Title: “If You Play Your Cards Right”
Prompt: The meta answer is a literary antagonist.
Answer: QUEEN OF HEARTS (from Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland by Lewis Carroll)
Explanation: 4D, clued as [With 40-Down, the hand that you’ve been dealt] tells you that you have a BROADWAY STRAIGHT in your hand. Google (or just knowledge of poker) tells you that a BROADWAY STRAIGHT is an ace-high straight: Ace, King, Queen, Jack, Ten. And the title tells you that you need to play your cards right… if you play your cards off the right side of the grid, in order Ten to Ace from top to bottom, things start to fall into place.
Each of five entries on the right side of the grid + one of the cards Ten to Ace = a new word that matches another clue in the grid.
9A MIT + TEN -> 1D ANORAK clued as [Part of a winter wardrobe]
18A FLAP + JACK -> 60D EGG clued as [Part of many a diner order]
41A DRAG + QUEEN -> 35A ICON clued as [RuPaul, for one]
49A PAR + KING -> 24A LAUNDRY clued as [Common hotel amenity]
69A PAL + ACE -> 46A CASTLE clued as [Home fit for a princess]
The first five letters of the answers to those five clues, read in grid order, spell ALICE. But wait, ALICE isn’t a literary antagonist, so that doesn’t fit the prompt. This means the answer can only be the QUEEN OF HEARTS, in keeping with the card theme.
There were 45 correct answers and 20 incorrect submissions this month. Almost all of those incorrect submissions were for ALICE. Based on the comments people sent in with their answers, although there was a contingent that may have simply not read the prompt, others did read the prompt but could not let go of ALICE as the answer and tortured themselves trying to find a justification for why she would be considered an antagonist.
There was also a small showing for the Red Queen. Close, but although the two are occasionally conflated in movie adaptations, the Queen of Hearts and the Red Queen are two different denizens of Wonderland in Lewis Carroll’s books. And only the Queen of Hearts is a playing card – the Red Queen is a chess piece, so she doesn’t fit the theme.
This post will be updated with the name of this month’s randomly chosen winner just as soon as they respond to my email informing them of their good fortune. The prize this month is a copy of a thematically apt novel embossed with FROM THE LIBRARY OF ARIADNE. For reasons that I can’t imagine require any explanation, this month I’m going with The Alice Network by Kate Quinn.
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/or rate the puzzle.
Dubious Honors
This month’s Tick-Tock Award, which is awarded to the solver whose submission I received first, goes to Alexander M., whose answer came in at 9:41 AM EDT on August 1. The White Rabbit Award (a particularly apt award this month!), which is awarded to the solver whose submission I received last, goes to Connor D., whose answer came in at 9:22 PM EDT on August 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 August’s contest! And thank you to Faren Roth for this entertaining puzzle! If you are interested in constructing a puzzle for ACL, please visit our Submit a Crossword page. See you in September!
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