December 29, 2017, the crossword was constructed by the nefarious Marie Kelly (alias for Mike Shenk and an anagram for Really Mike) and entitled PLAY GROUNDS. The answer to the contest was "a kind of competition". It looked very simple with seven long answers containing the names of college bowl games. So most of us entered something like College Bowls.
However there was a second level to the contest. If you took the first letters of the cities that all the bowls were played in they spelled out Pageant (see below).
Rose Bowl – Pasadena
Cotton Bowl – Arlington Texas
Fiesta Bowl – Glendale AZ
Sun Bowl – El Paso Texas
Peach Bowl – Atlanta Georgia
Sugar Bowl – New Orleans
Outback Bowl – Tampa
So Pageant’ed has come to mean a puzzle where you get hoodwinked by the simplicity and there is a second level.
The link to the original puzzle's page on the WSJ site is no longer active.
If you want to see the morphed puzzle and solution, go here and scroll down 4 or 5 contest solutions.
To solve this via PDF, click here.
The standalone PDF solution published by WSJ is here.
