LAST WEEK’S RESULTS:

Title: “Sweet Sixteenths”
Prompt: This puzzle’s contest answer is the letter that goes in the lower-rightmost square in this grid. NOTE: in order to get credit for this meta, you MUST submit a brief (one or two lines) explanation of your reasoning.
Answer: D found by 213 solvers, of which 111 were solo solves

A simple task faced solvers last week: identify the letter that goes in the bottom-rightmost square in the grid, and write a sentence explaining that letter’s presence there. Simple as in “not complicated to explain,” but certainly not simple to figure out!

The two clues interesting that bottom-right square were

84-A: [It may grow off a coastline] = REEF or REED
73-D: [Non-responsive to “Are you OK?,” in a way] = DEAF or DEAD

So we have an ambiguity there: does that square take an F or a D? There must be some logical way to figure it out, and this disambiguation was in fact the crux of the meta.

[more TK — Matt]

GUEST CONSTRUCTOR: ERIK AGARD

Today’s puzzle is Week 1 of 5 in March. Yes, I am having to push the Week 5 up to March (after pushing it up to February) but I assure you it will be March and that it will be a fun one. And remember you can toughen this Week 1 considerably by choosing one of the non-standard solving options attached.

Today’s puzzle is by the great Erik Agard.  Erik is a contributor to These Puzzles Fund Abortion 5, the author of Monday’s New Yorker crossword, the proud owner of a Bilal Coulibaly–Alex Sarr joint bobblehead (thanks Jed), and partway through How to Fall in Love in a Time of Unnameable Disaster by Muriel Leung. He hopes you enjoy the puzzle! 

–Matt, on behalf of Erik