MGWCC crossword 2:18
meta 1ish 
[4.20 avg; 5 ratings] rate it
hello, and welcome to episode #924 of matt gaffney’s weekly crossword contest, a week 2 puzzle called “You’ve Seen This One”. i don’t know if the title (and indeed, the puzzle itself) is a tongue-in-cheek acknowledgment of matt reusing a theme last week that he had done before 8 years ago, but anyway, here we are. the instructions this week tell us that we’re looking for a well-known romantic comedy. what are the theme answers? it’s not the longest answers in this slightly undersized (13×13) grid; rather, it’s the fact that many clues in the grid are reused, and in close proximity:
- 1a {One of two colors in Bangladesh’s flag} GREEN.
- 8d {One of two colors in Bangladesh’s flag} RED.
- 9d {Four-letter state} OHIO.
- 10d {Four-letter state} UTAH.
- 18a {“Cheers” character} NORM.
- 21a {“Cheers” character} DIANE.
- 26a {Haunting instrument} HARP.
- 28d {Haunting instrument} OBOE.
- 38a {One of the EU’s 24 official languages} GREEK.
- 47a {One of the EU’s 24 official languages} DUTCH. i have been watching a whole lot of winter olympics, with lots of dutch on show (especially in speed-skating) and not a whole lot of greek.
- 52a {It’s taught in studios} ART.
- 56a {It’s taught in studios} YOGA. there is a very slight asymmetry in the grid here, as YOGA is symmetrically opposite GREEN in the grid, with one extra black square in the lower right to allow for a 4-letter word to be opposite a 5-letter word.
reading off the first letters of the answers in order gives GROUNDHOG DAY, the meta answer.
this is such a good meta. the execution is very clean, with the paired clues occurring near each other in the grid and in numerical order; you didn’t have to go hunting through the whole puzzle to find the pairs of clues, which would have been doable but more annoying. the answer is quite apt, too, with the premise of the film being bill murray’s character experiencing déjà vu as he relives the same day over and over. even the date (2/2) of groundhog day is central to the theme, as we have the theme clues marching two by two through the puzzle. about the only way it could have been improved would have been to run a week earlier, as the week 1 puzzle in february (and closer to groundhog day itself). it’s definitely easy enough to have been a week 1, too.
one thing we have seen before in this series is on the rare instances when matt has put out a relative clunker, he is almost always back with a vengeance the following week, and this is no exception: i loved, loved, loved this meta. a simple enough idea, but with flawless execution and a terrific punch line, this one will stand out in my memory as one of the best easy metas of the entire series.
how’d you all like this one?
Thanks, Joon — 409 correct entries this week. I was a little freaked out when nobody had gotten it but then both Jangler and e.a. got it at 12:04, then the next entry at 12:06, then 12:08…so a slow trickle but then the walls began to fall and a lot more people swarmed in!
I had thought this might be too easy for a Week 2, but it wasn’t. A solver’s eye tends to go clue-answer-next clue-next answer without really a good 5-10 scan of the page to see if there’s anything you might miss with that kind of solve. But the pairs were indeed a bit tough to suss out; not really something you’re usually looking for in a crossword.
Puzzle: MGWCC; Rating: 5 stars
Cute meta!
Cute meta!
This was pretty great…I echo everything Joon wrote except….I preferred it being this week and not the previous one. If it had come out right after 2/2, you would immediately think that was the answer and try to backsolve while doing the grid. But by waiting a week to Valentine’s weekend, it becomes one of a thousand potential rom-com answers and isn’t patently obvious while solving.