Friday, July 11th, 2008 -- MGWCC #006 -- "Can You Dig It?"

This is the sixth Matt Gaffney puzzle I have done since Matt started his weekly crossword contest, and I hope nobody posts a comment like the one from last week where someone said that MGWCC #005 was "too easy". As Matt commented, that "will not be a problem this week". This was a really tough puzzle. I can usually work through a Saturday NYT without touching google but for this puzzle I had to rely upon it for clues like: "Amy Goodwin's network"; "Late San Francisco poet Jack"; "___+ (French TV channel)"; "Penninsular nation"; and "French department Seine-et-___".

This puzzle was published--like all of them--on Friday, but the contest answer has to be in by Noon EDT, Tuesday. If you are still working on this puzzle as you read this, here is a spoiler warning.

DISPEL in 1A was the answer for [Brush aside], which I was thinking might be "offput'. Nope.

MAGICK was the answer for 19A [Occult activity]. All I could think of here in six letters was seance, but since then I have come up with this list: magic (5); magick, voodoo (6); sorcery (7); Idolatry (8); cartomancy, numerology, channeling, witchcraft (10); Soothsaying (11); fortunetelling (14).

29A bit me with "Who ___?" for five letters. I'm thinking of everything but the correct answer (CARES). Obvious when I got it.

Some very obvious answers for some questions really bit me. COURTS in 34A [With "the," system of justice]. ELECT in 5D [Put in, as in Putin] had me thinking, "I wonder what the Russian word is for that?". I also got bit by 41D [Treating impartially] by writing in 'fairly' when the expected response was FAIRTO. I finally deciphered this one by deciding that 57A [A kind gesture from] had to be NICEOF. It was the last word I wrote in this grid.

The best clue in the puzzle had me vexed almost the most: [Em preceder] in 48A. All I could think of at first as the em-dash. But the six letter answer turned out to be from the story of Dorothy: AUNTIE.

Of course as with all of the MGWCC puzzles one has to figure out an "answer" from solving the grid. This week the instruction was to find the missing letter. But after completing the grid I found no letters missing (It was pangrammatic). After going off entirely in the wrong direction I finally connected the title of the puzzle--"Can You Dig It?" with an answer in the grid: CANAL in 33A for [___+ (French TV channel)]. To the left of this was a black grid block and to the left of that was PANAM in 32A [It revolutionized 20th-century global transportation] and I saw in my mind's eye PANAM_CANAL. Aha! The letter missing is A. I don't know if it is intended as part of the mini-theme, but crossing the same black square downwards are the words SHIPS and CROSS, which with the 'A' would yield ShipsAcross. This makes sense because that is what the canal enables, in a way, as a shortcut.