LAST WEEK’S RESULTS:

Title: “Starting Directions”
Prompt: This puzzle’s contest answer is an eight-letter word pertaining to travel.
Answer: RAILROAD, found by 277 solvers, of which 192 were solo solves

Which way do you want to take this? All eight ways, as it turns out. Their internal meta-compass directed successful solvers last week to eight entries in the grid. These eight began with one of the four cardinal direction abbreviations (N, S, E, W) or one of the four ordinal compass points (NW, NE, SW, SE), and were the only eight entries in the grid starting with these eight letters/bigrams. Like so:

N: 45-A: [High times?] = NOONS
S: 52-D: [Dependable] = SOLID
E: 61-D: [Mouse-spotter’s shout] = EEK
W: 9-D: Words before “mandamus” or “habeas corpus” = WRIT OF
NW: 56-A: [Nigerian-American scholar who wrote 2005’s “Farmers, Traders, Warriors, and Kings] = NWANDO ACHEBE
NE: 38-A: [Stone tool] = NEOLITH
SW: 6-D: [Awesome, back in the day] = SWELL
SE: 20-A: [Rescue equipment, sometimes] = SEARCHLIGHT

Now what? Use your sense of direction! From the first letter of these eight directions in the grid, go one square in the relevant direction to extract another letter. For example, From the S in SOLID, go south (i.e. down) one square to get an O. For the two-letter ones, use the first letter (I thought that would be the most intuitive way to handle these). For instance, from the SE in SEARCHLIGHTS, go one square SE (i.e. down and right) to get the R (from PRY).

Do all eight of these and you’ve got the letters, in grid order, DARIAROL. That’s not a thing, right? But draw a little 3×3 box, black out the center, and put those eight in the relevant spot on the compass, and read clockwise: you’ve got contest answer RAILROAD, found by 227 solvers.

Ed says:

Around the compass rose!

Mikey G comments:

I almost lost my train of thought, but I kept on track!

Danny K Bernstein says:

That’s the ticket!

A writes:

Loved this puzzle! And just to boast for a sec: I don’t write on Shabbat, which means that I frequently end up printing out the MGWCC on Friday afternoon and just trying to work it out in my head. I can often do that with a Week 1 or 2, but this was the first time I ever did it with a Week 4!

Ale M writes:

Nicely Exciting With Solving!

And finally, Brian Kell writes:

Fun fact I learned today! The Pennsylvania Railroad, once the largest corporation in the world, survives today as American Premier Underwriters, an insurance company in Cincinnati.

I love these convoluted company stories, like “It started with an 85-year-old lady making candy in her basement in 1873…and today you know it as MERCEDES-BENZ!”

RICK KENNEDY’S METAS:

Constructor Rick Kennedy has joined the ranks of meta-writers! This is one of his recent favorites:

https://crosshare.org/crosswords/YeskrpHj4jevxI7p7KbG/the-one-that-got-away

And his archive is here:

https://crosshare.org/rakennedy16

Check them out after you’ve blazed through today’s super-easy MGWCC Week 1 of 5!

THIS WEEK’S INSTRUCTIONS:
No instructions given here since there are no-instructions solving options this week.

Good luck!