Sunday, July 15, 2018

Cntst Pzzl results

Last week's vowelless contest puzzle asked you to identify an author.


The first thing to notice is that six of the entries have enumerations that don't match the actual answer. For example, 1-Across is clued as [Wrote illegibly (5 5)]. The answer is SCRWLD, representing SCRAWLED, so it should be enumerated (8). But the second thing to notice is that, with the given enumerations, each of those entries could also represent the name of an author - in this case, OSCAR WILDE. The authors are as follows:

Oscar Wilde (SCRWLD, scrawled)
Jane Austen (JNSTN, Jan Steen)
Anita Loos (NTLS, entails)
Dante (DNT, donate)
Euripides (RPDS, rapids)
Celeste Ng (CLSTNG, closeting)

The first letters of their last names (or the single names they're commonly known by, in the case of Dante and Euripides), spell out WALDEN, the title of a book by Henry David Thoreau. And Thoreau's last name has the same consonants as author (THR).

26 solvers submitted correct answers, and the randomly chosen winner is Ken Crowell, who receives a copy of Peter Broda's vowelless collection Made Without AEIOU. Congrats, Ken! If you didn't win, you should get yourself a copy of Made Without AEIOU anyway. At a price of "pay what you want," it's a bargain.


Monday, July 9, 2018

Puzzle #88: Cntst Pzzl

For the first time ever, we've got a contest puzzle (pdf, puz, pdf solution) this week (and it's a vowelless, as you might guess from the title). Once you've solved the puzzle, there's a meta; the meta answer is an author. (The PDF solution file includes a list of the full answers for the curious, though of course it doesn't include the meta answer.)

The theme was inspired by Peter Broda's recent collection of vowelless puzzles, Made Without AEIOU. Peter has graciously offered to donate a copy of the collection for the winner. Send your answer to the email address in the right sidebar by Sunday at noon for a chance to win - a randomly chosen correct entry will win. (If you win and you've already bought a copy of Made Without AEIOU, we'll find another prize for you.) Good luck!