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: “Wave Hello!”
Prompt: This week’s contest answer is three letters long.
Answer: “S.O.S.”

A 21×21 for Week 1? I’m not sure we’ve ever done that before, but I had some 16-letter entries that were good and wouldn’t fit into a 17×17, and then I tried a 19×19, but it was the 21×21 size that turned out to have a perfect fit. And so it was.

Our theme entries were:

23-A: [Position for James Madison and Hillary Clinton] = SECRETARY OF STATE
39-A: [Condiment at Subway] = SWEET ONION SAUCE
55-A: [Fanned] = STRUCK OUT SWINGING. The better way to strike out.
76-A: [Flying out of the gate] = STARTING OFF STRONG
92-A: [What Michael Corleone had to do at the end of “The Godfather”] = SETTLE OLD SCORES
107-A: [Shady pitcher] = SNAKE OIL SALESMAN

That’s six S.O.S. entries, found by a Subscription-Era record 682 solvers! The previous record was 655, so we blew past that. The pre-Subscription record was 723. Someday!

Sara N writes:

Didn’t need help on this one!

Nobody did — zero incorrect entries submitted! But Kaille says:

That’s what I was saying last week.

Magoo labeled the big grid:

Surprisingly Outsize Stuff

Similarly, mjsandler liked this one:

Sweet opening stumper!

But Mima didn’t dig the big grid so much:

The print is small. I did use a magnifying glass!

LLinNC is back after a break:

I haven’t had time to solve one of your puzzles in months! Thanks for welcoming me back gently.

sps writes:

Dang. My initials are so close…

And finally, Meta – World Peace says:

My wife is a SONYA and laughed at 50-A this week.

Refreshing your memory: the clue was [Name whose fourth letter can also be an i or a j]

PATREON UPDATE:

We’re up to 945 solvers who’ve made the jump to Patreon! Join them here. Reminder that all refunds for January, February, March, and April are now done. If you have months left on your subscription and haven’t received a refund for any of those months, please e-mail me at crosswordcontest@gmail.com and I’ll take care of it.

Note that May and June refunds will be given during the first two weeks in June. So if you see a charge from me for May and/or June and still have time left on your subscription, don’t worry — you’ll be refunded then.

THIS WEEK’S INSTRUCTIONS:

This week’s contest answer is a two-word phrase.

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