IMPORTANT NOTE: As of January 2015 MGWCC is a subscribers-only crossword. The cost is $26 per year, and you can subscribe (or get a free trial month first) here:
LAST WEEK’S RESULTS:
I received just 85 correct answers for MGWCC #386, so not your ordinary Week 3 puzzle. There were a lot of steps to meta success on this one, and I underestimated how difficult they were in combination with each other.
We were looking for a name in recent news, and our theme entries were…well, what exactly? Not entirely clear. But the six longest entries (9 letters apiece) in the grid were:
17-A [1998 Spike Lee movie] = HE GOT GAME
25-A [Concerning] = AS REGARDS
50-A [Fundamentally] = IN ESSENCE
63-A [“Oh, well”] = C’EST LA VIE
11-D [Singer who played Johnny Fontane in “The Godfather”] = AL MARTINO
35-D [“See you when you get back”] = I’LL BE HERE
And then the central entry also turned out to be theme; you may have noticed that, like the six entries above, it has a two-letter word in it:
39-A [City the Navajo call “Yooto”] = SANTA FE.
Also note that there are no other two-letter words in the grid. And what do these seven have in common? Each is a symbol for a chemical element:
He = helium (2)
As = arsenic (33)
In = indium (49)
La = lanthanum (57)
Al = aluminum (13)
Be = beryllium (4)
Fe = iron (26)
You’ll see that I’ve provided each element’s atomic number in parentheses above; that was the next step to success. The final step was: take those numbers in (numerical) order, and find the corresponding squares in the grid: boxes 2, 4, 13, 26, 33, 49 and 57 spell the surname of meta answer Paul MODRICH, in the news recently for, aptly enough for our theme, winning a Nobel Prize in Chemistry.
Al says this meta was:
Elementary!
mrbreen almost alarmed his fellow passengers:
Got the aha moment on a flight and was tempted to stand up and ask if anyone had a periodic table!
Bob J had a leg up:
I’m a chemist so I’d have kicked myself if I hadn’t seen this one.
And Meta — World Peace says:
Hi Matt, you are hereby awarded the Argh-Nobel for MGWCC Week 3/5 Difficulty Mismatch Disrepair.
Thanks, I think.
This week’s winner, whose name was chosen at random from the 85 correct entries received, is Joe Eckman of Cochranville, Penna. In addition to a MGWCC pen, pencil and notepad set, Joe will also receive a 1-year subscription to a special project of mine which, for the second and final time, I will need to postpone a week before telling you about! But it will definitely be ready next week. So much drama…
THIS WEEK’S INSTRUCTIONS:
We’ve got rather macabre themes this week and next, but ’tis the Halloween season! Prepare to be a little scared…
This week’s contest answer is a well-known U.S. Senator, past or present.
IMPORTANT NOTE: As of January 2015 MGWCC is a subscribers-only crossword. The cost is $26 per year, and you can subscribe (or get a free trial month first) here:
Solve well, and be not led astray by words intended to deceive.