LAST WEEK’S RESULTS:

Title: “Two Out of Three Ain’t Bad”
Prompt: a five-letter word somewhere on this page (the printed-out puzzle’s page).
Answer: THREE, found by 215 solvers, 133 of which were solo solves

Another toughie in what’s turning out to be a tough month! Let’s check out our theme entries:

17-A: [“We’re in This Love Together” singer, 1981] = AL JARREAU
27-A: [Approximately 90% of all primetime TV characters, it sometimes seems] = ER DOCTORS
37-A: [Person you shouldn’t have trusted] = SNAKE IN THE GRASS
51-A: [French savior] = JOAN OF ARC
60-A: [Common website page] = CONTACT US

The common thread here, which stood out far less prominently than I had expected, is that each of these contains a two-letter word whose first letter, in alphabetical order throughout the entries, is one of the five main vowels. They are:

AL
ER
IN
OF
US

Pretty much gotta be the right path since they’re all in alpahbetical order, which is a 1 in 120 shot. But now what?

Answer: notice that if you double the second letter in each of these, you’ve still got a clueable entry. Like so:

AL –> ALL
ER –> ERR
IN –> INN
OF –> OFF
US –> USS

Gotta be the right track again since it’s unlikely they’d all work. Now what?

Answer: find a clue in the puzzle that could satisfy these five. Like so:

AL –> ALL –> TIDE [Classic laundry detergent brand] at 1-A
ER –> ERR –> HIT [Affect baseball statistics, one way] at 45-A
IN –> INN –> RESORT [Vacation destination, often] at 12-D
OF –> OFF –> EERIE [Alarmingly not quite right] at 65-A
US –> USS –> ENS [Abbr. commonly used in the American Navy] at 33-A

The first letters of those entries spell our contest answer THREE.

THIS WEEK’S INSTRUCTIONS:

This puzzle’s contest answer is an adjective describing a late, great crossword writer who would’ve turned 70 in a few weeks. Invoke his name to solve the meta!