Title: “The Art of Writing”
Prompt: The meta answer is a novel.
Answer: THE GOLDFINCH (by Donna Tartt)
Explanation: the five longest across entries, although not clued this way, are all names of famous paintings. The name of the artist of each painting appears in a clue elsewhere in the puzzle, like so:
THELASTSUPPER -> 21D [Leonardo’s costar in “The Great Gatsby”] TOBEY
POOLPARLOR -> 82D [Resting place for D. H. Lawrence] TAOS
AMERICANGOTHIC -> 43A [Wood used for baseball bats] ASH
NIGHTHAWKS -> 85D [Sid: “_ Story” :: Hopper : “A Bug’s Life”] TOY
THEGULFSTREAM -> 52D [Homer hitting Babe] RUTH
Read in grid order, the first letters of the answers to those five clues spell TARTT. Mostly solvers realized TARTT had to be Donna Tartt, but the prompt asks for a novel, not an author, so now what? Presumably we’re looking for a book by Donna Tartt. But which one? In keeping with the theme, we’re looking for the one whose title is also the name of a famous painting, which leads us to THE GOLDFINCH.
There were 77 correct answers and 6 incorrect submissions this month. There was no general consensus among the incorrect submissions, although a couple of them were for Donna Tartt’s other well-known novel, The Secret History. Close, but not as fitting an answer as The Goldfinch.
Congratulations to this month’s randomly chosen winner: Carolyn Breckel of Washington, DC! The prize this month is a copy of a thematically apt novel embossed with FROM THE LIBRARY OF ARIADNE. This month I was inspired by a one-off wrong answer. Despite apparently being a total guess, it was nevertheless a particularly apt guess for a puzzle titled “The Art of Writing,” so much so that I’m surprised now more people didn’t submit it! So long story short, the prize this month is The Picture of Dorian Gray by Oscar Wilde. Congratulations, Carolyn!
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 Thomas B., whose answer came in at 9:44 AM EDT on June 1. The White Rabbit Award, which is awarded to the solver whose submission I received last, goes to Tom and Regina C., whose joint answer came in at 10:15 PM EDT on June 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??
Thank you to everyone who submitted an answer to June’s contest! And thank you to Lee Taylor for this entertaining puzzle! If you are interested in constructing a puzzle for ACL, please visit our Submit a Crossword page. See you in July!
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