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LAST WEEK’S RESULTS:
Title: “Road Trip”
Prompt: This week’s contest answer is a flower.
Express writeup, since I’m pressed for time this morning: four makes of car hid inside four countries: a Yugo in YUGOSLAVIA, a Mini in DOMINICA, an AUDI in Saudi Arabia, and a KIA n Slovakia. Then CAR itself hid in MADAGASCAR, with the clue caveat “(this one’s a little different)”.
Since these are CARs hidden in NATIONs, we were looking for CARNATION, found by 283 solvers.
I thought this was about as cute and inoffensive as a Week 2 could be, but a lot of solvers found it more difficult than usual. The comments section at Fiend turned ugly, in fact, with me getting a little annoyed at what I viewed as a nitpick-fest, and then commenters rushing in on both sides. The fitting coda came when Amy had to close comments and issue a warning on the post after a (possibly intoxicated) solver named Ben went into attack mode on Yours Truly. Yikes. Worth 10 minutes of your time if you’re not busy today.
One other note: the panel vote 2-2 to allow LOTUS as an acceptable alternate answer. I myself would not have accepted it, but that’s why we have an independent panel. The idea is that there is both a car and a flower called Lotus, and it’s the national flower of several countries (though not of any of the four in the grid).
A bit tenuous, but two judges thought it was just good enough to keep a solver for looking for a better answer, so those 46 entries were counted as correct (ties go to the solver). Maybe a good peace offering considering the differing viewpoints on this one.
At any rate, onward and hopefully upward…
This week’s winner, whose name was chosen at random from the 329 correct entries received, is R.R. In addition to a MGWCC pen, pencil, and notepad set, R.R. will also receive a 1-year subscription to Matt Gaffney’s Daily Crossword.
THIS WEEK’S INSTRUCTIONS:
This week’s contest answer is a two-word phrase.
Solve well, and be not led astray by words intended to deceive.