LAST WEEK’S RESULTS:

Title: “Happy Early New Year!”
Prompt: This week’s contest answer is a 12-letter phrase.
Answer: DOUBLE-DATING
Correct entries: 562 overall, of which 514 were solo solves

17×17 grid, and lots of double-letters jumped out from it. Upon further inspection, all of them (on the acrosses) were double MMs, XXs, and IIs:

5-A: [Best Director winner for “The Silence of the Lambs”] = Jonathan DEMME
15-A: [Latin American chain with over 20,000 convenience stores] = OXXO. 13,000 of those are in Mexico alone.
21-A: [American version of a character encoding standard] = US ASCII
23-A: [“That’s a pity,” casually] = BUMMER
36-A: [Sci-fi series whose stars included Tim Curry and Malcolm McDowell] = LEXX
37-A: [Joel who’s been an NBA All-Star for the past four seasons] = EMBIID. A Cameroonian name, if you were wondering.
44-A: [Blocks of writing that may begin with “Lorem ipsum”] = DUMMY TEXTS
52-A: [Disobeyer of Dr. Fauci] = ANTIVAXXER
57-A: [Japanese gate] = TORII
76-A: [Ginormous] = IMMENSE
84-A: [Maker of Assure and Therappe shampoos] = NEXXUS
85-A: [Super-smart people, jocularly] = GENII

And then at the last across (89-A) we have: [The forthcoming new one is found four times herein] = YEAR.

So there is 2022 in Roman numerals, MMXXII, four times in those twelve entries. The first letters of those twelve entries spell out our fitting contest answer, DOUBLE-DATING, since that date consists of three double letters.

I’m fairly stingy with accepting alternate answers, but this week I was compelled to accept not one but two of them. Both were highly fitting: MIXED DOUBLES, submitted by 18 solvers, touches all the bases (to mix sports metaphors there): the MIX part of “Mixed” uses our three Roman numerals, and they’re doubled in the grid, and that is indeed a 12-letter activity. A number of these solvers were floored when they saw their entry marked incorrect, which is a good sign that you’ve got a strong case for an alternate answer.

The other one, submitted by 12 solvers, was DOUBLE MATING. MUMMY TEXTS sounded plausible at 44-A instead of DUMMY TEXTS, and MBA works plausibly as well as DBA for the down clue [44-D: Letters after an entrepreneur’s name]. A number of these were highly experienced solvers who, as with the MIXED DOUBLES crowd, were surprised to see their answer marked incorrect.

Is DOUBLE MATING a thing? It sounded like a chess thing to these solvers, which it isn’t really, but again, plausible enough on all three counts there. You can have double-check in chess, and you can mate someone with a double-check, but it wouldn’t really be called “double-mating.” But again, too plausible on all three of those counts not to mark as correct. A curious couple of cases!

FIREBALL NEWSFLASH KICKSTARTER:

Just 48 hours to go in the Fireball Newsflash Kickstarter, helmed by the great Peter Gordon. He writes:

Just two days left to sign up for next year. Go here:

https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/petergordonpuzzler/2022-fireball-newsflash-crosswords

If you’ve already signed up, Kickstarter will know and won’t let you pledge twice. If you want to adjust your pledge by getting an autographed book, the world’s longest crossword puzzles, or a Fireball Crosswords lanyard, baseball cap, or bottle opener, click on “Manage your pledge,” then “Change your pledge,” then select SUBSCRIBER – THE PUZZLES WITH ADD-ONS, click the “Pledge $14” button, and choose what add-ons you want.

Very highly recommended. Especially the baseball cap (I own one!).

THIS WEEK’S INSTRUCTIONS:

This week’s contest answer is a five-letter word.

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