MGWCC #926

MGWCC crossword 3:14
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hello, and welcome to episode #926 of matt gaffney’s weekly crossword contest, a week 4 puzzle called “Name Game”. the instructions this week tell us that we’re looking for a famous British author. intriguingly, the byline is “Matthew Clark Gaffney” instead of the usual “Matt Gaffney”. that must be a hint. anyway, what are the theme answers? there are six goofy 10-letter acrosses, each of which is a pair of 5-letter words:

• {It runs around a Russian summer house} DACHA LEDGE. this clue doesn’t have the customary final ?, but it’s clearly a theme answer. (some constructors, myself included, prefer to avoid a complete-sentence clue construction that ends with a ?.)
• {Chocolate substitute that sat around too long?} MOLDY CAROB.
• {Macho types dressed in frilly lace?} JABOT HE-MEN.
• {Group of witches headed by an English automaker?} ROYCE COVEN.
• {Those who determine who gets the most slices of breakfast food?} BACON FATES.
• {The clever words and actions of Mr. Youngman?} HENNY WILES.

so, what’s going on? many of the 5s look like they could be one-letter-off modifications, maybe from famous author’s names (like ROYCE/JOYCE, HENNY/HENRY) but some of them don’t—i’m looking at DACHA, which … actually, wait. that could be SACHA, and maybe BACON-BARON, and COVEN-COHEN. all right, so three-named people, i guess all with (5, 5, 5) enumeration. i see ROYCE-JOYCE CAROB-CAROL FATES-OATES too. yeah, and HENNY-HENRY JABOT-CABOT LEDGE-LODGE.

that accounts for 9 of the 12 words in the themers. what’s left over? MOLDY, HE-MEN, and WILES. okay, that one is early tennis star HELEN WILLS MOODY.

okay, what now? we’ve mixed and matched the words from different theme answers, so there’s no ordering on the four trinomial people used in the theme. but there is still an ordering of the theme answers, so maybe we’re looking at the changed letters in order:

• DACHA LEDGE -> SACHA LODGE
• MOLDY CAROB -> MOODY CAROL
• JABOT HE-MEN -> CABOT HELEN
• ROYCE COVEN -> JOYCE COHEN
• BACON FATES -> BARON OATES
• HENNY WILES -> HENRY WILLS

the letters on the right spell out SOOLCLJHRORL, which is nothing. on the left, they spell DELBJMRVCFNE, which is even nothinger. hmm. i guess this isn’t the extraction, or at least not the ordering. what if we put the letters into trigrams by name?

• SACHA BARON COHEN gets SRH from DCV.
• JOYCE CAROL OATES gets JLO from RBF.
• HENRY CABOT LODGE gets RCO from NJE.
• HELEN WILLS MOODY gets LLO from MEL.

yeah, i don’t think this is it, no matter how you reorder the trigrams.

hmm. what else could we do? we have a comedian, an author, a politician (actually two politicians, one from the late 19th century and one from the mid-20th), and a tennis player. none of them is a british author (SBC is british, but not an author; JCO is an author, but american). i guess we could just be looking for another (5, 5, 5) person who fits the prompt. oh, ideally even one whose name we might be able to create by changing one letter in three of the 5-letter fill answers… though that’s honestly quite a lot to ask, with six 10-letter themers already constraining the grid quite a bit. all of the 5s in the grid are either downs that cross two or three themers, or acrosses that sit directly above or below a theme answer (or both), so there’s very little wiggle room to squeeze any more constraints on the 5s in the fill.

anyway, are there any such people? hmm, maybe! there’s diana wynne jones, who is a british fantasy/sci-fi author of some note. my kids read some of the books in her chrestomanci series. bizarrely, WYNNE is hidden backwards in HENNY WILES, though i think that must just be coincidence, given how constrained the theme mechanism already is.

at this point i’m definitely leaning towards submitting diana wynne jones because i think it’s a pretty good answer that fits the prompt and makes sense with the theme mechanism. but i’d love to find a stronger click. i know the 5s in the grid are constrained, but the 5s in the clues are not, and if i could find (say) “tiana”, “lynne”, and “bones” in the clues i’d be delighted. but i can’t.

hey, what’s going on with the clue {1 and 5, say (abbr.)} NRS? is that a non-standard abbreviation for “numbers”? and if so, are we meant to take a special look at the 1st and 5th letters of these names, maybe? if so, i’m not seeing what that does.

well, i’m out of time, and i guess i didn’t get this one (unless i did?). let me know what i missed!