Title: “The Odd Squad”
Prompt: This week’s contest answer is a Best Actress Oscar winner of the 1980s.
Answer: CHER, found by 236 solvers; also accepted MERYL STREEP (see below), submitted by 18 solvers

SAD Week 2 Curse-ish puzzle last week; with 254 entries, was more of a Week 3, so we’re dialing it back to Week 2-level today and then we’ll return with a proper Week 4 seven days from now.

Six famous-ish names on the long Acrosses:

17-A: [Madonna’s co-star in “Desperately Seeking Susan”] = AIDAN QUINN
21-A: [Canadian golfer who won the 2003 Masters] = MIKE WEIR
33-A: [“Blade Runner,” “Dune,” and “No Way Out” actress] = SEAN YOUNG
43-A: [Supermodel who was a guest judge on “RuPaul’s Drag Race”] = KATE UPTON
56-A: [“Spamalot” co-creator] = ERIC IDLE
63-A: [Best Actor winner for 2017’s “Darkest Hour”] = GARY OLDMAN

Not the most super-famous list you could come up with, so must’ve been chosen for a precise reason. With names, I was hoping solvers would jump to “initials” sooner or later, which look like this:

A.Q. M.W. S.Y. K.U. E.I. G.O.

A couple of observations: 1) no repeated letters in these six, and 2) all six main vowels are accounted for. That’s a little odd, and speaking of odd, look again at our title, “The Odd Squad”: These are 12 of the 26 letters of the alphabet, and look at their alphabetical placement:

1- A
2- B
3- C
4- D
5- E
6- F
7- G
8- H
9- I
10- J
11- K
12- L
13- M
14- N
15- O
16- P
17- Q
18- R
19- S
20- T
21- U
22- V
23- W
24- X
25- Y
26- Z

These are 12 of the 13 odd-numbered letters; the only one unaccounted for is C, making mononymous CHER our contest answer, found by 254 solvers.

I also accepted MERYL STREEP, submitted by 18 solvers, who found an unlikely (1.57%) occurrence: In each of the six names, the initials are in alphabetical order: AQ, MW, SY, KU, EI, and GO. This was completely unintentional and unnoticed by me until solvers pointed it out! The only two-initial winner of the 1980s with this same feature is Meryl Streep with her M.S. Wild!

JEFF CHEN PANGRAMS:

Two weeks ago I challenged solvers to compose a pangram that included both “Squeezy” and “Jeff Chen,” in honor of Jeff’s new word game.

Our winner, with a mere 37 letters used to make an almost-totally-normal-sounding relevant sentence, is JanglerNPL, who submitted this beauty:

Expert kids love Jeff Chen’s Squeezy Web Game

A mere 37 letters, no forced syntax and relevant to the subject. Bravo. JanglerNPL will receive a MGWCC pen, pencil and notepad set as a just reward.

THIS WEEK’S INSTRUCTIONS:

This week’s contest answer is a two-word phrase often spoken on the Las Vegas Strip.