"Be Transformed" - June 3, 2022

[mconte.wsj]

The contest answer is EBAY. Two words in each theme answer are also a word in pig Latin: ALL WAY/WALL; ANNIE MAE/MANNY; EQUAL SAY/ SEQUEL; OLD BAY/BOLD. Each of those new words begins one clue: Wall at 16-Across (EXEC); Manny at 63-Down (BOX); Sequel at 14-Across (ALIENS); BOLD at 68-Across (YOU LIE). The first letters of those entries spell the contest answer.

Congrats to the winner: Kristin Morgan of Huntsville, AL.

[BarbaraK]

The contest answer is EBAY. Two words in each theme answer are also a word in pig Latin: ALL WAY/WALL; ANNIE MAE/MANNY; EQUAL SAY/ SEQUEL; OLD BAY/BOLD. Each of those new words begins one clue: Wall at 16-Across (EXEC); Manny at 63-Down (BOX); Sequel at 14-Across (ALIENS); BOLD at 68-Across (YOU LIE). The first letters of those entries spell the contest answer.

Congrats to the winner: Kristin Morgan of Huntsville, AL.

Thanks for the update! Hope Mike is enjoying his vacation, and we appreciate you filling in.

Do you happen to have the total number of submissions and the number or percent that were correct? Just in case anyone here is such a nerd that they keep a spreadsheet with that sort of thing. Who me?:)

[mconte.wsj]

Hi Barbara! There were 491 entries this week. In terms of the percent of correct submissions, I don't have access to that information. I'll be filling in for Mike again for this week's contest crossword, but once he's back, you can expect his full reports to resume!

[BarbaraK]

Hi Barbara! There were 491 entries this week. In terms of the percent of correct submissions, I don't have access to that information. I'll be filling in for Mike again for this week's contest crossword, but once he's back, you can expect his full reports to resume!

Thank you! Wow, that's a low number. Makes this the hardest one we've seen since last November.

[ky-mike]

Hi Barbara! There were 491 entries this week. In terms of the percent of correct submissions, I don't have access to that information. I'll be filling in for Mike again for this week's contest crossword, but once he's back, you can expect his full reports to resume!

Thank you! Wow, that's a low number. Makes this the hardest one we've seen since last November.

Total, or correct? Does seem low for total submissions.

[BarbaraK]

Hi Barbara! There were 491 entries this week. In terms of the percent of correct submissions, I don't have access to that information. I'll be filling in for Mike again for this week's contest crossword, but once he's back, you can expect his full reports to resume!

Thank you! Wow, that's a low number. Makes this the hardest one we've seen since last November.

Total, or correct? Does seem low for total submissions.

Total. There was a four week stretch last fall where the number of total submissions was 508, 387, 361, and 511. In each of those the number correct was around one third to one half of the total.

There was a more recent one, "Dude, Where's My Car" with a lower number of correct entries - only 286 - but with 70% of the submissions wrong.

[ZooAnimalsOnWheels]

I was visiting my brother over a very long Memorial Day weekend and we had started filling in the gird Sunday, but were planning to work on this on Monday. I got an unexpected E-mail on Monday from another friend who does the puzzle complaining that the mechanism was a stretch. I closed it as soon as I saw that it was discussing the puzzle, but couldn't help seeing a couple words that he had capitalized in the message body: Pig Latin. So that gave it away for me.

I don't know that I would have gotten there on my own or even working with my brother, but I tried to nudge him there by telling him the word ahead of the -ay word was important and then repeating them out loud. It was his 13-year old son who said "that sounds like pig Latin."