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LAST WEEK’S RESULTS:

Title: “All Over the Map” by by Brooke Husic
Prompt: This week’s contest answer is what I used for my road trip around the country.
Answer: STATE CAR
Correct entries: 199 overall, of which 123 were solo solves

Wild trip around the country from Brooke last week — all over the map indeed! Where was she taking us on this fantastic voyage?

No obvious theme entries stood out; the longest word in the grid was a mere 8 letters, and none of the clues gave an overt hint. Which means there must be some kind of pattern concealed in the grid, but what was it?

With a cue from the title, successful meta-ists looked for state abbreviations, and found a curious thing: every five-letter entry in the grid consisted of a pair of state abbreviations, separated by an unused middle letter. In grid order, they were:

13-A: IN-EAR (IN + E + AR)
27-A: NERVA (NE + R + VA)
50-A: MOTOR (MO + T + OR)
65-A: DEANE (DE + A + NE)
5-D: ORAMA (OR + A + MA)
17-D: MATIN (MA + T + IN)
39-D: ARCDE (AR + C + DE)
53-D: COSMO (CO + S + MO)

Now what? Well, you’ll notice that all but two of these states are used twice. Sounds like we’re taking a trip around the country, and it stands to reason that the states used just once are the beginning and end of our journey. Let’s start with CO and create the itinerary:

CO + MO (S)
MO + OR (T)
OR + MA (A)
MA + IN (T)
IN + AR (E)
AR + DE (C)
DE + NE (A)
NE + VA (R)

…yielding the apt contest answer STATE CAR. Quite a way to travel!

Evan points out:

It’s super-impressive how Brooke managed to avoid other two-letter state abbreviations *everywhere* else in the grid.

Agreed. 50 bigrams couldn’t appear anywhere else in the grid — not easy at all to pull off, but she did.

cyn agrees as well:

Impressive construction. I can’t believe there are no other state abbreviations (including US territories) in the fill besides the 8 5-letter entries.

Meta – World Peace says:

Notwithstanding the puzzle’s bike/ebike observation, I trust Brooke’s vehicle also came equipped with a MOTOR, like those estate cars the Brits drive. That was a fun Week 4 trip!

Mark Woychick says:

Elegant mechanism and construction!

And finally, Burak writes:

Great meta. So simple yet so elegant.

Agreed — so tough to see, but once you see it, you wonder why it took so long. Thanks, Brooke!

Now let’s turn our attention to Week 5…

GUEST CONSTRUCTOR MONTH 2022, WEEK 5:

Our Week 5 meta is by Will Nediger. I’ve long admired Will’s work — his outstanding blog is called Bewilderingly, which is an anagram of his byline — so I’m thrilled to have him in the anchor spot this month.

Will is a puzzlemaker from London, Ontario, where he lives with his wife and their two kids, Julian and Joseph (whose names, he notes, are “collectively supervocalic”). In addition to Bewilderingly, you can find his puzzles at the New Yorker, Vox, and The Browser.

Now let’s see what he’s conjured up for Week 5…

THIS WEEK’S INSTRUCTIONS:

This week’s contest answer is a beverage.

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