LAST WEEK’S RESULTS:

Title: “Ease Into It”
Prompt: This week’s 12-letter contest answer is what I hope you do with this meta.
Answer: EKE OUT THE WIN,, found by 222 solvers, 111 of which were solo solves

Tricky one for Week 4, though some solvers found a shortcut that I did not anticipate at all. Four apparent (and indeed actual) long theme entries were:

17-Across: [Spare bed for a guest] = AIR MATTRESS
26-Across: [Admonishment to a slacker] = YOU DIDN’T EVEN TRY
44-Across: [“Never can forget that one…”] = I REMEMBER IT WELL
59-Across: [Marilyn Monroe’s co-star in 1960’s “Let’s Make Love”] = YVES MONTAND

Subtle common thread, tricky to see since it code-switches from auditory to visual in a heartbeat! Idea is: The first word in each theme entry is a homophone for a palindrome with the letter pattern E?E, like so:

AIR = ERE
YOU = EWE
I = EYE
YVES = EVE

Gotta be the right track, once you see/hear it. But now what? Well, some of those clues seem to be going out of their way to include a certain word or two. Allow me to quote the joonmeister over at Fiend, whose meta-antennae zeroed in on this quirk with alacrity:

the first thing i noticed while solving that i was quite sure was thematic was none of these clues or answers—it was in fact the clue for 1-across, {What a moneyed person may do at dinner} TREAT. there has to be a reason for the unusual wording of this clue (in particular, the rare word “moneyed”). looking through some of the other clues, i noticed some other odd word choices—”skewering” and “breweries” in particular. these all contained E_E trigrams, which clicked with the title, and made me realize we were looking for E_E homophones of the first words of the long theme answers: AIR/ERE, YOU/EWE, I/EYE, and YVES/EVE.

So we have two instances each of ere, ewe, eye, and eve in the clues. They are:

14-A: [Sphere you live on] = EARTH
19-A: [Inherently important] = KEY
51-D: [Different] = ELSE
15-A: [Nash known for skewering with words] = OGDEN
16-A: [Nat. with about 10,000 breweries] = USA. Go us!
31-D: [Like a snippy reviewer’s comments] = TRITE
1-A: [What a moneyed person may do at dinner] = TREAT
41-A: [Hackneyed ending to a movie] = HUG
55-D: [From Cheyenne to Omaha, say] = EAST
35-A: [Conflict-filled events] = WARS
44-A: [“Never can forget that one…”] I REMEMBER IT WELL. Serendipitously needed an I in what turned out to be the final iteration (of many) for this grid. “Where the !@#$ am I going to sneak an I-entry in here?” I thought, and then I noticed that perfectly-placed theme entry, already sitting right where I needed it. The Crossword Gods took pity that day…
52-D: [Leverkusen rejection] = NEIN.

The first letters of those twelve e?e hiders spell contest answer EKE OUT THE WIN, which of course contains yet another E?E word.

thanman2 keeps it palindromic:

wow!

As does Daisywoj:

Aha!!!

Golem writes:

EYE see what EWE did there.

And finally: In the waning days of summer, mjsandler thematically wishes me a good one:

Bon ETE a Mathieu

And now, on to Week 5…bonne chance!

GUEST CONSTRUCTOR: WILL NEDIGER

Today’s Week 5 meta is by the great Will Nediger, who once published here what I consider to be one of the five best metas I’ve ever seen (written by me or anyone else). Bro’s got chops.

Will lives in London, Ontario, with his wife and two sons. His extremely highly-recommended blog is called Bewilderingly, which is the best crossword blog name that I know of (it’s an anagram of his byline).

Let’s see what he’s cooked up for Week 5…

THIS WEEK’S INSTRUCTIONS: