LAST WEEK’S RESULTS:
Title: MGWCC #878 — “Little Morsels” by Lydia Roth & Christina Bodensiek
Prompt: This puzzle’s contest answer consists of four grid entries.
Answer: DOOR DASH DOT COM, found by 236 solvers, of which 159 were solo solves
Week 5 of Guest Constructor Month 2025! First thing you notice while solving this is …that there’s nothing obvious you’re supposed to be noticing! Just seems like a normal crossword with four longish theme entries (two 10s and two 9s) but they don’t seem especially themey (FOR SCIENCE, MAINE COON (my cat Stella is one of these — not meta-related, just saying), CENTIPEDE, and YOU GET A CAR). Hmmm, so now what?
How about those clues? There’s something odd going on with them, though it’s hard to say what. A weird cadence to some of them, like [Fly sky-high and attract upward-looking stares, perhaps] for SOAR at 35-A, or [T.S. Eliot’s highly-regarded work, “The ___ Song of J. Alfred Prufrock”], which is a long and winding road to LOVE. So it’s probably in the clues, but where?
Answer: in the dots and dashes, of which there are so many in the clues! Could it be Morse Code? Well there is that title, “Little MORSEls”…
And there was the rub: for every clue that has dot(s) and/or dash(es) in it, those dots and dashes spell out a letter of the alphabet in Morse Code. For example, at 1-A we have [Dr. Sagan who co-founded the non-profit The Planetary Society], which yields . – – which yields the letter W (see handy Morse Code chart above).
Do that with all the clues with dot(s) and/or dash(es) — which are all on the Across clues, BTW, none on the downs (!), and you get the message:
WHERE SAMUEL MORSE ORDERS FOOD
See awesome solution grid by Gridmaster J above. So we need four grid entries that would amusingly answer this riddle, and our authors have conveniently placed them in symmetrically in the grid — which is not only nice aesthetically, but also gives solvers a strong click. They are:
DOOR
DASH
DOT
COM
A lovely final answer, which cleverly includes both dash and dot! Now that’s a fitting meta answer! Awesome work to round out the month.
What a beautiful Guest Constructor Month 2025 it was! Big thanks to our 2025 crew: Erik Agard, Peter Abide, Evan Birholz, Jeff Chen, Lydia Roth, and Christina Bodensiek. Kudos in great abundance to each of you. Tough acts to follow, but let’s see if I can keep the meta-mojo rolling into April…
THIS WEEK’S INSTRUCTIONS:
Today’s puzzle is Week 1 of 4 in April. Instructions:
No instructions given here since there are no-instructions solving options this week.
–Matt