MGWCC #161

crossword 4:11
puzzle -2:30 

greetings, fellow solvers! welcome to the 161st episode of matt gaffney’s weekly crossword contest, “Greece Is The Word”. after a brutal month of june, matt eases up on us with a simple task: identify a letter in the Greek alphabet. there are three obvious theme entries:

• {St. Louis hockey players make the sun rise against its will?} clues BLUES FORCE DAWN.
• {American and United slightly injure Mr. Charles?} clues AIRLINES WING RAY.
• {Sorority in a 1990’s “SNL” skit, and what the words in 16-across and 60-across need to form phrases} is the three-square triple rebus answer DELTA DELTA DELTA. and indeed, the other two theme answers consist of three words that can follow “delta” in a phrase.

that central rebus answer crosses the {Famous feature of the Nile} RIVER [DELTA], {Fictitious fraternity} [DELTA] HOUSE, and most interestingly, {Plastic Panzer, e.g.} MO[DEL TA]NK. nifty. and in case it’s not yet abundantly clear, the answer to this week’s contest is delta.

this is the third time (that i can remember) that matt has gone to the greek alphabet for a MGWCC, including the crazy-hard meta #8 and the somewhat easier #34. this one’s gotta be the easiest, though, even if it was a rebus (only the third MGWCC rebus, too, i think).

the crossword itself wasn’t quite so easy. in particular, i had to guess at one crossing: {Ethan of “My Name Is Earl”} SUPL_E crossing {Muslim holiday} _ID. i know i’d seen that muslim holiday before (but only in a previous MGWCC) and i thought it was E, but SUPLEE doesn’t look like a name. but it’s right. i guess.

odds & ends:

• {“Mourning Becomes ___” (O’Neill play)} ELECTRA. actually a cycle of three plays, based on aeschylus’s oresteia, but set during the american civil war. i think this is the only major o’neill work that i haven’t read.
• {Zealous states} are ARDORS. not a plural you’d see in the wild.
• {Interest, in bookie-speak} is VIG, short for vigorish. i learned this for scrabble, but then i later came across it while reading poker books. it’s also used to describe the house take from each pot if you play poker at a casino.
• {“The Wrath of ___” (noted 2010 crossword book)} KLAHN. this is an awesome book. if you like hard crosswords and haven’t got this book, do it!
• {“Everything turned out fine”} clues “I’M OK NOW”, which i like as a fresh answer. and the clue is just right.
• {1985 pop hit for a-ha} is TAKE ON ME. i’ve seen this used to clue AHA, but never the song name itself in the grid. nice one.
• {Paris museum, to Parisians} clues LE LOUVRE. i guess this is right? the official name is musée du louvre, so “louvre” must be masculine.
• {Bird that went extinct because it didn’t fear humans} clues the DODO. my understanding is that are actually zillions of avians and megafauna that have gone extinct because they didn’t fear humans, particularly species that evolved on islands/continents that didn’t have humans until the last 10,000 years or so.
• {Winter: Sp.} is INVIERNO. whew, that is a long foreign word that’s not exactly a cognate (except for other romance language words for winter, like the french “hîver”). i had to piece this together—next time you see this word in a crossword, it’ll likely be in a clue for ENERO.

that’s all from me. how’d you all like this one?