LAST WEEK’S RESULTS:

Title: “Word Find”
Prompt: “This week’s contest answer is a famous person with a 6-letter surname.
Answer: WILL SHORTZ, found by 221 solvers, 127 of which were solo solves

SAD (Simple and Difficult) Week 5 with which to round out the month of May. One major insight to discover and then it’s (mostly) off to the races, but tough to see! Step 1 was easy: notice that six theme entries use the same “Part of…”format:

15-A: [Part of TLDR] = READ. Too long, didn’t read.
42-A: [Part of WHO] = WORLD. World Health Organization.
48-A: [Part of EGOT] = EMMY. Emmy, Grammy, Oscar, Tony.
52-A: [Part of ROTFL] = FLOOR. Rolling on the floor laughing.
36-D: [Part of DKNY] = DONNA. Donna Karan / New York.
64-A: [Part of BOGO] = BOGO. Buy one, get one.

First solving instinct is to see if any of the unused words in each initialism/acronym can be useful elsewhere, such us swapping one out for another entry in the grid while still satisyfing its clue. That lead nowhere, though…so what now?

The key is to notice another such word hiding in the unused portion of the long-form of these initialisms/acronyms. Like so:

15-A: Toolongdidn’tread conceals “oolong” which satisfies 14-A: [Tea type] = SPICED
42-A: WorldHealthOrganization conceals “thor” which satisfies 74-A: [God associated with lightning] = ZEUS
48-A: EmmyGrammyOscarTony conceals “carton” which satisfies 27-A: [Common container] = RECEPTACLE
52-A: Rollingonthefloorlaughing conceals “lingo” which satisfies 72-A: [Local patois] = TONGUE
36-D: DonnaKaranNewYork conceals “anne” which satisfies 18-A: [Family member of Edith Frank] = OTTO
64-A: Buyonegetone conceals “eton” which satisfies 17-A: [Famed English prep school] = HARROW. Bizarrely, taking “tone” from Buyonegetone works as well, since HUE is in the grid clued as [Shade], again yielding the H. One of the strangest coincidences I can recall in the entire MGWCC series.

Only one famous person with that surname, our own WILL SHORTZ, found by 221 solvers. As you surely know, Will is recovering from a stroke earlier this year so keep sending good vibes towards the town of Westchester, N.Y. on his behalf.

DIS says:

Where there’s a will…

ASB says:

Lovely tribute. I’d be interested to know, from a constructing point of view, what snafu caused the initial delay then the last second delay.

Just underestimated (severely) the amount of last-minute wrangling that would be required to get the puzzle into shape. But wrangle I eventually did.

And David Stein writes:

This was a great month of metas! Thanks.

Not too bad, right?! However…

GUEST CONSTRUCTOR PUZZLE:

…I do need a week off after writing those last two puzzles! So pinch-hitting this week we have David Alfred Bywaters, who describes himself as “a recovering college professor who lives quietly in Chicago.” You may already be familiar with his fortnightly crossword site; Every other week he publishes an original crossword, and on off-weeks he recommends a Victorian novel.

Let’s see what our mysterious Chicagoan has in store for Week 1…

THIS WEEK’S INSTRUCTIONS:

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

Good luck!

–Matt