MGWCC crossword untimed (5ish?)
meta 5ish 
[4.63 avg; 4 ratings] rate it
hello, and welcome to episode #942 of matt gaffney’s weekly crossword contest, a week 3 puzzle called “We’re Back in Town”. this week’s puzzle challenges us to name a small U.S. city. okay. what are the theme answers?
- {Southern trees} MAGNOLIAS.
- {Tries to get going on a gravel road, as a truck might} KICKS UP ROCKS.
- {“I’ve seen worse”} NOT A BAD EFFORT.
- {Railway intersection} GRADE CROSSING.
- {1987 #1 hit for Huey Lewis} JACOB‘S LADDER.
- {Manage to uncover} FERRET OUT.
the title is a pretty clear indicator of what to do from here: we’re looking for towns in reverse, or to be more precise, US city names in reverse. each of these six themers contains the first word of a largish US city hidden backwards: LONG beach, CORPUS christi, BATON rouge, CEDAR rapids, BOCA raton, and TERRE haute, respectively. easy peasy.
what next, though? surely we have to be finding the second word of each city name somewhere. my first thought was that RATON could be the two-word phrase RAT ON, which might be an alternate answer to a clue in the puzzle. plausible, but not this time.
no, instead we had to go combing through the clues to find these hidden second words (forwards, as it turns out):
- BEACH is hidden in {Be aching for} NEED.
- CHRISTI is in {Movie in which Taylor Schilling played Christine Mendez}, which was a fairly obscure clue for the film ARGO.
- ROUGE is in {Frou-frou gelatin mold container}, which, again, weird way to clue TIN.
- RAPIDS is in {He falls for a trap, I’d say} IAGO. does he? i don’t think i’d say that. (to be clear, i’m talking about iago from othello, not iago the parrot from aladdin.) he’s the one setting the trap, not falling for it, although he does get apprehended for murder in the end.
- RATON is in {Fervor a ton of people have at once} CRAZE.
- HAUTE is in {Be familiar with, as a French auteur} KNOW.
the first letters of the answers to these six clues spell out NATICK, a small city in massachusetts that’s the answer to the meta. it’s a nice touch that the six relevant clues appear in order, and all in the acrosses, as it cuts down on possibly tedious time spent combing through clues.
NATICK is, of course, (in)famous in crosswords thanks to brendan emmett quigley, but i’m not exactly sure why matt chose it as the answer to this particular meta, since the meta mechanism doesn’t involve naticks at all. that said, i thought the meta mechanism was right in the week 3 sweet spot. the first step is clear from the title and themers, but then you still need to figure out where to go next. it’s pretty clear to look for the second word of each city somewhere, but where and how are still not obvious. but the weirdness of those six clues (or at least a few of them) ought to stand out.
how’d you all like this one?
Puzzle: MGWCC; Rating: 5 stars
CORPUS Christi was the first backwards city name I found, and LONG Beach was the last one; once I got that and began scanning the grid, the clue at 1A immediately jumped out at me, and the rest fell quickly.
Nitpick: Natick is technically a town, not a city, per its charter and form of government. Whether or not it’s small is arguable, though I’d argue it’s not small (but if it were a city, it’d certainly be small for a city).
Puzzle: MGWCC; Rating: 5 stars
Really enjoyed this one. We’ve had a few recently where the title was kind of not helpful as a guide but this one was perfect. This is one where you could teach newbies some more advanced meta techniques. Don’t see it in the grid? Look at the clues. Oh hey! Right at 1-across!
I personally thought the square at 55, with RATTI crossing ARTAK, was a NATICK square. But that’s just me. Because both are completely foreign to me!
Nice touch!
Agree about the RATTI/ARTAK natick. Personally, I always get a laugh when I encounter this town’s name in the context of two obscure entries crossing. When I lived in the Boston area, I was very familiar with Natick, as I passed through it often.
As for the meta, I enjoyed it. Though I expected the answer to be another two word city. When I got the first N, I expected it to be something like New Ulm.
Didn’t get this one, but really fun mechanism. My Hail Mary guess was “Boise,” as in the “Boise” are back in town!