IMPORTANT NOTE: As of February 2020 MGWCC is available only to subscribers at my Patreon page. A subscription costs $3/month.

LAST WEEK’S RESULTS:

Title: Big Game
Instructions: This week’s contest answer is a creature frequently found in crossword grids.
Answer: OKAPI
Number of correct entries: 567

Five “animal crossings” in last week’s grid, with their crossing letters spelling contest answer critter OKAPI. And notice that they’re all critters we’re used to seeing in crosswords! They are:

ORCA and OWL crossing at the O of ORGAN DONOR CARD and GROWL.

Fun story: the delay on Friday was caused by my eleventh-hour (literally) realization that SCOWL, my original entry at 8-Down, contained not just my intended OWL, but also a pesky COW. Egad! I had gone over each entry in the grid three times, line-by-line, very slowly, to make sure there were no extraneous critters in there, but I guess my brain/eye could not see that both my OWL *and* a COW could share one 5-letter word.

So I fixed that, but then had another realization: I’d been looking for 3- and 4-letter animals, but there is also a 2-letter animal: the OX! And as horrible luck would have it, I had SOX in the grid. So I changed LOL/LATEX/SOX to LOB/BATES/SOS and sent the puzzle out…only to have a solver point out that I now had a BAT in the grid over there!

Weirdest game of whac-a-mole ever, I guess.

AUK and ELK crossing at the K of MILWAUKEE and ELKE

ELAND and ASS crossing at the A of ICELANDAIR and EZPASS

APE and ASP crossing at the P of LEAPED INTO and GASP

ERMINE and IBIS crossing at the I of UNDERMINE and ALIBIS

Put them all together and you’ve got OKAPI, a familiar crossword pal.

PATREON UPDATE:

We’re up to 919 solvers who’ve made the switch over to Patreon! Join them at the link. Thanks to everyone who’s made the jump so far; If you have any trouble with it, please e-mail me at crosswordcontest@gmail.com or via Patreon messaging.

PETITE PANGRAMS KICKSTARTER:

The great Peter Gordon is running a 3-month-long series of 9×11 puzzles, each of which is a pangram. Join up here. I test-solved one, and they’re very fun!

THIS WEEK’S INSTRUCTIONS:

This week’s contest answer is a body part you’ll need to solve this meta.

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