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LAST WEEK’S RESULTS:
Title: “Costume Change” (original) and then “Anybody Want a Refill?” (hint)
Prompt: This week’s contest answer is a common 5-letter Halloween costume.
Answer: CLOWN
Correct entries: 135 overall, of which 25 were solo solves
Frighteningly tough one for Halloween, even with the hint I sent out; only Jangler had fully grokked the meta after 24 hours (a handful of others had gotten there via educated guesses after getting close to the main idea).
Intended solving path:
1) Notice that the grid is divided into three non-contiguous sections: a northwest and a southeast, separated by a southwest-to-northeast central area.
2) Notice that there is one non-symmetrically-placed black square in the grid (in the northwest section, to the right of CHEX) that breaks the symmetry and must have some reason for existing.
3) From the “5-letter Halloween costume” prompt, be thinking of 5-letter entries, and observe that there are 19 of them in the grid — 10 in the central area, but only 9 in the center.
4) From the “Refill” prompt in the new title, remove those 10 central fives and replace them with nine fives from the outside areas. There’s only one way they fit, since they connect to the rest of the fill on that central area; when you’re done, CLOWN magically appears across the central 5 on the grid, and that is our contest answer.
Fair enough with the “Anybody Want a Refill?” title, especially for a Week 4 on Halloween (is that a rule that Halloween Week 4s should be extra-tough? Should be…). BUT, how were solvers supposed to to get the idea with the original title?
Answer: yeah, it was tough, and maybe too tough. Right on the the line, and I must admit the Halloween-can-be-tougher idea is one of the factors that made me go with the more difficult title before the Saturday hint. I thought the “5-letter” prompt would nudge solvers to look at 5s, and the non-contugious grid pattern would hint at the refill more than it did once you’ve noticed the nine 5’s outside the center and the ten 5’s within it. Fortunately it’s an online puzzle so I was able to send out the new title which made the meta perfectly fair (though still far from easy).
I just now realized that Mikey G also got it exactly as I’d planned. Posting his comment at Crossword Fiend in full here:
You get my random thoughts, in real-time, haha.
1. Bizarre grid. What’s up with all those squares? And then I realize, “OH YEAH NOT CONNECTED.”
2. 5-letter Halloween costume, so clearly something with “5.” Early ideas include CLOWN, FAIRY, and GHOST, and the latter simply can’t be (can it???).
3. Note the asymmetry as well: this prevents an extra 5-letter word in NW (or maybe adds one in SE). So something’s up with that.
4. There are 4 5-letter entries in NW, 5 in SE, and 10 (5 each way) in the middle. That middle 5-by-5 chunk seems suspicious. Let’s try stacking it:
CUTUP
WANTS
DINGO
AERIE
SHRED
Yeah, nothing.
5. So we have 9 entries “outside” the center and 10 inside it. Do we match up one to each word in the center and see what remains?
6. Title: Changing costumes. Changing initial letters? Superimposing these in certain places?
7. Just saw SHREK in the middle perhaps? (Tough metas make me go “OH GRRR.” Ogre. That was terrible, moving on.)
8. Deleting the entire grid. Retyping it. Changing a letter? SHRED to SHREK, AERIE to EERIE, and so forth. Nothing much – CANID is kind of weird too, and that won’t give us anything. That 5-letter reminder in the meta prompt needs to have something to do with these 5 letter words. Hmmm.
9. That semidupe FOGUP/CUTUP. I don’t like that. Do I “superimpose” FOGUP on CUTUP…and then FOGUP and can connect with FROST going down…FROST to SHEET. WAIT A MINUTE. We are supposed to replace that “five-by-five” grid in the middle with all the other five-letter words elsewhere in the grid.
10. I SEE C*O*N IN THE MIDDLE. I’M NO CLOWN. I THINK IT’S CLOWN. YES IT IS.
Someone else can do it better than I can, haha. But basically, replace the middle 5-letter words in the center (there are 10) with the other 9 5-letter words elsewhere in the grid (some of the words, such as FOGUP and SHRED, lock in what needs to occur). When you do this, the obligatory 10th word that must form, CLOWN, appears across the middle, the meta answer.
My clown opens up doors for me. It was a nice jester!
Well that makes me feel a little better — at least two solvers grokked it all pre-hint! Sure they were Jangler + a guy who writes a regular meta himself, but still…
Anyway, let’s move along. Time for a Week 1:
THIS WEEK’S INSTRUCTIONS:
This week’s contest answer is a nation in the news.
Solve well, and be not led astray by words intended to deceive.