MGWCC #086 — Friday, January 22, 2010 — “My Metapsychology”

Good afternoon, crossword fans — welcome to Week 86 of my contest. If you’re new to the contest and would like to enter, please see the site FAQ on the left sidebar for instructions.

LAST WEEK’S RESULTS:

Last week’s puzzle contained five two-word theme entries, each of which exhibited a peculiar feature:

RUHR RIVER
EVERYONE ELSE
DERIVED DEMAND
GREG GRUNBERG
ANA ALICIA

See it? 240 solvers did (solution, top left). They noticed that each of two words in these phrases both starts and ends with the same letter. A scan on clues for a sympatico pair led them to 1-across {“Success!} and 24-down {Stories}, which merge to form last week’s contest answer, SUCCESS STORIES.

This week’s success story, whose name was chosen at random from the 240 correct entries received, is Judy Pozar of Leverett, Mass. In addition to a MGWCC pen, pencil and notepad set, Judy will receive a 50-puzzle subscription to Peter Gordon’s new Fireball Crosswords.

Also: nobody mentioned the grid’s asymmetry!

THIS WEEK’S INSTRUCTIONS:

This week’s contest answer is a familiar game show host. If you’re not up on your game show hosts, this person’s name is found on one of these two lists. E-mail this host’s name to me at crosswordcontest@gmail.com by Tuesday at noon ET. Please put the contest answer in the subject line of your e-mail.

SPECIAL PRIZES THIS WEEK:

Five randomly selected solvers this week will win $10 gift cards from the iTunes store. These prizes are sponsored by Stand Alone, creators of Crosswords for iPhone.

I’m working with Stand Alone on a very cool project that I’ll write more about in the near future.

[Note: a normal book prize will also be awarded to a randomly-chosen solver this week, unaffected by the gift card prizes.]

To print the puzzle out, click on the image below and hit “print” on your browser. To solve using Across Lite download the free software here, then join the Google Group (1,048 members now!) here.

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

3 thoughts on “MGWCC #086 — Friday, January 22, 2010 — “My Metapsychology””

whoa, it was asymmetric? huh. in retrospect i remember thinking that the REZ/IDO/EDNA section in the middle was a little funny, but i had completely forgotten by the time i finished.

I didn’t notice the asymmetry either, though I’ve never understood why symmetric grids should be such a big deal to begin with: the constraint makes life harder for the constructor, and usually does little or nothing to improve the solving experience.

NDE

Hm. I don’t usually consciously note the symmetry of the grid, but I did notice it on this puzzle (mainly because you had done that in a previous MGWCC). You didn’t hear from me this week because I didn’t solve it before the deadline.

Joon on January 22, 2010 at 7:21 pm said:

whoa, it was asymmetric? huh. in retrospect i remember thinking that the REZ/IDO/EDNA section in the middle was a little funny, but i had completely forgotten by the time i finished.
Noam D. Elkies on January 23, 2010 at 1:04 am said:

I didn’t notice the asymmetry either, though I’ve never understood why symmetric grids should be such a big deal to begin with: the constraint makes life harder for the constructor, and usually does little or nothing to improve the solving experience.

NDE
cybergoober on January 23, 2010 at 5:26 pm said:

Hm. I don’t usually consciously note the symmetry of the grid, but I did notice it on this puzzle (mainly because you had done that in a previous MGWCC). You didn’t hear from me this week because I didn’t solve it before the deadline.