LAST WEEK’S RESULTS:

Title: “MGWCC #914 — “Sorry, Wrong Category”
Prompt: The 2025 Nobel Prize Ceremony is on Wednesday! This puzzle’s contest answer is a well-known Nobel Prize winner.
Answer: PEARL S. BUCK, found by 476 solvers, 405 of which were solo solves

The 2025 Nobel Prize ceremony took place on Wednesday. Watch it here:

Four curious long entries populated our grid:

17-A: [Nobel category our answer *didn’t* win in, despite their surname] = ECONOMICS
11-D: [Category our answer did win in] = LITERATURE
25-D: [What one-half of our answer’s name is] = PRECIOUS GEM
62-A: [What one-half of our answer’s name is] = ONE DOLLAR

Which Literature Nobelist fits the bill here? The Good Earth author Pearl S. Buck, found by 476 solvers. The S stands for “Show me the money!” a fact which is not widely known. OK, it actually stands for “Sydenstricker.”

Meta — World Peace says:

The Good Earth was my mom’s favorite book.

And Jeff G. says:

Hey Matt, Nice find! It’s been a few weeks since I’ve been able to grok and submit. I’ll take it, even if it is a week 1.

PETER GORDON KICKSTARTER:

Friend of MGWCC Peter Gordon has a Kickstarter up for the 2026 Edition of his Fireball Newsflash Crosswords. 20 currents events crosswords delivered to your inbox throughout 2026. Very fun stuff.

GUEST CONSTRUCTOR PUZZLE:

Our guest constructor today is Paul Coulter. Paul is a novelist, retired biology professor, and nearly perfect solver of Week 1 metas/nearly sure-fail solver of Week 4 or Week 5 metas. He says: “Every last weekend of the month (unless Matt decides to give us a gift), I seem to try 99 dead ends, without somehow stumbling onto the one real route.”

Let’s see if you can stumble onto the route Paul set out for you on this one. Good luck!

THIS WEEK’S INSTRUCTIONS:

This puzzle’s contest answer is a quality you’ll need to solve it.