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LAST WEEK’S RESULTS:
Title: “Seeing Double”
Prompt: This week’s contest answer is a five-letter word.
Answer: TWICE
Correct entries: 449 overall, of which 396 were solo
Lovely Week 2/5 from Malaika Handa last week. One of my favorite meta types, the SAD puzzle (Simple And Difficult). It’s right there in front of you, but so tricky to spot, like a camouflaged butterfly. Don’t miss Joon’s epic last-minute save.
Remove all the double letters from the five long acrosses and you’re left with contest answer TWICE. Usually I say a puzzle qualifies as SAD if you can describe the mechanism in two sentences, but here we only needed one! Love it. As did solvers:
docison says:
Really well done, Malaika! So nice I solved it twice!
eisense says:
love her style. What fresh clues and fills!
Agreed, and you an find more of that here.
pannonica says:
Thanks, as always! Thanks, as always!
glasser notes:
Wow, that set of themers would have been highlights of a themeless despite the strong constraint they follow!
Alex Bourzutschky says:
Remarkably tight meta for a budding constructor. This would surely be in at least the top 25% for your metas! I appreciated the creative cluing as well. Thank you for giving her this platform– a real win-win-win situation.
Agreed on all counts, though even 25% is underselling it.
And finally, Paul Yee quips:
LIKE THE META, MALAIKA H.!
Yielding the E, of course.
Big thanks to Malaika for the puzzle, and note that I will return the favor by writing the 7×7 for her site on September 11th of this year. I’ll link to a reminder then; read an interview with Malaika about her 7×7 project here.
THIS WEEK’S INSTRUCTIONS:
Today’s puzzle is Week 3 of 5 in July. NOTE: Due to the delayed post, the contest deadline this week is noon ET on Wednesday, July 21st.
Instructions:
This week’s contest answer is a six-letter word.
Solve well, and be not led astray by words intended to deceive.