Title: “No One Can Divide Them”
Prompt: The meta answer is a novel.
Answer: WUTHERING HEIGHTS
Explanation: The clue for 32A PRIMES is phrased in a suggestive way, given the puzzle title: [You can’t divide them (except by one and themselves)]. Looking for prime numbers leads to the numbered squares in the grid, and taking the letters in the prime-numbered squares spells WUTHERING HEIGHTS, the contest answer.
This grid was slightly smaller than normal (13×13 instead of the standard 15×15) to avoid any extraneous prime-numbered squares – every square with a prime number in it is used in the contest answer. Several solvers commented on the impressively clean fill given this somewhat unforgiving constraint!
There were 94 correct answers and 2 incorrect submissions this month. One of the incorrect submissions was for The Solitude of Prime Numbers, which is indeed a novel and a very reasonable guess. The other was for Truth & Beauty, which is also a reasonable guess for a puzzle about primes (certainly I think mathematicians would agree), but assuming this is a reference to the book by Ann Patchett, this is a memoir, not a novel.
Congratulations to this month’s randomly chosen winner: Burak Tekin of Cambridge, MA! The prize this month is a copy of a thematically apt book embossed with FROM THE LIBRARY OF ARIADNE. This month said book is Once Upon a Prime: The Wondrous Connections Between Mathematics and Literature by Sarah B. Hart. This is the first nonfiction book awarded as an ACL prize – it seemed particularly apt for this month’s contest. Congratulations, Burak!
You can read Ben Chenoweth’s blog post about this month’s contest over at Crossword Fiend, where you can also leave a comment and rate the puzzle.
Dubious Honors
This month’s Tick-Tock Award, which is awarded to the solver whose submission I received first, goes to Tom W., whose answer came in at 9:12 AM EDT on April 1. (This is even more impressive if you know, as at least a couple of you do, that I forgot to post the puz file this month until ~9:20 AM EDT on April 1, which means Tom must’ve printed the PDF and solved on paper in 12 minutes! The missing puz file was not an intentional April Fool’s joke, sorry if it slowed anybody down.) The White Rabbit Award, which is awarded to the solver whose submission I received last, goes to Regina and Tom C., whose joint answer came in at 10:31 PM EDT on April 5. 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
More contest crosswords by women to enjoy! Pair O Ducks is back with their springtime series of meta crosswords over on Crosshare. Two puzzles have been published so far – the deadline for the second one, “Eggs Change Words,” isn’t until this Sunday, April 12, so head on over if you haven’t already!
Thank you to everyone who submitted an answer to April’s contest! And thank you to Heather Gearan for her second ACL puzzle! If you are interested in constructing a puzzle for ACL, please visit our Submit a Crossword page. See you in April!
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