Episode #338 Contest: Plundered Goods

[bcimmet]

There's a new contest puzzle from Fill Me In. I'll rate this one 3.7 bananas on a scale of 5 bananas. (Bananas has nothing to do with the puzzle, it's just a 1-to-5 scale we made up.) As always, I have a poor sense of difficulty, but based on the feedback from our testers, this one played tricker than most of what we typically put out.

The puzzle is called "Plundered Goods" and was constructed by me (Brian Cimmet). The solution to the puzzle is an 8-letter word.

The crossword can be downloaded from here. You're welcome to solve and talk about the puzzle -- but if you want to be eligible for a prize, you have to listen to the podcast for this week's password. The podcast can be found on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, Google Podcasts, our own website, or wherever you collect your podcasts.

Once you've solved the puzzle, submit your answer and this week's password by email to fmi@bemoresmarter.com. You can also contact us with any suggestions, questions, comments, or ideas. Thanks for playing along!

[boharr]

Got it.

[Meg]

Also got it.

[dudeski]

Got it

[ChrisKochmanski]

Banana peeled.

Though I needed a nudge.

Good one!

[Laura M]

Ha ha ha that was great!

[BarbaraK]

Banana split!

Like most metas, it’s easy once you see what’s going on.

[benchen71]

It took a few nudges, but I've split the banana.

[bcimmet]

Hello solvers,

The solution to this contest was TREASURE.

The key was to reparse the title as PL-UNDER-ED. In the grid, there were four instances of the letters PL sitting two rows beneath ED. The letters between PL and ED, when read from top to bottom, spelled out TR-EA-SU-RE.

Thanks for playing! There's another contest puzzle and another post in the forum for it. I hope you give it a try!