MGWCC #884

MGWCC crossword 2:48 
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hello, and welcome to episode #884 of matt gaffney’s weekly crossword contest, a week 2 puzzle called “It Has a Certain Ring to It”. this week’s puzzle challenged us to name a famous American, although it turned out to be plenty solvable without the instructions. what were the theme answers? this wasn’t obvious at first glance, but littered throughout the grid were instances of the trigram LEO:

• {Melissa who’s a judge on “MasterChef: Dessert Masters”} LEONG.
• {Eventually solve} PUZZLE OUT.
• {Cheering words} OLE OLE.
• {Bonaparte or Dynamite} NAPOLEON.
• {Add to the chorus of criticism} PILE ON.
• {Politically centrist} MIDDLE OF THE ROAD, aptly spanning the central row of the grid. it’s also the title of the greatest variety cryptic ever, by patrick berry.
• {Diet with lots of fish} PALEO.
• {Redundant statement} PLEONASM. i love this word (and its inflected forms).
• {___ County (jurisdiction near Minneapolis)} MCLEOD. never heard of this—i would have needed a highlander clue to know this answer without the crossings.
• {97-year-old English jazz singer} CLEO LAINE. did not know she was still alive! (or, for that matter, that she was english.)
• {City of northern Spain} LEON.
• {___ of Alexandria (early Christian martyr)} LEONIDES. another unfamiliar one—LEONIDAS, the spartan king from the battle of thermopylae (played by gerard butler in 300) is a lot more famous, but the E was necessary here as it crossed the THE in MIDDLE OF THE ROAD.
• {___ the gods (RuneScape drink)} ALE OF. woof, this is a rough partial.
• {Bread spread} OLEO.

that’s 11 acrosses and 3 downs for a total of 14 LEOs, making the answer quite obvious (and timely): it’s newly elected pope LEO XIV, a.k.a. robert prevost. the “certain ring” of the title presumably alludes to the fisherman’s ring, traditionally worn by the pontiff.

fourteen is a whole lot of LEOs to cram into one little 15×15 grid, and matt acknowledges as much with the clue and answer at 1-across: {Like some of the fill in this grid, though I hope you’ll dig the meta anyway} WEAK. i did dig the meta anyway—it felt like more of a week 1 difficulty rather than week 2, but there was no pope yet back in week 1, and there was an impressively quick turnaround between when the white smoke billowed from the sistine chapel chimney on thursday afternoon and when this meta went live on friday at noon. impressive work—we’ve seen matt perform wonders like this before, but that doesn’t mean we should become desensitized to how remarkable it is.

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