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LAST WEEK’S RESULTS:
Title: “Stuff Your Pie Hole”
Instructions: This week’s contest answer is a breakfast food that would’ve made a good seventh theme entry.
Answer: BAGEL
There’s our missing Week 1 out of 5! We had a Week 2/5-level puzzle to start the month, but now we’ve course corrected and can blithely move on to Week 3/5 as if nothing untoward had ever happened.
Six theme foods populated our grid last week. In rising order of deliciousness they were:
45-A [*Cereal in a yellow box] = CHEERIOS. Nothing against you, Cheerios, but you are the sixth most delicious of these foods.
11-D [*Dessert in a special pan] = BUNDT CAKE. Fifth, though I’m not sure I’ve ever had bundt cake.
59-A [*Pasta whose name means “little pies”] = TORTELLINI. Good, but it’s hard to compete with the top three.
27-A [*One of Homer Simpson’s favorite foods] = DOUGHNUT. Only third? Some may disagree.
35-D [*There’s sometimes a random one in an order of french fries] = ONION RING. But no one’s ever mad when this happens. Some place should start doing it on purpose, feature not bug.
17-A [*Cereal pitched by Toucan Sam] = FROOTLOOPS. No question. Although it is not the #1 cereal overall, a sacred space reserved for Golden Grahams.
What do all these have it common? They’re ring-shaped (or toroidal, to get technical about it). What breakfast food is missing? The BAGEL, found by 523 solvers. An additional 8 solvers were given credit for Apple Jacks, which is also an excellent toroidal cereal. And a special shout-out to solver pink1517, to whom I gave full credit for OATMEAL, since s/he had seen the ring-shaped foods and parsed the answer as O-AT-MEAL.
jowens says:
My 9-year-old daughter’s first meta solve!
Ed reminisces:
Or maybe a pineapple ring with a butterscotch Life Saver stuck in the middle? Just like mama used to make.
Dr M suggests:
1/26 Alpha Bits?
Or maybe 2/26, if you count the Q?
And finally, adamrosenfield goes way back:
Or maybe it should be called an EVERYWHERE BAGEL.
This week’s winner, whose name was chosen at random from the 532 correct entries received, is Andrew Cherry of Jersey City, N.J. In addition to a MGWCC pen, pencil, and notepad set, Andrew will also receive a 1-year subscription to Matt Gaffney’s Daily Crossword.
THIS WEEK’S INSTRUCTIONS:
This week’s contest answer is a five-letter noun.
Solve well, and be not led astray by words intended to deceive.