LAST WEEK’S RESULTS:

Title: “By the Numbers”
Prompt: This week’s contest answer is a 5-letter word.
Answer: FORTH
Correct entries: 292 overall, of which 222 were solo solves

This one played more like a Week 4 of 5 than its intended 3 of 5. Compact grid (no entries longer than eight letters), and solving revealed five instances of using the numeral 4 in place of the word “for.” Like so, presented in crossing pairs::

20-A: [Ready when customers need it, in business-speak] = FIT 4 USE
4-D: [Words spoken when handing over the phone] = IT’S 4 YOU

22-A: [Knock the ball out of the park, in cricket lingo] = HIT 4 SIX
10-D: [Go jogging, as described in a meme from “Back to the Future”] = RUN 4 FUN

39-A: [1924 song, or a 1950 Doris Day movie] = TEA 4 TWO
25-D: [Special effects technique where a normal stage is filmed to appear underwater] = DRY 4 WET

55-A: [First part of the Three Musketeers’ motto] = ALL 4 ONE
44-D: [Last part of the Three Musketeers’ motto] = ONE 4 ALL

59-A: [“ttyl”] = BYE 4 NOW
47-D: [“You scratch my back, I’ll scratch yours” arrangement] = TIT 4 TAT

Now what? We’re looking for a 5-letter word, and there are five “4” squares, so you might theorize that we’re extracting one letter from each of these. How? Look “by the numbers,” as the title suggests, and you’ll see four letters adjacent to each 4:

STYU in the upper-left
NTFS in the upper-right
YAWT in the center
ELAO in the lower-left
TETN in the lower-right?

Final step: find a five-letter word in the fill consisting of these four letters plus one other:

STUY — FUSTY
NTFS — FONTS
YAWT — WARTY
ELAO — OLETA
TENT — TENTH

In grid order, those added letters spell contest answer FORTH.

Gwinns says:

Having EOLA and TENT in the grid too was sneaky.

EOLA / OLETA was tough but unavoidable. Interestingly if you knew neither OLETA nor MELUA crossing at that L, you could still backsolve the L once you had the mechanism! Now that’s a polite meta-constructor.

TENT was a last-minute change to clean up that corner. Neither TENT nor EOLA technically violated the meta but I admit TENT was unnecessarily trappy and I would’ve changed it back if I’d noticed.

Bird Lives says:

FTW — FOR THE WIN

mpsprs notes:

Seems like Redhead64 has the ideal finishing location this week.

Check the leaderboard from last week, though I’m sure you can guess without peeking…

And finally, Megan Amram writes:

this puzzle had some MIXED META-FORTH

Zing! Clever.

THIS WEEK’S INSTRUCTIONS:

NOTE: Due to the late post, the deadline for this week’s puzzle is noon ET on Thursday, Dec. 30th. You can also earn credit for the Christmas solving badge by submitting by 11:59 PM ET on Monday, December 27th.

This week’s contest answer is a synonym for “excellent”.

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