MGWCC #868

 

hello, and welcome to episode #868 of matt gaffney’s weekly crossword contest, a week 3 puzzle called “Creature Feature”. the instructions this week ask for an animal you may need to imitate to solve the meta. okay, what are the theme entries? i don’t know for sure—i was busy mystery hunting for the last three days, and i’m just trying to catch up now, with an hour to go until the deadline. so let’s solve this as we go. there are four long answers arranged in a pinwheel pattern:

• {Take all of} MONOPOLIZE.
• {Snitching type} TATTLETALE.
• {Cause trouble to repeatedly} EXASPERATE.
• {Bully} INTIMIDATE.

okay, i think i see what’s going on here—each of these clues could also be answered with the name of an animal: to {Take all of} is to HOG, a {Snitching type} is a RAT (or perhaps a stool PIGEON, but let’s stick with RAT for now), to {Cause trouble to repeatedly} i think is to BADGER, and to {Bully} is to COW. in addition, there are two crossing 7s in the center of the grid, {Flap your gums} CHATTER which might also be … YAK (?), and {Copy} IMITATE which could also clue APE. curiously, this last one dupes a key word from the instructions—this might be intentional and thematic, or it might be accidental.

okay—i think i see the next step. each of these six animals can be found hidden in the fill, if you add one letter and (in some cases) anagram. i’ve only spotted five of them, but i’m sure the sixth one is hiding somewhere! so far, i’ve got:

• {Tom Sawyer’s ride} is a RAFT, which is RAT + F.
• {Black bird} is a CROW, which is COW + R. interestingly, i believe CROW is the only animal explicitly in the grid, unless you could YETI or the names of specific humans like muhammad ALI and tea LEONI.
• {Anjou, e.g.} is a PEAR, which is APE + R.
• {Funny Danny} is KAYE, which is YAK + E.
• {Person who dresses in dark colors} is a GOTH, which is HOG + T.

this looks like it’s going to spell FERRET (reading from top to bottom in the grid) even though i haven’t found the one that matches BADGER + E… and this actually makes me think that BADGER isn’t the right animal for {Cause trouble to repeatedly}. i do see LEONI in the relevant section of the grid which is LION + E, but LION can’t really be a verb that fits the EXASPERATE clue. oh, perhaps it’s DOG + E = DOGE. yeah, that works.

so i guess i have successfully FERRETed out the meta, although i’m not sure i would call it “imitating a ferret”. (and now we know that the IMITATE dupe wasn’t explicitly clueful, so i’m guessing it was accidental.)

anyway—nice meta. not as hard as some of the ones i spent the weekend banging my head against, but this is a clean and clever construction. the difficulty feels just right for week 3 out of 5, and i appreciated that i was able to tackle it post-hunt. thanks as always, matt!