MGWCC #802

 

hello and welcome to episode #802 of matt gaffney’s weekly crossword contest, “Animal Instinct”. i tried this puzzle without the instructions and it wasn’t that hard, although the grid was pretty chewy with unusual entries. what was the theme? there were no overt theme entries, unless you count {Pathetically low-quality, like a few entries in this grid; but nature is both imperfect and ruthlessly efficient, so you might say this is actually thematic} SAD at 1-across. but a whole lot of answers contained the string DAM:

• {Cheese that’s good in quiche} EDAM.
• {Samuel ___ (brewery)} ADAMS.
• {Matt or Johnny} DAMON. hoo boy, there are a lot of other possible surnames for famous matts and johnnys.
• {Classic Pontiacs} GRAND AMS.
• {The Grande ___ Potomac (nickname for reality TV star Karen Huger)} DAME OF. never heard of this person, and turning up my nose at the awkward 6-letter partial.
• {“How ___ I at this!?”} BAD AM. pretty not bad at all, actually, but i can understand the constraints on the grid.
• {“Really helping me out here, bro!”} U DA MAN. this took me a while to piece together (and then parse), but i actually kind of like this entry.
• {Heavy metal band formed after Pantera broke up} DAMAGE PLAN.
• {“My Cup Runneth Over” singer, 1967} ED AMES. i know him only from crosswords, but back when i started doing crosswords regularly in the late 00s, i felt like he came up (full name) a whole bunch.
• {Fruit often used in preserves} DAMSON PLUM.
• {Japanese toy that sharpens dexterity} KENDAMA. never heard of this.
• {Largest city in the Netherlands, for short} ADAM. i guess a-dam, short for amsterdam? anyway, ADAM is just a common enough entry as the name, but it would dupe ADAMS.
• {___ Touch (car-detailing service in Orlando, Fla.)} DA MAGIC. even worse and even longer partial!
• {Korean for “burden”} BUDAM. hoo boy. this is a korean word that i do not know, and i’m willing to bet i know more korean than 99% of you.
• {Salvatore ___ (noted Italian-born crooner)} ADAMO. never heard of this guy either.
• {Makes slightly wet} DAMPS.

so yes, a lot of that is pretty clunky, but the overall effect is that the grid has a DAM constructed across it, separating the two opposite corners by blocking off the whole positive diagonal. given “animal” in the title, i suspect we are meant to be submitting beaver, as that is the animal known for building dams. indeed, the instructions tell us that This week’s contest answer is the animal you must become to solve this puzzle. that might be overstating it, but sure.

i have mixed opinions about this meta. i appreciate, at least on a theoretical level, matt’s creativity in turning the grid into a beaver dam. i do wish the DAM entries had been smoother—there were a whole lot of obscurities required. at no point was the grid unfillable, even when two obscurities crossed each other, because the diagonal DAM pattern was quite evident after a while. but it was still kind of a slog even though the grid was only 10×10 and asymmetric.

that’s all i’ve got. how’d you like this one?