MGWCC #845

 

hello, and welcome to episode #845 of matt gaffney’s weekly crossword contest, “Week 2 of 5”. for this week 2 of 5 puzzle, the instructions told us that we were looking for something you won’t need to solve this meta. what were the theme answers? four grid-spanning answers were all enumerated (5, 5, 5):

• {“Take your time”} HASTE MAKES WASTE.
• {Canada’s nickname, with “The”} GREAT WHITE NORTH.
• {WNBA MVP of 2015 and 2019} ELENA DELLE DONNE of the washington mystics. who can forget when erik agard won the ACPT in dominant fashion while rocking the delle donne jersey during the finals?
• {Santana hit of 1970} BLACK MAGIC WOMAN.

this puzzle would basically be unsolvable without the title to suggest the next step, which is taking the second letter from each 5-letter word to get AAA, RHO, LEO, and LAO respectively. each of those can be an alternate answer to a different clue in the grid:

• {Letters for excellent hitters and pitchers} MLB, or AAA one level below the majors. i note in passing that the inclusion of this answer entailed a slight asymmetry in the grid, with the extra black square to the left of MLB instead of the white square in the symmetrically corresponding square 9. there’s no particular reason there couldn’t have been a symmetric black square in square 9, but it didn’t bother me one way or the other.
• {Greek letter} ALPHA, or RHO.
• {Zodiac sign} TAURUS, or LEO.
• {Language of Southeast Asia} HMONG, or LAO.

taking the first letters of these four answers gives MATH, which, depending on your definitions, we may or may not have needed to solve the meta. i would argue that even counting to five and taking the second of five things constitutes math, but kindergarten-level math comes fairly automatically to most of us, so much so that we don’t even realize we are doing math.

that quibble aside, this was a lovely meta. the title, which is also the calendar position of the meta, pretty much says it all, and it’s pitched at a perfect level for a week 2 of 5. i really enjoyed the meta.

the crossword itself was somewhat less enjoyable—the fill really creaked in places, with awkward weird plurals like SHHS, NOES, and IBMS; partials like IN AN, ENTER A, I ROLL, and A GAL; unusual foreign word SENF; foreign partial DORMA; and some fairly recherché vocabulary like EROSE, ORMOLU, and STATAL. a certain amount of that in any given grid is generally unremarkable, but there was rather more of it in this one than i was expecting. i also learned a new word (MIDWIT), and i kind of wish i hadn’t because it’s not a very nice word. i don’t expect i’ll be using it in everyday speech.

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