LAST WEEK’S RESULTS:
Title: “Step Inside” by David Alfred Bywaters
Prompt: This week’s contest answer is a Victorian novel.
Answer: Middlemarch by George Eliot, found by 463 solvers; credit also given for Little Women by Louisa May Alcott, submitted by 81 solvers
Fun one from our Victorian Novel Recommending constructor. Our five nonsensical theme entries were:
18-A: [Pastry purveyor?] = ROLL MOVER
23-A: [Chili consequence?] = HOT PALATE
37-A: [“I said neat, you fool! Where did you learn bartending?!” e.g.?] = ICE RAGE
50-A: [Spice shop sample?] = FREE CLOVE
59-A: [Improvised beds at an all-night diner?] = BOOTH CAMP
What’s going on? Each of these nonsense phrase derives from a base phrase into which a letter has been inserted — dead center for each, which turns out to be the key:
ROLLMOVER
HOTPALATE
ICERAGE
FREECLOVE
BOOTHCAMP
This middle letters spell MARCH, leading to George Eliot’s (pen name for Mary Ann Evans) 1872 novel Middlemarch.
81 solvers submitted “Little Women,” idea being that the surname of the sisters in the book is March. As joon points out in comments at Fiend, “Little Women” was too close for comfort, though technically not correct:
Fair point, but for a Week 1 I should’ve excluded this possibility with a qualifier like “novel with a one-word title,” as one solver suggested. So in the spirit of Week 1 generosity I felt we had to take Little Women.
That quibble aside, just about everyone liked this Week 1 puzzle, so thanks to DAB for filling in!
On to Week 2. Uh-Oh, look at that title! If you don’t know, “the Week 2 Curse” at MGWCC is the weird propensity for Week 2 puzzles to be way, way tougher than what they should be. Hopefully I’ve avoided it this time around…
THIS WEEK’S INSTRUCTIONS:
This week’s contest answer is a two-word, eleven letter lament that you may utter if you miss this meta.
Good luck!
–Matt