MGWCC #95

crossword 7:14
puzzle 0:16

i’ve been swamped with actual work, so i haven’t yet had time to blog the puzzle. grid and meta solution after the jump, and i’ll chime in with a full post later today. in the meantime, feel free to comment about the puzzle.
update: the full post is up.
okay, i’m back and i’m here to blog the 95th episode of matt gaffney’s weekly crossword contest, “Silence is Golden.” the instructions were pretty simple: This week’s contest answer is a famous character from children’s literature. the four 15-letter answers in the grid spelled out four “clues” to the meta answer:

• MEAT CUT IN ROASTS = RUMP
• AFRICAN GOLF STAR = ernie ELS
• PINBALL MISTAKES = TILTS
• RELATIVE BY BLOOD = KIN

the charade works out straightforwardly: RUMP+ELS+TILTS+KIN = RUMPELSTILTSKIN, which is a fairly appropriate answer for a contest in which we are trying to guess somebody’s name, no? i’m not sure what to make of the puzzle’s title. in the fairy tale, old rumpy would have got what he had coming (the queen’s first-born child) if he had just kept his mouth shut instead of singing his name while dancing madly about his cabin in the mountains, but honestly, who hasn’t fallen for that one a few times? i know i have. i’m not sure if that’s all there is to it, though. does the gold have anything to do with anything? i guess rumpelstiltskin got the queen to promise him her first-born in the first place by spinning straw into gold. is that what the allusion is all about?

one other tie-in i just noticed: the grid’s central down answer is GRIMM, clued as {Fitting literary surname}. it’s a fitting name because their tales are rather grim, but it’s doubly fitting as a clue because the meta answer is a grimm fairy tale character! that’s terrific.

anyway, this was an easy meta, but the crossword was pretty tough. it’s a gorgeous grid, though, with a word count of 72 (low enough to be a freestyle) despite the constraint of 60 theme squares, while still being very clean. nice long answers LOSES TRACK, HOBO CAMP, CHAINSAW, and ANNABEL LEE (my starting point in the grid). i had the toughest time in the bottom section:

• {Southeastern Conference sch.} is LSU, but it could have been a bunch of other things.
• {Humble TLA} is IMO. TLA is “three-letter acronym,” and i guess i didn’t work out while solving that “humble” refers to the sentiment expressed by the acronym, rather than the acronym itself. IMO (“in my opinion”) is so humble that there’s an IMHO version with humble explicitly added in.
• LVOV, the {Historic city of the USSR}, is here, too. just a few days ago on LACC, there was a discussion of four letter cities in the former USSR, and i mentioned RIGA, KIEV, ORSK, and OREL but forgot about LVOV.
• something feels off about the clue {Top} for BRA. i think it’s legit, but usually when the answer is more specific than the clue, there is a qualifying adjective thrown in. like {Large dog} for HUSKY is fine, but {Dog} for HUSKY seems insufficient. what do you guys think? either way, it’s a ridiculously vague clue.
• i like the clue {High ways} for OVERPASSES. and {Get the blood circulating} works for MOVE AROUND, but that took me some time to unravel, too.

other than that area, i moved through the puzzle pretty quickly despite the long unclued answers and the low word count. some clues of note:

• speaking of humble acronyms, {Acronym sort of like TANSTAAFL} is GIGO. appropriately enough, the answer stands for “garbage in, garbage out,” but i did eventually manage to parse that horrible acronym in the clue: there [ain’t?] no such thing as a free lunch. (i was perhaps aided by my familiarity with gary huckabay’s coinage TNSTAAPP, “there’s no such thing as a pitching prospect.”) at least, i think that’s what’s going on. i’m a little hazy on the connection between that and GIGO, though.
• {Dell champions them}? why, PCS, of course. if you were thinking of the dell champion crossword books, you were on the wrong path. however, {Crossword constructor Lynn} LEMPEL is in the grid. crosswords about crossword constructors! is that fair? many crossword fans certainly know her name, and we’re all crossword fans here, so why not?
• {Spring in France} is not PRINTEMPS (which gets a heck of a lot less grid play than ÉTÉ), but the ÉVIAN natural spring that lends its name to the bottled water. i loved this clue.
• {“American Idol” Season 8 finalist ___ Desai} is ANOOP. i don’t watch idol, but i remembered this guy’s name because amy posted about him on her blog 9 months ago. not about him being on idol, but about him doing crossword puzzles (and maybe reading this blog), and how ANOOP could be a new fill possibility. i don’t know how i dredged up his name, but there you have it: welcome to the big time, ANOOP.
• i did not know: {Peter Tosh’s “___ Africa”} is MAMA and {#1 hit possibly about David Bowie’s wife} is ANGIE. i assume these are both songs, but not within my ken.
• the baseball players were more up my alley. both {2009 World Series MVP} hideki MATSUI and {1977 AL Cy Young winner} SPARKY lyle were gimmes. the P of SPARKY gave me CAPELLA, the {5th-brightest star in the Northern Hemisphere}. this one comes up every so often, and it differs by only one P from CAPPELLA of “a cappella.”
• {She married her brother} sounds scandalous, but it’s just HERA. there was a lot of that going around.
• the {Count in Lemony Snicket books} is OLAF, but if this were a real OLAF clue, it would read {Evil count in Lemony Snicket books with a group of similarly evil associates who he refers to as his “theatre troupe”}.

okay, that’s all from me. sorry for the late post, and we’ll see you next week with the easy first MGWCC of april.