Title: “If I Could Just Get Things in Order…”
Prompt: The meta answer is something that may be difficult for a writer to do.
Answer: BEGIN
Explanation: the clue for 82A SORT, [Get things in order, such as by alphabetizing], with its clear callback to the title, provides a crucial hint. Something should be alphabetized… but what? The five long across entries seem like a good bet: they are all three-word book titles, all clued in a similar way. If the three words from each title are put in alphabetical order, they lead to a matching clue, containing three words starting with the same three letters, elsewhere in the grid. For example:
20A NORTHANDSOUTH -> A N S -> 78A [A new someone] for BABY
The relevant letters and corresponding entries are color-coded in the solution grid above. The first letters of the corresponding entries give, in grid order, NIEGB. Well, that’s not great. What about in the order of the original theme entries? That gets you BIEGN. Also not great. Meta etiquette demands that no anagramming be required to get to the answer at this stage, so what is going on? The solution of course is that the letters do not need to be anagrammed, they need to be alphabetized, at which point they reveal the contest answer: BEGIN. Definitely something that may be difficult for a writer to do!
This puzzle played quite tricky, as I expected it to. ACL doesn’t publish a ton of really difficult metas, but every once in a while you may encounter one. There were 44 correct answers and 2 incorrect submissions this month.
Congratulations to this month’s randomly chosen winner: Pavel Curtis of Bellevue, WA! The prize this month is, as always, a copy of a thematically apt book embossed with FROM THE LIBRARY OF ARIADNE. This month’s meta answer doesn’t suggest a book, or even a genre, the way most ACL answers do, so instead I went with the obvious alternative and picked a title from the five themers: this month the prize is I Am Legend by Richard Matheson. Congratulations, Pavel!
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 Tom W., whose answer came in at 9:26 AM EDT on October 1. The White Rabbit Award, which is awarded to the solver whose submission I received last, goes to Pavel C., whose answer came in at 11:57 PM EDT on October 5. I have no actual prizes to hand out to these solvers (well, unless you count the fact that Pavel also won the contest prize), 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 October’s contest! See you in November!
Ex libris Ariadne
