MGWCC crossword 3:14
meta DNF 
[3.83 avg; 6 ratings] rate it
hello, and welcome to episode #930 of matt gaffney’s weekly crossword contest, a week 4 puzzle called “Creature Feature”. this week’s puzzle instructions ask for a 9-letter cartoon character. okay. what are the theme answers? if there are 9 of them, i sure don’t know what they are, but there are four long acrosses, so let’s start there:
- {Slurpee drinker’s fear} BRAIN FREEZE.
- {City you can see from Mount Homan} DAZAIFU JAPAN. never heard of this city, or indeed, this mountain.
- {Pre-purchase warning} CAVEAT EMPTOR.
- {Tough-to-gauge factor} UNKNOWN RISK.
so, what’s going on with these? i have no idea—they don’t seem to have anything in common apart from being two-word phrases. the title suggests animals, but i don’t see any animals lurking in or suggested by these theme answers.
then again, if we’re supposed to get a 9-letter answer, maybe there are lots of themers elsewhere. looking through the rest of the grid, i noticed this clue: {One who may tweeze brachial cells} ER DOC. that is a weird-ass clue—way too specific for what it needs to do. and it looks like “tweeze” is echoing the FREEZE of BRAIN FREEZE.
oh, “brachial” is also doing work: tweeZE BRAchial hides a ZEBRA, and now i see that if you reverse the word order, FREEZE BRAIN contains ZEBRA as well. okay, we’re onto something:
- FREEZE BRAIN has the ZEBRA in the ER DOC clue.
- JAPAN DAZAIFU has a hidden PANDA. yep, there’s another PANDA hiding in {A skip and a hop, say} PAIR.
- EMPTOR CAVEAT has an ORCA, as does {Game for casino lovers} POKER.
- RISK UNKNOWN has a SKUNK, and this is probably the least odorous way to discover a heretofore undetected SKUNK in your midst. there’s another one in {Field where you may ask unkind questions} ECON. this was another clue that was weird on the first pass—what is “unkind” doing here? well, now i know.
great. so, uh, what now? we need to get a 9-letter answer somehow from these four pairs. (i very much do not think there are five more of these in the grid—for one thing, there aren’t five more two-word theme answers you can reverse like this.) presumably we are supposed to do something with ER DOC, PAIR, POKER, and ECON. and while it’s not impossible that we’re meant to do something with the leftover bits not used to hide the animal, i sort of doubt we are, because those theme answers are already quite constrained by the fact that they need to hide the animal.
well, okay—all of ZEBRA, PANDA (giant panda, anyway), ORCA, and SKUNK are famously black and white. is this relevant? it seems relevant. if you were going to select four animals for black-and-whiteness, it’d be these four; if you were going to select four animals for ease of hiding their names across the end and beginning of a two-word phrase, it wouldn’t be these four. so is there something else we’re supposed to be doing with black and white?
i guess it could just be a famously black-and-white 9-letter cartoon character. there’s pepe le pew, but he’s a skunk and it’s weird to that SKUNK is one of the four animals. i don’t like that. it’s also a little unsatisfying if there’s no more specific click than “he’s 9 letters and black and white”.
well, how about this: there are 9 clues in the puzzle that start with B or W:
- {Brother of George} JEB. this one, right at 1-across, definitely got me—i filled in IRA right away.
- {Bulletin board runner, maybe} SYSOP.
- {Big bird’s nest} AERIE.
- {Brian on stages} ENO.
- {Wish you could take that one back} ERR. this one also got me—i filled in RUE. hey, are we maybe supposed to be coming up with alternatives for all of these? this is actually not a very good clue for ERR at all.
- {Blows, like a volcano} SPEWS. ERUPTS, i guess?
- {Way over yonder} AFAR.
- {Border or a sort} STATE LINE.
- {“Whoooops!”} YIPE.
i suspect that we are supposed to be doing something with these 9 clues, because there are exactly 9 of them, and some of them (notably AERIE and ERR, maybe AFAR) look like they were written slightly contrivedly to start with B or W. the most obvious thing to do is take the first letters of their answers, but that gives JSAEESASY. if you put them in numerical order instead of clue order, it’s JESASSYAE, which isn’t better.
is there anything to this idea of alternate answers? IRA and RUE, sure. ERUPTS is not the same length as SPEWS so that’s less compelling. the others don’t really have anything nearly as specific to pin an answer among a large space of possible answers.
while we’re thinking about B’s and W’s, i do have to point out BOB WEIR at 4-down, a member of the grateful dead. i don’t know that this answer has anything to do with the meta, though.
it feels like i must be close here—i have had at least two major aha moments on this meta, maybe three if clues starting with B/W is correct. and yet i have not arrived at a 9-letter cartoon character.
my hail mary answer is going to be … BETTY BOOP. why not? she’s black-and-white, ish, and has two names starting with B.
well, what’d i miss?
This puzzle’s contest answer is a 9-letter cartoon character-Black and White (feature of creature)+CARTOON=Pepe LePew-went for the skunk even though it was one of the four.
As Joon noted, the first letters of the grid entries for the clues with the black and white animals in grid order was PEPE. That was enough for me to get to Pepe Le Pew.
In grid order of those four key entries with the clues hiding the black-and-white animals:
38D: PAIR
44A: ER DOC
54D: POKER
62D: ECON
Their first letters spell out PEPE. So PEPE LE PEW it is.
Jerry was the lead vocalist on “Touch of Grey”.
Of course, Bobby has (had) been singing it since Jerry died so I suppose that answer is ok.
You were close with this observation:
“ER DOC, PAIR, POKER, and ECON” – Those 4 first letters spell PEPE, leading to Pepe Le Pew. (along with the black and white)
I always loved the Warner Brothers cartoon universe, especially Roadrunner and Wile E Coyote
I put in PEPE LE PEW on that same theory (1st letters of ERDOC, PAIR, POKER, and ECON in grid order), but that doesn’t seem to use BRAINFREEZE et al. I feel like I missed something.
Puzzle: MGWCC; Rating: 5 stars
The four black and white animals in the four across theme answers are also concealed (as subsets) of the four clues that give you the four grid answers that let us spell Pepe.
Yes, I see that. But I don’t see how we’re meant to use that to get the answer. A person could spot the hidden animals in the clues and find PEPE that way, without ever noticing the animals are also hidden (sort of) in the themers. I also am not seeing how the back-to-front hiding in the themers [BRAinfreeZE, etc.] plays into it.
Puzzle: MGWCC; Rating: 4 stars
Exactly.
After finding 4 animals hiding between the words in 4 bizarrely phrased clues (tell me you didn’t notice that insane clue for 62D), I took the first letters, in grid order, of the entries associated with those 4 clues, and spelled out PEPE. Given that the prompt called for a nine-letter cartoon character, the answer had to be Pepe LePew.
The fact that the same 4 animals were also hidden within the four long entries proved irrelevant, since I had already found them in the clues. The fact that all four of the animals were famously black and white also proved irrelevant (and I’m still not even sure how that fit into the metanism.) The fact that the four entry letters spelled out “Pepe” meant, that, for a second week in a row (yes, I know, last week was a different author), the answer was extrapolated from the extracted information. The inclusion of “skunk” within the four hidden creatures was more unhelpful than helpful, in that I had to wonder if there was something more to do with pandas, orcas and zebras.
As a Week 4 puzzle, finding 4 animals hiding within the clues seemed a reasonable challenge, and the double concealment (in the grid, as well as the clues) proved oddly redundant if you came in via the clues. I can, however see how those solvers who found the four in the grid, first, could then be pointed to 4 specific clues. It just didn’t work the other way.
And I was really confused by having 3 more animals, all of whom, seemingly irrelevantly, were also black and white.
To quote Joon:
“…there’s pepe le pew, but he’s a skunk and it’s weird to that SKUNK is one of the four animals. i don’t like that. it’s also a little unsatisfying if there’s no more specific click than “he’s 9 letters and black and white”…”
+1
But I went with it anyway…
Yeesh.
Puzzle: MGWCC; Rating: 4 stars
*LOL*
I don’t solve these anymore but I usually check the write up. I really question Pepe Le Pew’s inclusion in a puzzle in 2026