LAST WEEK’S RESULTS:
Title: “These Actions Are Highly Irregular”
Prompt: This week’s contest answer is a six-letter adjective you might apply to some contest crosswords..
Answer: QUAINT, found by 326 solvers, of which 216 were solo solves
A triple-Schrödinger! The first one ever? I found this amusing attempt, though it’s done tongue-in-cheek (lots of funny-but-not-close-to-legit clues to shoehorn all three answers into one clue). Of course this one of mine isn’t a true “triple-Schrö” either since the three entries are each forms of the same verb. BUT STILL!
Three grid-spanning theme entries stood out, but just seemed like normal crossword entries at first blush:
16-A: [Hit a button while on a front porch] = RING THE DOORBELL
37-A: [Let the cops know everything] = SING LIKE A CANARY
58-A: [Set your credit card on the table quickly, maybe] = SPRING FOR DINNER
So we’ve got RING, SPRING, and SING, which all rhyme. But what next?
Answer: The last across clue, for answer TENSE, read [Present, past, and past perfect are each one of these in English]. With that in mind, notice that the crossing word on each of those three I’s is also a verb:
2-D: [Hit the pool] = SWIM
25-D: [Let the wine flow] = DRINK
44-D: [Set about] = BEGIN
So we’ve got six very common verbs, each of whose sole vowel is an I. Next insight: these are all verbs that change their I to an A and U in the past and past perfect tenses, and then another insight: all three pairs use the same verb to start their clues: Hit for RING and SWIM, Let for SING and DRINK, and Set for SPRING and BEGIN.
The upshot of all this is that Triple-Schrö aspect: The clues for all six of these entries can satisfy the answer in any of the three tenses. So that first Schrö-square can be RING THE DOORBELL, RANG THE DOORBELL, or RUNG THE DOORBELL. The second can be SING LIKE A CANARY, SANG LIKE A CANARY, or SUNG LIKE A CANARY, crossing DRINK, DRANK, or DRUNK, which satisfies [Let the wine flow]. The third can be SPRING FOR DINNER, SPRANG FOR DINNER, or SPRING FOR DINNER, crossing BEGIN/BEGAN/BEGUN for [Set about].
Now what? Well, all this has Rube Goldberg-ed us into the letters I, A, and U. Where do we go from there?
Answer: the clues. Eagle-eyed solvers noticed some oddly-phrased clueage lurking about. Like at 15-A, where ALEX is clued as [Lucy Liu acted as her in “Charlie’s Angels”]. “Acted as her”? “portrayed her” or “played her” would be much more natural. But it concealed a secret: the letter combination IUA in “Liu acted”. Aha! Let’s find the other five:
65-A: [Charm on Maui] = AUI
6-D: [What, in French Guiana] = UIA
7-D: [“I authorize you to reverse my most recent command, keyboard!”] = IAU (a lot of solvers said this one was their in; helped that IAU were the first three letters of the clue)
30-D: [Some members of the Paiute tribe live here] = AIU
34-D: [Managua is there (abbr.)] = UAI
And then the aforementioned 15-A: [Lucy Liu acted as her in “Charlie’s Angels”] = IUA
Take the first letter of the answers to those six and they spell, in the usual grid order, contest answer QUAINT. Which is itself contains those three key vowels consecutively.
TO HINT OR NOT TO HINT?
Still a mixed bag of responses to the hints. I was hoping the time-release (first on Saturday noon, second Sunday noon, third Monday noon) would address any “too tempting to look” arguments against hintage, but some solvers still didn’t like it. I shall huddle with my advisors on the future of hints at MGWCC. If we do go forward with them in some form then we have to call them “Nudges” since my wife came up with that term when I discussed it with her and she feels strongly about it. So Nudges they will be in the future if they are here at all.
Onward and upward, across-ward and downward! September is a five-Friday month…It starts now…
THIS WEEK’S INSTRUCTIONS:
No instructions given here since there are no-instructions options this week.
Solve well, and be not led astray by words intended to deceive.