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LAST WEEK’S RESULTS:
Title: “Apple Core”
Instructions: This week’s contest answer is a New York City attraction.
Answer: LINCOLN CENTER
Redemptive Week 2 since my previous attempt had been a Week 3.5, and with 470 right answers it was indeed a real Week 2.
A two-stepper: Step 1 is to notice that all five theme entries have the letters ABE in them, and Step 1.5 is to notice that it’s always right in the middle of the entry:
17-A: [Like many of Shakespeare’s sonnets] = ELIZABETHAN
25-A: [1983 hit by one-hit wonders the Tubes] = SHE’S A BEAUTY. I was admonished by several solvers that the Tubes may have had only one real hit but were not really one-hit wonders since they had a lot of punk cred in the ’70s and beyond in the Bay Area. I did not know that, and withdraw my characterization of their place in music history.
35-A: [Peggy Parish’s most famous character] = AMELIA BEDELIA
45-A: [Made sense of] = DREW A BEAD ON
54-A: [Order ending with Z] = ALPHABETIZE. A li’l bit tricky there since “Order” is a verb.
Step 2: Realizing what NYC site all those ABEs point to. A statue of Japanese prime minister Shinzo Abe? A huge billboard of Homer Simpson’s dad in Times Square? No, they’re referring to LINCOLN CENTER, since ABE and centered in the entry.
Mildly amusing, but not as amusing as Mike Miller‘s solve:
I was doing your contest puzzle on the No. 1 uptown subway home Friday and I was literally staring at the theme answers and wondering why they all had the same 3 letters in the middle when the train pulled into the 66th St. station and the conductor announced the solution. (I don’t consider that cheating… prefer to think of it as an assist from the puzzle gods.)
Me too, but I think we can still count it as a solo solve.
This week’s winner, whose name was chosen at random from the 470 correct entries received, is P.D. In addition to a MGWCC pen, pencil, and notepad set, P.D. will also receive a signed copy of my book Pint-Size Crosswords.
THIS WEEK’S INSTRUCTIONS:
This week’s contest answer is a famous song of 1977.
Solve well, and be not led astray by words intended to deceive.