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LAST WEEK’S RESULTS:

Title: “Consonantal Drift”
Prompt: This week’s contest answer is a five-letter interjection I hope you won’t utter when you get the meta.
Answer: HMMPH
Correct entries: 172 overall, of which 86 were solo solves

Small but tough meta last week. Title was “Consonantal Drift” — and note that “consonantal” is a real word!

Insight #1: with consonants (and the maybe vowels) on the brain, realize that there are five three-letter entries in the grid comprised totally of vowels: in grid order they are OUI, UAE, AAA, EAU, and IOU. Insight #1.5: realize that each of those begins with a different vowels, which bumps it up into “probably meta-related” territory. And let’s reorder those into alphabetical order as AAA-EAU-IOU-OUI-UAE.

Insight #2: Each time a clue begins with a seven-letter word, that words displays a CVCVCVC letter pattern, using the five all-vowel three-letter entries as its V’s. Like so:

26-A: [Pegasus was her son] = MEDUSA, with the EAU as the vowels in “Pegasus”
46-A: [Sudafed may ease them] = HEADACHES, with the UAE as the vowels in “Sudafed”
50-A: [Caracas greeting] = HOLA, with the AAA as the vowels in “Caracas”
10-D: [Winokur of “Hairspray”] = MARISSA, with IOU as the vowels in “Winokur”
27-D: [Botulin, for example] = PROTEIN, with the OUI as the vowels in “Botulin”

Insight #3: That yields MHHMP, which isn’t an exclamation…but rearrange them in AAA-EAU-IOU-OUI-UAE order to get contest answer HMMPH!, which I hope no one actually uttered upon getting it.

We can’t call it a “theme” since that has a specific meaning in crosswords, but I hope you liked the “motif” here of beginning with all vowels in the first step (AAA, EAU, etc.) then moving to a mix (Caracas, Pegasus, etc). then moving to all consonants for the finish (HMMPH).

FIREBALL AND FIREBALL NEWSFLASH CROSSWORDS:

The great Peter Gordon has two crossword campaigns you may wish to get in on: His extremely tough Fireball Crosswords, which includes a number of metas throughout the year, and his Fireball Newsflash crosswords, which are his weekly current events puzzles. Both very highly recommended.

http://www.fireballcrosswords.com/subscribe.htm

https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/petergordonpuzzler/2023-fireball-newsflash-crosswords

THIS WEEK’S INSTRUCTIONS:

This week’s contest answer is a sport.

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