LAST WEEK’S RESULTS:

Title: “One More Time”
Prompt: This week’s contest answer is a one-syllable word.
Answer: CLONE, found by 233 solvers, 151 of which were solo solves

Double letters in clues was the raison d’etre for last week’s challenge. Precisely 21 clues contained a double letter, with no repeats. Like so:

[Public health expert Aaron Buseh’s focus] = EBOLA
[Where to adopt a tabby] = SPCA
[Half a soccer field, roughly] = ACRE
[How a politician may suddenly resign] = IN DISGRACE
[Steelers general manager Khan] = OMAR
[Welsh winger Giggs] = RYAN
[Order from a court, as to withhold evidence] = WRIT
[Stadium where Torii Hunter played some games] = SHEA
[Hajji’s land, in poetry] = ARABIA
[Quick points for Tim Henman or Tom Okker] = ACES
[Willy Wonka prop] = CANE
[Not as common] = RARER
[Spinnaker, for example] = SAIL
[“The Disappearance of Shere ___” (film shown at the 2023 Sundance Film Festival)] = HITE
[User of terms like et. seqq, v., and SCOTUS] = ESQ.
[Patricia in “The Passage”] = NEAL
[Word after test or vacuum] = TUBE
[They divvy up the dough after litigation] = SUERS
[Powwow holders] = TRIBE
[It merged with Exxon in 1999] = MOBIL
[1985 movie title often used by cruciverbalists in puzzles] = ELENI

So we’ve got 21 of the 26 letters of the alphabet represented in these clues; which ones are missing? In alphabetical order they are F, O, R, T, and Y. That spells “forty,” which probably isn’t a coincidence…but “forty” isn’t a one-syllable word, so let’s look at the entries there.

We’ve got CLONE on the Across and CORE on the Down, each of which is exactly one syllable. How to disambiguate? Let’s look at the *answers* to those 21 clues above. In grid order they spell out (see diagram above by Gridmaster J) ACROSS IS THE META ANSWER, leading us to CLONE, found by 233 solvers. Idea being you add FORTY to ACROSS IS THE META ANSWER, of course, pointing to CLONE.

Sheepish admission: a number of solvers mentioned that they’d guessed CLONE over CORE because it fit the title well. I only realized after publication that I’d originally had those two 40- answers as CLONE and COPY to confuse guessers, since each of those fits “One More Time” to a T (or a C, as it were). But then while writing the puzzle I forgot about COPY completely and wound up replacing it with CORE, which doesn’t really help there. Normally I would’ve highlighted COPY in the grid while constructing but somehow didn’t (or maybe I did but then changed it later in confusion). So that nuance was lost and lucky guessers got a 99% chance instead of a 50-50. Alas, what might have been…

THIS WEEK’S INSTRUCTIONS:

No instructions given here since there are no-instructions solving options this week.

Good luck!

–Matt