MGWCC #883

MGWCC crossword 1:19 
meta 0:01

hello, and welcome to episode #883 of matt gaffney’s weekly crossword contest, a week 1 puzzle called “Living on Boroughed Time”. this week’s was a midi-sized (11×11) puzzle that i was able to solve without the instructions, as the title was revealing enough to suggest what answer was being sought. what were the theme answers? no answers were longer than others in the grid, but five different answers were all plural chess pieces, clued in non-chess ways:

• {Wearers of shining armor} KNIGHTS.
• {Sells for cash, maybe} PAWNS.
• {Some members of the clergy} BISHOPS.
• {Tut and Arthur, for two} KINGS.
• {Some Eurasian crows} ROOKS.

together, these comprise all of the pieces on a chessboard except for the QUEENS (the one that wouldn’t fit neatly into a symmetric crossword grid), so that must be our answer. the title suggests that the prompt is going to be “name one of the boroughs of new york city”, and i’m so sure of it that i didn’t actually look at the instructions. as it happens, queens is the borough i’ve visited most recently, as my last trip to new york (for lollapuzzoola last august) ended at the billie jean king USTA national tennis center in flushing, for day 1 of the main draw of the US open.

this is about the easiest possible chess meta, certainly easy enough for a week 1 with no instructions. and for all that matt (a fairly serious chess devotee) loves to put chess clues into his puzzles, i can’t actually remember the last time that chess served as the meta mechanism in the mgwcc. it’s definitely happened before—a mere 500 or so weeks ago, matt ran mgwcc #285 during the 2013 world championship match, in which wunderkind challenger magnus carlsen unseated incumbent vishy anand. i’m sure there must have been some chess meta more recent than that one, but i can’t readily recall it.

that’s all from me this week. how’d you like this one?