Ahoy, Fellow Cruciverbalists! Welcome to Week 29 of my crossword 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:
A little word puzzle awaited solvers of last week’s crossword — a hockey stick-toting, grizzly-infested, never-kicked-the-Queen-out little word puzzle involving our friends north of the border and their postal system.
The five longest entries in the grid spelled out the task:
JOIN THREE / CANADIAN POSTAL / ABBREVIATIONS TO / FORM AN NFL STAR’S / FIRST NAME
Everyone (including me) Googled the list of Canada’s thirteen postal abbreviations, and even non-sports fans pieced together PEYTON MANNING, who was last week’s contest answer phrase. His first name is spelled from the postal abbreviations for Prince Edward Island, Yukon Territory, and Ontario (PE, YT, ON). “Peyton” was the only recognizable six-letter sequence I could get from those thirteen abbrs. Solution grid at left.
This week’s winner, whose name was chosen randomly from among the 103 correct answers received, is Jordan Chodorow of Los Angeles, Calif. Jordan has selected as his prize an autographed copy of Sip & Solve Hard Crosswords.
ONE THING:
Due to limitations in Blogger’s system, I’m going to have to do comments in kind of an odd way. Comments will be open immediately when a puzzle is posted, but moderated so that they only appear at noon ET on Tuesday, when the entry deadline passes. Any comments posted after Tuesday at noon will appear immediately.
Again, no rules on comments — anything about the puzzle can be discussed there, including that week’s contest answer word. [UPDATE, 12/23, 12:05 PM ET — Comments section now open! I think I’ll go post there myself.]
I lied, there’s another thing: due to illness and then sloth, I’m about four weeks behind on sending prize books out. They’re going out this weekend, though, so if I owe you book loot, hold on — it’s comin’.
THIS WEEK’S INSTRUCTIONS:
Somebody is missing from this week’s crossword. His (her? not sure) name, which is six letters long, is this week’s contest answer word. E-mail it to me at crosswordcontest@gmail.com by Tuesday at noon ET. Please put the contest answer word in the subject line of your e-mail.
To print the puzzle out, click on the image below and hit “print” on your browser. To solve using Across Lite, join the Google Group here:
http://groups.google.com/group/mgwcc
Solve well, and be not led astray by words intended to deceive.
41D appears to be the “DTN” Corp. Why is this a “controversial military contractor”?
I’m first? w00t!
Matt’s been on me to share my thoughts with his hundreds of fans. Well, a gross anyway.
This was one of his tougher grids, given entries like “Plaxico” “Sane Man” “Cipro” “iocaine” “Broz” “O Canada” “ipecacs” and “Ciro” and only a few advantages for veteran solvers such as “Edys” and “Sssssss”. This is made more brutal by the fact that the four theme clues are very tough because you have to solve them by figuring out enough down-clues since they have no immediately obvious relationship to one another. (I confess I only managed to fill in 43 across because I had figured out the theme and anagrammed my way through.)
However he balances it with an unusually easy weekly challenge. Given the season, the title, and the instructions, the only thing that surprised me was that the obvious omission from the set wasn’t the actual omission.
As usual, finally, any clues Matt has embedded in the grid are not perspicable to me. (Well, 19D and 22D at a stretch maybe.)
How to clue the missing word?
Let’s play a game – if instead of the contest answer word, there were another themed grid entry, how would we clue it? My choice is “Manhattan neighbor”.
Jim —
That’s DYN, as in DynCorp. The clue at 42-across {“X-___”} could have been either the incorrect X-RATED, as many solvers put, or the correct X-RAYED. Since DynCorp isn’t extremely well known, I should have added a defining tag to 42-a, like {“X-___” (did an MRI on)}.
Lyle —
I think I’m going to rent “SSSSSSS.” I bet it’s not very ssssssscary, based on its imdb reviews.
Stevo —
REDONDO — took me a minute.
It was interesting how many people refer to that reindeer as “DONDER.” I always thought it was just DONNER (but accepted both for the contest this week).
Oh snap, it is Donner. Donner und Blitzen = Thunder & Lightning
Not exactly the warm fuzzy imagery we usually associate with the reindeer today, is it.
OK, my revised clue for the missing entry is: “Briefs, relative to pants”.
Happy Festivus everyone!
I submitted Donder, but I was reading straight off of Wikipedia at the time. (And I think my old anthology o’ American stuff had the poem in it, and I remember that being Donder too.)
OK, here’s a link to DynCorp.