crossword 3:03
meta 0:03
meta 0:03
hello and welcome to episode #809 of matt gaffney’s weekly crossword contest, “Family Man”. for this week 1 puzzle, matt challenges us to find a name in the news. what are the theme answers? five across answers in this unusual grid (12×15) contain one-letter “words”:
- {Store that had giraffes in its ads} TOYS “R” US. at this point i thought the meta might involve backwards letters, as the R is stylized Я. but no, the others weren’t like that.
- {Animated sitcom featuring the voices of Bill Burr and Laura Dern} F IS FOR FAMILY. i’ve never heard of this show. i always thought F was for fugitive. i don’t know why the FAMILY part of this answer is duplicated in the puzzle title.
- {Cereal since 1955} SPECIAL K. the K is for kellogg, one assumes.
- {Outlet mall store} J. CREW FACTORY. it occurs to me that i have no idea what the J stands for, and it turns out it’s because it doesn’t stand for anything. i’ll also admit that i needed almost every crossing to piece together the last word of this answer, which rings approximately zero bells. but it’s pretty far removed from the type of clothing shopping that i do (which is mostly restricted to, uh, buying soccer jerseys online).
- {“Gladiator” and “Evil Dead Rise” have one} R RATING.
taking those single letters in order gives RFK JR, which is, unfortunately, the answer to the meta. i say unfortunately because it is upsetting to me that this name is in the news—he is a crackpot conspiracy theorist and anti-vaxxer, and we just need absolutely none of that right now in our national discourse. so this meta ended on a very sour note for me.
that’s all i’ve got to say about this puzzle. on to week 2, please.
AGREE WITH YOU, JOON. THE MORE ATTENTION WE PAY TO THIS CRACKPOT, THE MORE WE DISTRACT PEOPLE FROM THE REAL ISSUES THAT NEED SERIOUS ATTENTION.
Agree too.
I’m also displeased that he’s in the news, but I didn’t mind him as a meta answer. I kind of liked that the letters looked like nonsense — as opposed to an actual name — until they fell into place. Caused the tiniest bit of eyebrow furrowing on a Week 1.
The meta answer didn’t bother me – seems fair game for wordplay purposes. But I did find it odd that the mechanism was so similar to last week’s meta. Sort of a Week 1 version.
Finished the puzzle and thought, “huh, that guy sucks.” It didn’t bother me any more than e.g. the biweekly appearance of a certain mass-murdering Ugandan who gets clued anodynely as “dictator”
I thought that coming up with fill to lead us to the desired letters and filling the grid was good constructing. 😎