Title: “Time to Reorder”
Prompt: This week’s contest answer is what it often takes for puzzlers to solve tough metas.
Answer: ETERNITIES
Correct entries: 282

Three long theme entries last week, all comprised of a number:

17-A: [Silver site] = FIVE THIRTY-EIGHT. Not a mine, but the political prognosticator Nate Silver’s website fivethirtyeight.com.

38-A: [When Kennedy defeated Nixon] = NINETEEN-SIXTY

62-A: [Constantly] = TWENTY-FOUR SEVEN

First insight, easier to notice if you write these out as numerals, is that every digit from 0 to 9 is represented exactly one time here:

538
1960
247

So that’s probably not a coincidence. What now? We’ve extracted this ordering of the ten digits, and with “re-order” in the title that could be important. Well, the numbers 1-9 are found on the top row of most crossword grids, so let’s look there:

1 R
2 I
3 T
4 E
5 E
6 I
7 S
8 E
9 N

That doesn’t spell much, and where are we supposed to get the 0? Well, 1-Across was strange, as you may have noticed during the solve: [Overused, as a phrase] was the clue, and the answer appeared to be RITE, which doesn’t make sense. But that would be a perfectly fitting clue for TRITE, and aha! Let’s add a 0-square there (see solution grid at right, showcasing my Paint talents) and put the T in. So now we’ve got:

0 T
1 R
2 I
3 T
4 E
5 E
6 I
7 S
8 E
9 N

Now what? Let’s re-order them according to the order of those numerals in our theme entries:

5 E
3 T
8 E
1 R
9 N
6 I
0 T
2 I
4 E
7 S

They spell our contest answer, and I hope too many eternities weren’t spent deducing it.

One regret: I wish I had noticed not to make the 10-square a T, since some solvers didn’t grok the 0-square idea but short-circuited the meta anyway by assuming the 10-square held the zero. This isn’t really logical (10 is two digits, not just the zero, and it leaves the weird 1-A clue unaddressed) but I wish I’d thought to make the 10-square something not a T.

2019 and 2020 PRIZES UPDATE:

Wanted to have the 2019 prizes out by Halloween, but they’re still en route to me. But they’ll go out as soon as I receive them all.

The good news is: I also ordered the 2020 prizes at the same time, so even though 2019’s is taking a few ETERNITIES to reach winners, 2020’s prizes will go out super-fast. This should re-balance the scales of my prize-sending karma.

GUEST HALLOWEEN META:

Prepare to be scared! Here’s a Halloween puzzle by meta-master Chris King, a self-described “trivia guy” who lives in Columbia, South Carolina. You can follow him on Twitter at @ckingsc. Chris has also written two books of crosswords, which you check out here and here.

I was especially excited when Chris sent me this one since he was the October 2015 winner of my Crossword of the Month for an outstanding meta, and a nominee several other times for lovely, complex metas (or quasi-metas) including this and this and this.

So good luck, and Happy Halloween from Chris and myself!

THIS WEEK’S INSTRUCTIONS:

A couple of trick-or-treaters are going around the neighborhood tonight, but they need a map to navigate the shortcuts and pitfalls of their quest. Who is this pair?