Title: “MGWCC #911 — “Change is Good”
Prompt: This puzzle’s contest answer is a 9-letter noun that I hope you’d apply to this crossword.
Answer: SENSATION, found by 255 solvers, 156 of which were solo solves

First of all, thanks to Gridmaster T for this stunner of a solution graphic! Beautiful.

Now, on to the puzzle: tiny little 9×9 grid, fittingly so since pennies are small, too. And now worth so little that we ain’t makin’ ’em any more! But there are 300 billion in circulation (!!) so I suspect they’ll be around for a while…

Anyway, what to do? Every penny has five words/phrases stamped on it:

IN GOD WE TRUST
LIBERTY
UNITED STATES OF AMERICA
E PLURIBUS UNUM
ONE CENT

There are occasional letters of other kinds on pennies, like a letter indicating where it was minted, but these five phrases are the ones on all pennies. So now what? Well, let’s cross each of those letters off of our grid and see what’s left! Do the eliminating and you’re left with contest answer SENSATION, assuming you picked the letters in the order in the graphic above! If not, you had to anagram. Also could’ve been ESTONIANS, I guess. Was Lincoln part Estonian? Probably not…

Anyway SENSATION appeared to many solvers as a pretty random answer word, but if you pronounce only the first syllable the joke will reveal itself…

ab says:

Estonians didn’t have a one senti coin before the Euro but Euro Cent coins are in use there now.

Qatsi says:

This grid IS NOT SANE!

And finally, KayW asks:

How on earth did you construct that?!

So I started with the idea, and naively began trying to fit those relevant 81 letters into the grid on Crossword Compiler. Seemed a bit tougher than I thought it’d be after a while, so I asked Consigliere his thoughts. “Use a Scrabble board,” he said, which sounded reasonable. But I couldn’t find one in the house (I have since located it, but too late). So I went for the nuclear option: emailing Frank Longo, who is a wizard at solving problems like this.

But it was far from trivial! It took Frank and his partner (Corey Kosak) over two hours to get the fill we used! Probably beyond human capability without computer assistance, so big thanks to those two guys for making this idea happen.

THIS WEEK’S INSTRUCTIONS:

This week’s puzzle is a guest meta by Patrick Berry. Prompt:

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