LAST WEEK’S RESULTS:

Title: “What Kind of a Person…?”
Prompt: This week’s contest answer is one of the 25 largest cities in the Southern Hemisphere.
Answer: SYDNEY, AUSTRALIA, found by 328 solvers, 265 of which were solo solves

What kind of a person…would solve meta-crosswords?? You and others like you! And me…

Last week’s challenge began with five long theme entries:

17-A: [Kinshasa is on it (3)] = CONGO RIVER
23-A: [They play the Chicago Blackhawks tonight] (2) = WINNIPEG JETS. The Jets scored two goals in the third period to stage a 2-1 comeback victory. I’m not saying that happened *because* they were featured in last week’s MGWCC, but I’m not saying it didn’t, either.
37-A: Eldest child of a Spice Girl and a soccer superstar (1) = BROOKLYN BECKHAM. Sounds like a Dickens character. With so many characters in each book you have to give them names that stand out, like “Brooklyn Beckham”.
54-A: [Flowering ornamental plants] (4) = APPLES OF PERU
62-A: [It features a proa (that ship you see in crosswords) and a coconut tree] (5) = FLAG OF GUAM

Now what? We’ve got a geographic place name in each entry, so, with a nudge from our title, let’s look at the demonym for each:

Congo –> CongoLESE
Winnipeg –> WinnipegGER
Brooklyn –> BrooklynITE
Peru –> PeruVIAN
Guam –> GuamANIAN

Looks promising, since these demonyms are all different from each other. Next step: find a grid entry that uses the letters in one of these, plus another letter (anagramming needed in some cases). In top-to-bottom grid order (see solution grid above) they are:

ITE –> SITE, yielding the S
GER –> GERI, yielding the I
LESE –> LEEDS, yielding the D
VIAN –> NAIVE, yielding the E
ANIAN–> NARNIA, yielding the R

That gives us SIDER. What Southern Hemisphere city takes that suffix to form its demonym? Contest answer SYDNEY, Australia, found by 328 solvers, where a local is known by the mellifluous name of “Sydneysider”. Not a commonly-known term in the States so many solvers had to Google it.

DJB writes from the meta answer:

As a Sydneysider, it would be embarrassing to miss this one!

Magoo says:

What a great city to celebrate

Jenithaca writes:

First solo solve. 🙂

Of many to come, I hope!

Matt M. writes:

Rough grid or not, I loved this puzzle. Going to show it to my Guam-obsessed (and geography-obsessed) 7-year-old now…

And finally, Mikey G quips:

Along came Sydney and sat down be sider!

And now we’re on to Week 3 of 4 in October…

THIS WEEK’S INSTRUCTIONS:

This puzzle’s contest answer is a six-letter adjective that I hope you’d apply to this meta.

Good luck!

–Matt