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LAST WEEK’S RESULTS:

Title: “This & That”
Prompt: This week’s contest answer is a four-letter word.
Answer: PAIR
Correct entries: 405 overall, of which 369 were solo solves

A perfect 5-week month! Go me! Correct answer totals (overall/solo) were 593/578, 563/535, 405/369, 222/136, and 142/27. That’s just about right for a 5 Weeks.

OK, OK…so maybe I didn’t quite get them in the correct *order*…but time is merely an illusion, right?

Aiming for a Week 2.5 since that’s what we were missing, and the grid came with four ampersands pre-placed in the quartet of long entries. They were:

19-A: [German literary movement] = STURM & DRANG. Translation: “Storm & Stress”

37-A: [1963 Kurosawa mystery based on an Ed McBain novel] = TENGOKU & JIGOKU. Translation: “Heaven & Hell”

63-A: [1830 Stendhal novel] = LE ROUGE & LE NOIR. Translation: “The Red and the Black”

87-A: [Cigar maker since 1882] = GARCIA & VEGA. Translation: Surnames of course; can’t find a meaning for Garcia, but Vega means “field.”

But you didn’t need any of those translations to uncover the answer! Instead, translate each ampersand to the relevant language and see what happens to the crossing word:

6-D: [Less interesting] = BL(AND)ER, but becomes BL(UND)ER if you use the German “und”

40-D: [India’s ___ Islands] = (AND)AMAN, but becomes (TO) A MAN if you use the Japanese “to”

51-D: [Bruce Lee’s son] = BR(AND)ON, but becomes BR(ET)ON if you use the French “et”

83-D: [Michael of “Little House on the Prairie”] = L(AND)ON, but becomes L(Y)ON if you use the Spanish “y”

Last step: Find the clue in the grid that could satisfy each of these four new entries:

BLUNDER = [Embarrassing mistake] at 30-A, answer PRATFALL
TO A MAN = [Without dissenters] at 32-A, answer AS ONE
BRETON = [One of the Celtic languages] at 55-A, answer IRISH
LYON = [French city] at 11-A, answer REIMS

The first letters of those entries spell contest answer PAIR, found by 405 solvers.

Jed says:

My daughter joined me in solving this one. She got a REAL thrill when we grokked it!

Heather Kennedy writes:

In 2023, I will get aroUND TO ETYmological studies of new Scrabble words.

And Meta – World Peace says:

Thanks for welcoming us into 2023 with that recalibration, Matt!

Huge thanks to everyone for another puzzling year here at MGWCC. Got some exciting changes set for our 15th anniversary this June — the site will be expanding in ways I think you’ll find fun — so don’t touch that dial! And thanks for playing for as long as you have, whether you started last week or back in 2008, or anytime in-between.

THIS WEEK’S INSTRUCTIONS:

No instructions given here since there are no-instructions options this week.

Solve well, and be not led astray by words intended to deceive.