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Last Thursday, I gave you a crossword and asked you to figure out what famous person in the news was hinted at with the meta. Must have been harder than I though as we only got 84 entries. Nevertheless, 70 of you came up with the correct answer: Richard III. In the news of the WTF? variety: Richard’s bones were discovered in a car park (that’s a parking lot to you and me) somewhere in Leicester, England last week. To commemorate, I hid exactly three famous Richards (“Native Son” author Wright, the first “Survivor” winner Hatch, and actor/humanitarian/pope-in-training Gere) and placed them all underneath CARs. Let’s see that solution grid, shall we?
But BEQ, what about those 14 wrong answers? What about those 14 wrong answers, indeed. Check out these head-scratchers: Quvenzhané Wallis (four times), Rosa Parks (twice), Walt Disney, Alex Rodriguez, Julia Child, Amy Poehler, Rachel Maddow, Lance Armstrong, and Essie Mae Washington-Williams. Wow. That list almost feels like the start of a joke that takes place in a bar. Anyway, if you did the math, that only adds up to 13. The 14th guess was the fictional Carson Richards.
Our three randomly selected winners are Gideon Fostick, of Sunnyvale, CA, Emily O’Neill of Vancouver, and Lorraine Barg of Stamford, CT. They’ll receive either a copy of any book I wrote of their choosing, or some crap that’s taking up space in my house that I don’t want anymore. Congrats to all three of them, and thanks to all who entered the meta.
Two interesting crossword links so share with you:
- An intriguing video crossword popped up on the intenets yesterday. It was put together by my man Erik Agard, and the clues, all YouTube clips, were made by his friends. You might recognize a few of these names: super-solvers Anne Erdmann and Dan Feyer; “Jeopardy!” champion Joon Pahk; “Miracle” Matt Gaffney; up-and-coming-crossword writer Neville Fogarty; cryptic sherpa Ross Beresford; and some guy named Will Shortz who, now that I think about it, owes me money. Anyway, be sure to take a long hard look at that stylish mofo at 1-Across because that would be yours truly. It’s fun stuff. Go to it.
- The American Red Crossword project finally went live. It is a collection of never-before-published Easy/Medium puzzles by a lot of the top names in the business. Cost is free, however a suggested donation of $20 is asked if you download it. All of the proceeds are going to benefit those hit by Hurricane Sandy. Here’s just a sampling of the murderers row involved in the project: Andrea Carla Michaels, Doug Peterson, Caleb Madison, Ben Tausig, Liz Gorski, Merl Reagle, and yours truly. Great puzzles. Great cause. Give till you can’t give any more.
Share the puzzle. New one tomorrow.
Never got around to sending my wild guess of Dan Marino (on the basis of SHULA and WHATCHILDISTHIS)… would have been a worthy addition to the head-scratchers at least.
Quvenzhane Wallis occurred to me because of WHATCHILDISTHIS and ROGEREBERT. And she seems like someone who might say IKNOWRIGHT a lot.
But it didn’t seem quite right, so I didn’t enter.
Your puzzle today tripped me up big-time at first. I thought the rebus was ZERO, as in a synonym for LOVE (like in tennis). Couldn’t let that go for a long time even though I knew it couldn’t work with RING AROUND THE ROSY.
Fun puzzle, though! I’ve recently become addicted to your themeless Mondays.
Thot the idea was ROSE in a box. But it’s more the other way around and it’s EROS. For the esse of me, I can’t tell these love gods apart: Eros,Venus, Amor, Cupid, Aphrodite, etc. I just read The Golden Ass by Apulieus and it presents the myth of Psyche and Cupid for the first time (mid 2nd-century). So that can help. Elsewise, this BEQXWP was full of XLNT clues. 56D I thot this was NEON.