Title: Are You There Gods?
Prompt: The meta answer is the eight-letter last name of a children’s author.
Answer: D’AULAIRE
Explanation: Eight symmetrically placed entries are anagrams of a Greek god plus one extra letter. The extra letters spell the contest answer.
13A PROUDEST -> PROTEUS + D
18A AHARE -> HERA (or RHEA) + A
20A ROUSE -> EROS + U
36A HOLLIES -> HELIOS + L
38A NACROUS -> CRONUS + A
54A SIXTY -> STYX + I
56A REARS -> ARES + R
66A EMIRATES -> ARTEMIS + E
Two other symmetrically placed answers hint at the mechanism: 15A BADLY clued as [“Gods Behaving ___” (Marie Phillips novel)] and 65A GREEK clued as [“It’s all ___ to me!”]. Symmetry was key here! My hope was that specifying the number of letters in the answer and making the relevant grid entries symmetric would prevent solvers from being filled with dread at the idea of having to scour the grid for an arbitrary number of anagrams.
There were 40 correct answers and only 1 incorrect submission this month. Many solvers remarked that they had never heard of the d’Aulaires before, but a quick Google search is all that’s needed to confirm you’ve gotten the right answer, because the children’s authors Ingri and Edgar Parin d’Aulaire are well-known for their exquisitely illustrated 1962 book of Greek myths, aptly titled Ingri and Edgar Parin d’Aulaires’ Book of Greek Myths. This book was a staple of my childhood – I think I called it “the yellow book” because the version we had featured a bright yellow cover. Most of what I know about Greek mythology I learned from the d’Aulaires.
Congratulations to this month’s randomly chosen winner: Larry Bray of Elkhorn, WI! The prize this month (as it is every month) is a copy of a thematically apt novel embossed with FROM THE LIBRARY OF ARIADNE. This month I’m going with the obvious choice (because otherwise I would spend a week going through all the Greek-mythology-themed novels out there*): Gods Behaving Badly by Marie Phillips. Since the d’Aulaires were children’s authors and illustrators, none of their books qualify as a thematically apt novel, but if you’ve never encountered one of their books before I highly recommend seeking one out. Congratulations, Larry!
*There are a LOT. As evidence, please enjoy this picture of a display at my local library I coincidentally stumbled upon last weekend:
You can read Ben Chenoweth’s blog post about this month’s contest over at Crossword Fiend, where you can also rate the puzzle or leave a comment. Ben has also conveniently included a picture of that bright yellow book cover I remember so fondly.
Dubious Honors
This month’s Tick-Tock Award, which is awarded to the solver whose submission I received first, goes to ManyPinkHats (that’s the only name I have for this solver – if this is you and you’d like to claim credit, please email me your name!), whose answer came in at 10:24 AM EDT on April 1. The White Rabbit Award, which is awarded to the solver whose submission I received last, goes to Lindsey S. (last month’s prize winner!), whose answer came in at 9:27 AM EDT on April 8. I have no actual prizes to hand out to these solvers, they just get the satisfaction of BOOKending this month’s contest. Well done!
Can you beat their times next month??
More to Explore
I want to draw your attention to some other excellent contest crosswords created by women which you may want to check out: Lydia Roth and Christina Bodensiek have started a weekly meta crossword series to run throughout spring 2025! Puzzles are published on their Crosshare page at noon on Sundays. They’ve already published three pun-filled puzzles well-worth checking out: “That’s Messed Up,” “Paint Mixing,” and “Rise and Shine.” If you want to make sure you never forget to solve one, you can follow their Crosshare page, and you can chat about the puzzles (no spoilers until after the deadline) over on the XWord Muggles Forum.
If you know of any other meta/contest crosswords constructed by women or woman-aligned constructors that I should shout-out, please send links to those puzzles to damefoxwords@gmail.com and I’ll mention them in next month’s solution write-up.
Thank you to everyone who solved this month’s contest! See you in May!
Ex libris Ariadne
Ariadne's Crossword Library 