LAST WEEK’S RESULTS:

Title: “They Shall Return” was the original title, followed the next day with the more helpful title “+3”
Prompt: This puzzle’s contest answer is a five-letter word describing some successful MGWCC solves.
Answer: SOLOS, found by 380 solvers, 320 of whom were solo solves

Talk about a guy who knows how to play metas smart! If you just read Joon’s review here, you’d think this was simply yet another high-quality meta in the nearly unbroken chain (?!) of such metas that has come to be known as MGWCC.

But joonmeister got to things about a day late, so he totally avoided the fallout from the stupid last-minute mistake I made, later compounded by imperfect corrections from my tired brain (Consigliere had to literally talk me through them on the phone so I didn’t make the same mistake again).

As you can see from Joon’s review, the idea was: add a three-letter word to the end of a word in each theme entry to get a longer palindrome, like so:

17-A: KATY PERRY + DID = KATYDID
24-A: REV THE ENGINE + ERE = REVERE
40-A: WILD YAM + AHA = YAMAHA
53-A: DOLLAR TO EURO + POP = EUROPOP
65-A: MINI COOPER = MINIMUM

Then, as Joon did, find an answer in the grid that satisfies the new word. Like so:

[Creature that makes a distinctive sound] = SHEEP or KATYDID
[Show great interest in, in a way] OGLE or REVERE
[Famed guitar maker] = LEVIN or YAMAHA
[Music genre on Spotify] OPERA or EUROPOP
[Barely sufficient] = SCANT or MINIMUM

Those entries’ first letters spell out contest answer SOLOS, which many (most?) MGWCC entries are, and is a palindrome itself, keeping with the theme.

What happened? This:

Ugh. Messed up one clue right at the finish line and it ruined the meta for a non-trivial number of people. Such is the life we meta-writers have chosen…

Onward and hopefully upward…

Today’s puzzle is Week 4 of 5 in July. Instructions:

This puzzle’s contest answer is a slightly gross word.