LAST WEEK’S RESULTS:
Title: “MGWCC #895 — “Use Your Head”
Prompt: This week’s 7-word contest answer is something meta-writers try to do every week.
Answer: PULL A RABBIT OUT OF A HAT, found by 185 solvers, 102 of which were solo solves
Awards)
If Lewis Carroll and Rube Goldberg had co-constructed a crossword, it might’ve looked something like this. The entire 19×20 grid only existed for this skeletal:
If you found that signal in the noise, you were good to go — but getting there was tricky! Our four long theme entries were clear enough by length:
3-D: [89-year-old English pop singer] = ENGELBERT HUMPERDINCK. Who, as joon pointed out, named himself after this guy.
5-D: [Heaviest living bird native to North America] = TRUMPETER SWAN
49-D: [Eponymous founder of America’s third-largest grocery store chain] = BERNARD KROGER
12-D: [Title role for Warren Beatty] = BENJAMIN “BUGSY” SIEGEL
Clearly our theme entries, and with their downward orientation instead of the usual across, it’s a little eye-trickier to spot the next step: each of these conceals the name of a famous fictional rabbit:
ENGELBERTHUMPERDINCK = THUMPER, from “Bambi”
TRUMPETERSWAN = PETER, from the Beatrix Potter books
BERNARDKROGER = ROGER, from the 1988 movie “Who Framed Roger Rabbit” (which, annoyingly, doesn’t end with a question mark)
BENJAMINBUGSYSIEGEL = BUGS, famed Fudd foe.
Now what? Four clues happened to mention hats, which is a lot of headwear for one grid:
51-A: [Topper named for a region of France] = BRETON
69-A: [Military headwear] = SHAKO
82-A: [Artist’s cover, often] = BERET
108-A: [Summer headwear made of straw] = BOATER
Why so many hats? Well, look at where they’re placed: each one is horizontal, using the last letter of each bunny in the grid. Animate the grid in your mind and you might say you’re PULLING A RABBIT OUT OF A HAT, wizardry often required when solving (or indeed, writing) a meta.
Shout-out to Gridmaster J for this beautiful illustration:
Only running one solver comment today, but it’s a doozy:
AB says:
Haha, I feel so silly. I’ve owned many rabbits of the last few years. Alas, we are down to 1 (poor Sandy passed earlier this month), but we will shortly adopt another 2. So I identified the rabbits, and spent forever thinking WHITE (in WHITES) and BENJAMIN were also there, and that I missed a secret 7th. Given the “head” in the title, I looked at the words crossing the _tops_ of the rabbits! So RURAL or ESTD for Thumper, etc.. Also trying to find bunny ears, or hopping things, or teeth things. It took a long while before I realized that “headwear” appeared twice, and I had to look up Breton to realize it was not just a shirt but a hat too. And even with that, it took me over an hour to realize the prompt was 7 WORDS, not letters. But I am happy that you have managed to pull 895 rabbits so far; here’s to another 105!
105 More Rabbits To Go! Now *that* sounds like a Lewis Carroll book title. Or maybe Dr. Seuss.
Who’s ready for a Week 1? As always, remember that there are no-instructions, no-downs, and no-instructions + no-downs solving options available.
THIS WEEK’S INSTRUCTIONS:
No instructions provided here since there are no-instructions solving options available.
Good luck!
–Matt