Fireball Contest — September 13, 2023

Emma Oxford and Will Pfadenhauer contest, “Mind the Gap” — Conrad’s writeup

This month, we are asked, What #1 song of the past 20 years is hinted at by this puzzle? There were five long theme entries containing the word GAP:

• [Stretchy athleisure]: YO(GAP)ANTS
• [Roman-themed event during Greek Week]: TO(GAP)ARTY
• [Throwing a fit]: GOIN(GAP)E
• [Makeshift use for a traffic cone]: ME(GAP)HONE
• [Where much of “Crazy Rich Asians” takes place]: SIN(GAP)ORE

I spun my wheels for a while on this one before I locked onto the signal. I tried connecting each half of the GAP-separated words (YO -> ANTS, for example). I tried to turn the GAPs into black squares. I didn’t make any headway until I spotted HONE, which matched the clue for SHARPEN (Whet). I found the rabbit: treat each GAP-separated word independently and find a matching clue:

FB Contest – 09.13.2023 – Solution

• BRAVO -> E (Channel owned by NBCUniversal)
• LEAN -> ME (Word in the title of Bill Withers’s biggest hit)
• ACTOUT -> SIN (Misbehave)
• NOSEEUMS -> ANTS (Irritating insects)
• KRONA -> ORE (Unit of Swedish currency)
• SHARPEN -> HONE (Whet)
• POSH -> ARTY (Like the cultural elite)
• ADRIAN -> YO (Word shouted by Rocky)
• COME -> TO (Part of the publishing abbreviation TK)
• ENTER -> GOIN (Step over the threshold)

The first letter of the mapped entries, in grid order, spell the Taylor Swift #1 hit Blank SPACE, our contest solution. I enjoyed this meta. I thought YO/ADRIAN was clever. I had to grind to find all the mapped entries. Sometimes that’s tedious, but this meta made it fun. Solvers: please share your thoughts.