical, and beautiful step? And this is all happening in a 16×15 grid, mind you.

We’ve got three cups and — hey, look at that title! They will runneth over…and spill they do, logically up and over to the right:

Cup #1 runs over as AT in the cup and MOST up and over = AT MOST
Cup #2 runs over as SE in the cup and RENE up and over = SERENE
Cup #3 runs over as AR in the cup and GUED up and over = ARGUED

Definitely still on the right track! Ready for Step 7?

Insight #7: Those three spillover can clue an entry in the grid:

AT MOST clues MAX at 59-D
SERENE clues UNFAZED at 52-A
ARGUED clues REASONED at 14-D

Circle the first letter of of each of those three answers in the grid and they spell, in the usual grid order, contest answer RUM.

This is an extraordinary meta. As I wrote to Will after he sent it: I’ve written about 800 contest crosswords and solved hundreds more, and I would place this one in the Top 5 I’ve ever laid eyes on. The number, novelty, economy, clarity, and beauty of its steps are a marvel.

Bravissimo to Will — and yes, I’m sending him a bottle of rum in addition to the check and MGWCC stationery.

Tough act to follow, but someone’s gotta do it…

THIS WEEK’S INSTRUCTIONS:

This week’s contest answer is a feature of football games.

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