MGWCC crossword 3:39
meta 0:05 rate it
hello, and welcome to episode #941 of matt gaffney’s weekly crossword contest, a week 2 puzzle called “Take a Little Off Around the Edges”. this week’s puzzle challenges us with a riddle in five grid-spanning parts: WHAT EIGHT-LETTER / SEAFOOD IS FORMED / BY USING FOUR USPS / ABBREVIATIONS OF / COASTAL U.S. STATES? not that we needed it, but there’s an extra thematic clue at 35-across, {A map of it might be helpful for today’s meta} USA.
i don’t really have any insights as to the intended or optimal solution path; i think you could either just think of 8-letter seafoods and see if they work, or play around with the abbreviations of the coastal states to see what you might be able to spell. i chose the former, and pretty much the first thing i thought of was the answer: CALAMARI. that’s california, louisiana, massachusetts (hello!), and rhode island. perhaps it came to mind because all four constituent bigrams are consonant-vowel, although of course that’s not strictly necessary when stringing together state abbreviations.
it feels like it’s been a while since we’ve had a meta of this sort, where there’s nothing to look for in the grid or theme answers, just a multi-part riddle. i have the vague memory that they were more common in the earlier days of MGWCC. this puzzle is about as clean as they come: the instructions split into five 15-letter chunks, and that’s it. yeah, there’s the extra USA in the fill, but i suspect that’s just how the grid turned out rather than matt trying to shoehorn it in there; the clue for that entry doesn’t help at all on top of what the instructions already tell you.
the other thing that was clean about the meta was there was no ambiguity or interpretation (e.g., are the great lakes states coastal?). that’s a hazard that can sometimes creep in if the wording of the meta question is constrained by lengths and symmetry, but there was no such issue here, and i’m grateful for that.
with 75 theme squares, the fill was a bit strained in places—a handful of I plurals (I’M ON, I THEE, I COME)—but really nothing too awkward. overall, this was a fine week 2 puzzle. the clue {Fish in a “Simpsons” episode} for FUGU had me thinking about a different fish, blinky, but getting the answer reminded me about the fugu episode and that was a warm, happy memory. season 2 was just {Highest level of performance} PEAK simpsons.
that’s all i’ve got this week. how’d you like this one?
Mahi-mahi accepted as well.
I stared and had nothing until I realized I left out AK HI. That immediately gave me Mahi Mahi and, noticing no mention of “unique” or “different”, I sent that in.
Calamari is definitely better though. :)