Meta: 3 minutes
Greetings from Downunder! It’s benchen71 again, with another selection from Ariadne’s Crossword Library. The March puzzle is entitled “Blood Lines” and was constructed by Emma Oxford. The meta prompt: The meta answer is a novel.
Looking at the 15×15 grid, I note that it uses horizontal symmetry. As I was completing the grid the entry 55A CARMILLA, a Gothic novella about a vampire, stood out with its clue referencing Dracula, mainly because I had to google it since it was unknown to me.
However, once the grid was filled in, the first thing I thought to try was blood type letters: ABO. And there do seem to be quite a lot of these, but perhaps not more than the average grid. I spent a minute looking for diagonal lines of these letters, finding a long one in the upper right corner.
But are there any themers in this grid? CARMILLA might be one. Oh! 21A THECOUNT (from Sesame Street) is also a vampire, as is 29A SPIKE (never watched an episode of the TV series of Buffy but I vaguely recall seeing the movie that came before) and 46A VIAGO (Taika Waititi’s character in “What We Do In The Shadows” – good movie and a fun TV spin off series, too). How did I not notice this pattern while filling in the grid?
Given the title’s reference to “lines” let’s look at the two entries in each of these rows:
- 20A {Discussion} CHAT / 21A {Mathematically minded “Sesame Street” character} THECOUNT
- 26A {Get-together} MEETING / 29A {1990s TV character whose look was inspired by Billy Idol (and who claims it was the other way around)} SPIKE
- 44A {Sit-down} SESSION / 46A {Taika’s “What We Do In The Shadows” role} VIAGO
- 52A {Conversation} TALK / 55A {Eponymous character in a Gothic novella which predates “Dracula” by 25 years} CARMILLA
Which can only mean that the meta answer must be INTERVIEW WITH THE VAMPIRE, the novel by Anne Rice [is it just a coincidence that A and R are the first and last letters of the grid?] which was made into a movie starring Tom Cruise, Brad Pitt and a memorable Kirsten Dunst. And with that Ariadne’s Library is done for another month. I want some more! But I’m just going to have to wait until April…
Thanks Ben! 74 correct answers and only 2 incorrect submissions this month. A and R being the first and last letters of the grid I do think was a coincidence… but actually I can’t say that with 100% certainty because one of my test solvers provided considerable help with the fill in both of those sections, and maybe they were slipping some hidden messages in there that I didn’t notice! Another test solver is responsible for the title, which I think is way better (and, based on your solving path, much more helpful!) than what I originally had, which was just “Please Come In.”
Good write-up. It’s “Kirsten Dunst,” though, not “Dunstan.”
Fixed! I may have to blame autocorrect for that one. ;-)