MGWCC #427

 

hello and welcome to episode #427 of matt gaffney’s weekly crossword contest, “Let the Games Begin”. for this week 1 puzzle, coinciding with the start of the summer olympics, matt challenges us to find one of the 28 sports being contested at the Rio de Janeiro Olympics. what are the theme answers? there are four long answers in the grid:

• {Entering, as a rabbit hole} JUMPING DOWN. now this is a funny entry—really only applicable to alice. (or, i suppose, a rabbit.)
• {Degree you need to take the bar exam (usually)} JURIS DOCTOR. that’s usually just J.D., awarded to graduates of (american) law schools.
• {One place to earn a black belt} JUJITSU DOJO. this is an entry with lots of J’s.
• {Animal you don’t want to mess with} JUNKYARD DOG.

this meta could hardly be easier: the theme answers are all two-word phrases starting with “ju” and “do”. so the answer is just judo, a sport i am fairly sure i’ve never watched, even though i watch a lot of olympics. these last few days i’ve been overloading on soccer, tennis, basketball, swimming, indoor volleyball, rowing, and whatever else is on. fun fact: did you know that the usa women’s indoor volleyball team has a star player named carli lloyd? that’s not the same person as the star player for the usa women’s soccer team, just with the same name (and spelled the same way). crazy!

i don’t have too much else to say about the easy-peasy meta, but i liked the grid. there’s lots of fun stuff (partly to accommodate all the J’s from the theme). in particular, i laughed at the clue for WSJ: {Newspaper that runs weekly crossword contests, for short}. the friday wsj contest puzzle was written by none other that matt gaffney, and has these instructions: “The answer to this week’s contest crossword is one of the sports being contested at the Rio 2016 Games.” the contest deadline was sunday night, so it’s too late to enter, but it’s a fun puzzle nonetheless, and easy. (you can read evad’s writeup of it if you just want to skip to the answer.)

that’s all i’ve got this week. see many of you this weekend in manhattan at lollapuzzoola!