LAST WEEK’S RESULTS:

Title: “Hold It!” by Paul Coulter
Prompt: This week’s contest answer is a kind of sandwich.
Answer: WRAP, found by 309 solvers, of which 254 were solo solves

Paul Coulter batted cleanup this year (can you “bat cleanup” if you’re fifth? And if you’re not actually bringing any runs home? But you know what I meant). Let’s check out the path Paul laid for solvers:

Step #1: There are four entries in the grid that end with a word synonymous with “encloses”:

INBOXES at 23-A, “boxes”
ASPENS at 52-A, “pens”
REHEMS at 71-A, “hems”
CD CASES at 73-A, “cases”

Gotta be on the right track, especially since each of these begins with exactly two letters unused by the synonym. Now what?

Step #2: Find an entry in the grid that starts and ends with those two letters. Logical since they’re all “enclosing” words, and you know you’re on the right track since there’s exactly one such entry in the grid for each of the four:

IBERIAN at 53-A for I.N.-boxes
ASCRIBES at 28-A for A.S.-cribes
RED WINE at 41-A for R.E.-hems
CAROUSED at 69-A for C.D.-cases

Gotta be the right track now what? Answer…

Step #3: Find a clue whose first word is the new word formed by the truncations in Step 2 above:

(I)BERIA(N) is the first word in the clue to POLICE at 86-A
(R)EDWIN(E) is the first word in the clue to ALDRIN at 45-A
(C)AROUSE(D) is the first word in the clue to RILE UP at 26-A
(A)SCRIBE(S) is the first word in the clue to WRITER at 9-A

Take those four entries’ answers in the usual grid order and they spell contest answer WRAP. And that’s a wrap, indeed!

Note one final elegance: all twelve of these entries used are placed symmetrically in the grid! Wow. Nicely done, Paul, and thanks to Gridmaster J for highlighting Paul’s work so nicely here.

Big thanks to Paul, and to all five of our Guest Constructor Month 2023 contributors: Erik Agard, Quiara Vasquez, Tom Burnakis, Alex Eaton-Salners, and Paul Coulter. Highly enjoyable set of puzzles; we’ll do this again next year!

THIS WEEK’S INSTRUCTIONS:

This week’s contest answer is a famous American company.

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