LAST WEEK’S RESULTS:
Title: “That’s Touching”
Prompt: This week’s contest answer is a word you might say upon solving the meta.
Answer: NICE, found by 285 solvers, of which 224 of which were solo solves; also accepted OH, found by 16 solvers (see below)
Five theme entries last week, each of whose nonsensical answers concealed a country’s name:
17-A: [Music genre that doesn’t mince words?] = CANDOR RAP (concealing ANDORRA)
24-A: [Cuban-style shirts worn by a religious leader?] = GURU GUAYABERAS (concealing URUGUAY)
40-A: [Middle-age life change first noticed on a nighttime flight?] = REDEYE MENOPAUSE (concealing YEMEN)
49-A: [Person who’s collected more anime merch than anyone else in the world?] = POKEMON GOLIATH (concealing MONGOLIA)
63-A: [Throw NBA great Thomas for a loop?] = STUN ISIAH (concealing TUNISIA)
Now what? With a nudge from the title, realize that each of these countries borders exactly two others:
ANDORRA = SPAIN + FRANCE (ASF)
URUGUAY = ARGENTINA + BRAZIL (UAB)
YEMEN = SAUDI ARABIA + OMAN (YSO)
MONGOLIA = RUSSIAN + CHINA (MRC)
TUNISIA = LIBYA + ALGERIA (TLA)
Take the first letters of each set of countries (in parentheses above) and find a four-letter grid entry that contains three of them:
ASF = FANS at 44-A, yielding the N
UAB = BEAU at 69-A, yielding the E
YSO = POSY at 12-A, yielding the P
MRC = CRAM at 36-A, yielding the A
TLA = TALL at 43-A, yielding the L
Those spell NEPAL! Now what? Do the trick one more time: Nepal borders China and India, yielding NCI. Is there a four-letter grid entry containing three of those? Indeed there is — NICE at 1-Down, which I hope you said when you got it (or said later upon seeing the answer if you didn’t happen to get it.
And what about those OH! Solvers? Quoting myself from the discussion here:
https://crosswordfiend.com/2023/09/19/mgwcc-798/
I did accept the 16 entries of OH, which is a strange case. Idea is to use TIBET-INDIA instead of CHINA-INDIA for NEPAL; remove the T, I, and N from NO-HIT at 1-Across and you’re left with “OH”.
Now, Tibet is not a “country” strictly speaking, but it is strange that if you use it as such on 1-A you get a very plausible answer for the meta, and a number of highly-skilled meta solvers told me they had no doubt it was correct when they submitted.
True, it’s different from the rest to leave two letters (OH) instead of just one, but that could be excused as it being the last step of the meta, and while Tibet is not strictly-speaking a “country,” it’s more of a country than, say, Maryland or Alberta (it was a country until the 1950s, e.g.). Still maybe not enough, but another mitigating factor here is that I had already used CHINA in another theme entry, so you might have plausibly thought you couldn’t use it again.
Still might not have been enough, except — it was at 1-A, the most prominent spot in a crossword grid. So that was the straw that broke the camel’s back for me, and I awarded full credit to those sixteen entrants.
THIS WEEK’S INSTRUCTIONS:
This week’s contest answer is a six-word phrase that I hope will describe those solvers who’ve figured out the meta.
Solve well, and be not led astray by words intended to deceive.