MGWCC #927 |

MGWCC crossword 1:38
meta 15ish [4.00 avg; 1 rating] rate it

hello, and welcome to episode #927 of matt gaffney’s weekly crossword contest, a week 1 puzzle called “Silent Films”. i tried this one without the instructions, to no avail. what are the theme answers? the four longest across answers in this undersized (13×13) grid are all famous people whose surname is an animal + silent E:

• {Innovative plowman} JOHN DEERE.
• {“Are you not entertained?” shouter} RUSSELL CROWE.
• {Cofounder of the Black Panthers} BOBBY SEALE.
• {Sherman McCoy’s creator} TOM WOLFE. not to be confused with the slightly older american author thomas wolfe.

that’s already quite a nice tight theme; note that because the answers don’t form a symmetric set of lengths (9 12 10 8), the grid is asymmetric. but that’s fine.

so, what’s the meta answer? with “films” in the title and it being oscars week, i thought we were likely looking at an instruction like “a best actor oscar winner” or some such, and we’d comb through the list of winners to find another one fitting the theme. RUSSELL CROWE himself won best actor (for gladiator, from which the quote in the clue is taken), but of course he’s already in the theme. JAMIE FOXX is a homophone of an animal, but not constructed the same way (animal + silent E).

ohhh, okay—it’s probably one of this year’s nominees, specifically ETHAN HAWKE, nominated for playing real-life songwriter lorenz hart in blue moon. yeah, that’s gotta be right. just confirming by looking at the instructions: This week’s contest answer is one of the 20 Oscar nominees this year in the four acting categories. yeah, this is correct.

i think this is a great, tight set of theme answers (including the meta answer). i like that matt didn’t let the mismatched lengths dissuade him from turning this into a crossword, and using the most topical one as the meta answer. i am indeed entertained! a lovely week 1.

on a personal note, the theme also reminds me of my last sunday nyt crossword (yeah, it’s been a while, but on the other hand, constructing a 21×21 every other week for the boston globe means i haven’t been swimming in free time to send 21s elsewhere as a freelancer).

oddity from the fill/cluing: 6-down is {With 4-Down: “Black Cow” band, 1977} STEELY, and 4-down is indeed DAN… but it’s clued as {Poison frontman Michaels}. except that poison’s frontman is BRET michaels, not DAN. and at 47a, there’s BRET, clued as {Michaels or Hart}. i think some wires must have gotten crossed here in matt’s brain.

how’d you like this one?