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LAST WEEK’S RESULTS:
Title: “What a Character” by Mike Graczyk
Prompt: This week’s contest answer is what you might be if you solve it.
Answer: JUST MY TYPE
Correct entries: 274 overall, of which 202 were solo solves
You really have to admire my confidence lately, running all these extremely impressive guest metas on my own site. Threatened? Moi? Of course not…(?!)
It was Mike Graczyk‘s turn last week. I’d been wanting to run one of his metas for a while since he’s been publishing so many of them here so I’m glad we finally made it happen.
No overt hints, but one of those look-around-and-see-what-you-notice metas, and what you may have noticed is that the clues contain a wide variety of punctuation marks. For example, 17-A is [It refuses to give you even 1%] for SKIM MILK, and 48-D was [Couric and he attempted to decipher what @ meant on a 1990s talk show] for GUMBEL.
A closer look reveals that each of the ten punctuation marks atop the numeral keys on a standard keyboard are represented exactly one time in the clues:
17-A: % = SKIM MILK = on the 5 key
34-A: * = BILLY CRYSTAL = on the 8 key
43-A: ( ) = LINUS VAN PELT = on the 9 and 0 keys (one parenthesis for each of those two keys)
69-A: ! = JOKE = on the 1 key
8-D: & = BOOKER T. on the 7 key
10-D: $ = RENT = on the 4 key
48-D: @ = GUMBEL = on the 2 key
49-D: ^ = ENERGY = on the 6 key
65-D: # = SOS = on the 3 key
Now what? Pick the letter from the entry corresponding to the number key each of these uses. A lovely final step! So for SKIM MILK we take the 5th letter (M), for BILLY CRYSTAL we take the 8th letter, and so on. Putting them in order reveals:
1 = JOKE
2 = GUMBEL
3 = SOS
4 = RENT
5 = SKIMMILK
6 = ENERGY
7 = BOOKERT
8 = BILLYCRYSTAL
9 = LINUSVANPELT
10 = LINUSVANPELT
Yielding the lovely contest answer, JUST MY TYPE. Note the elegant solution Mike found for the problem of the two parentheses, where they finish the meta answer in its 9th and 10th spaces.
Solvers loved this, of course:
JanglerNPL writes:
Joke gUmbel soS renT skimMilk energY bookerT billycrYstal linusvanPElt very nice!
DIS says:
And MikeyG’s puzzles are just my type, so thanks for featuring him.
And finally, CraigMazin stayed with the theme:
That was *!#%ing brilliant!
Agreed, but watch your language! This is a family website!
Big thanks to Mikey G for the puzzle. And well, that’s yet another tough act to follow for me here on MGWCC, but I’ll give it a shot…
THIS WEEK’S INSTRUCTIONS:
This week’s contest answer is a five-letter interjection I hope you won’t utter when you get the meta.
NOTE: Due to the delayed post, the deadline for submitting your entry to this week’s meta is Wednesday, November 30th at noon ET.
Solve well, and be not led astray by words intended to deceive.