LAST WEEK’S RESULTS:

Title: “Stay Cool”
Prompt: This puzzle’s meta answer, which is 12 letters long, is something you might do (to me) if you don’t like this meta.
Answer: THROW SHADE AT, found by 190 solvers, 100 of which were solo solves

Quite a SAD (Simple and Difficult) meta. Step one: solve the damn grid, which was a toughie! Especially in that center, where our glorious SUN central rebus square shone (inside the entries GETS UNDER and RUNS UNTIL).

But then what? Clearly a lot of stress on that central part of the grid, which isn’t wide-open at all but still necessitated the atrocious entry ATYM ([San Francisco software company)].

But feature not bug, since it may have prompted solvers to look at the diagonals, which were key: stretching out from the SUN in the directions of NW, NE, SE, and SW, we find four three letter trees: ASH, ELM, OAK, and YEW. Interdasting, but now what? Well, the title is “stay cool” and we’re clearly dealing with trees, so how about we look for some shade? And given the position of our Sun, the shade would logically be in the three squares extended outward from our ASH, ELM, OAK, and YEW. In clockwise order, they are THR/OWS/HAD/EAT, or contest answer THROW SHADE AT.

jcraw says:

Once I figured out “Sun” in the center (which took a surprisingly long time since “runs til” seemed to work on its own), I knew it had to be “throw shade at”, and was ready to submit without seeing the mechanism. But then I saw the trees emanating from the center and the letters just beyond and went from wanting to throw shade at you to the opposite feeling. Very nice meta!

Megan Amram writes:

Funny red herring: I first thought this puzzle was about hats, because EBERT is an anagram of BERET.

Dammit! You just ruined the BERET puzzle I had planned for next week. Maybe I’ll do something about fezzes instead.

Philip Chow was not fooled at all:

FUN puzzle yay! – with the sun in the middle and the 4 trees, i knew to immediately look at the shadows!!

And finally, Brainbow says:

Either this was an easy week 4, or I was on the right wavelength.

It’s the second one, Brainbow!

And now let’s switch gears with a Week 1 of 5, typically the easiest category of puzzle in the MGWCC canon. Let’s see how we all do…

THIS WEEK’S INSTRUCTIONS:

Today’s puzzle is Week 1 of 5 in May. No instructions given here since there are no-instructions solving options available.

Good luck!
–Matt