IMPORTANT NOTE: As of February 2020 MGWCC is available only to subscribers at my Patreon page. A subscription costs $3/month.

LAST WEEK’S RESULTS:

Title: “Big Deals”
Prompt: This week’s contest answer is a poker hand.
Answer: FULL HOUSE
Correct entries: 663

Five wacky theme entries, let’s take a look:

17-A: [Heckle an eccentric act off the stage?] = BOO ODDBALLS

26-A: [Get-together with soccer star Mia and actor Jon?] = HAMM MEETUP

39-A: [African insectivores who live in a Saudi city?] = MECCA AARDWOLVES

50-A: [Pack animals faithful to a certain brand of e-cig?] = JUUL LLAMAS

59-A: [Problem experienced while vacationing in the Pacific?] = HAWAII ISSUE

Distinguishing feature of these entries? Each contains a five-letter sequence consisting of one pair of letters and one threesome of another letter. That’s a FULL HOUSE in poker, found by 663 solvers…

…unfortunately, 69 solvers also missed this meta, which means it was too tricky for a Week 1. Most of these solvers submitted THREE OF A KIND, noticing the 3 in each entry but not the 2 beside it. If only, say, a dozen people had missed this, I could’ve said “Shoulda looked harder!” But when almost 10% of solvers miss a Week 1, that means it’s a problem with the meta.

And it’s too bad, since if I had teed this up properly as an unmissable meta we would have beaten not only the Subscription-Era record of 685, but also the pre-Subscription Era record of 723! Oh well — there’s always next month.

Also, note the Easter egg: the pair/trips that ends each 5-letter sequence spells DEALS (highlighted in blue in the grid above).

PATREON UPDATE:

986 solvers have now joined us at Patreon! Become one at the link.

THIS WEEK’S INSTRUCTIONS:

This week’s contest answer is a team in the National Football League.

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