LAST WEEK’S RESULTS:

Title: “Crave Cold”
Prompt:This week’s contest answer is a six-letter adjective that I hope you’d apply to this meta.
Answer: DARING, found by 451 solvers, of which 399 were solo solves

Six wacky and alliterative theme entries populated our grid last week:

17-A: [Blast loud music at 5 AM from the Colosseum?] = ROUSE ROME

11-D: [River animal that saves the day?] = HERO HIPPO

28-A: [Jab your finger in an annoying person’s side?] = POKE PEST

47-A: [Get hold of that bird that stole your food at the beach?] = GRAB GULL. Good luck with that. You take one step in their direction to shoo them away and with one wing motion they’re suddenly 20 feet higher off the sand. That’s why they’re so bold!

37-D: [Sharply and repeatedly criticize general Arnold?] = HAMMER HAP

64-A: [Gift for a coffee-lover in May?] = MOTHER MUG

What now? “The Noticing,” which is my proposed name for after you’ve finished solving a meta grid and you just look around and see what looks out of place/noteworthy/etc. Sounds like a Stephen King movie title. Anyway, do the Noticing on this one and you might see that changing the first letter of each theme pair to another letter leads to a pair of synonyms:

ROUSE ROME = HOUSE HOME
HERO HIPPO = ZERO ZIPPO
POKE PEST = JOKE JEST
GRAB GULL = DRAB DULL
HAMMER HAP = YAMMER YAP
MOTHER MUG – BOTHER BUG

Gotta be the right track, so what now? Answer: find another entry in the grid whose clue can apply to each set of theme pairs. Like so:

1-A: [One’s residence] could be your DIGS, but also HOUSE or HOME
36-D: [Bupkis] = NADA, but also be ZERO or ZIPPO
63-D: [Laugh-evoking action] = GAG, but also JOKE or JEST
12-D: [Lacking in interest and excitement] = ARID, but also DRAB or DULL
21-A: [Talk on and on and on and on] = RAMBLE, but also YAMMER or YAP
32-A: [Irritate] = IRK, but also BOTHER or BUG

The first six letters of those spell contest answer DARING, which, when applied to puzzle title CRAVE COLD becomes another example of the theme trick, BRAVE and BOLD. I hope you found this meta to be that.

Paolo P. points out a subtlety:

This is because four of the theme entries are arranged in a circle, which one may call DA RING

Laura M. writes:

Nice full circle with the title, I love when that happens!

Golem adds to the theme:

This puzzle was [Accomplishment of counting every state?] (5, 4)

And finally, Rand says:

Helped a lot that one of my current favorite comic books is “The Brave and the Bold” 🙂

FIREBALL NEWSFLASH CROSSWORDS:

Check out Peter Gordon‘s new Fireball Newsflash Crosswords Kickstarter here:

https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/petergordonpuzzler/2024-fireball-newsflash-crosswords

20 newsy crosswords filled with the week’s events. Highly recommended!

THIS WEEK’S INSTRUCTIONS:

This week’s contest answer is a U.S. city that appears frequently in crossword grids.

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