MGWCC #827 — “We Have a Winner”

[hcbirker]

Awaiting beamage - finally!

[Sfreedman67]

I've staring at the completed grid, totally stuck...anyone mind giving me a nudge?

Edit: got some help, thanks!

[sharkicicles]

Got it with help from our seriously abbreviated Sunday night zoom crew… thanks again!!!!!!

[ajk]

Um, no-instructions will be completely impossible, right?

No way to get this no-instructions - I don’t think

Note that in addition to @Abide, Joon mentions over at Fiend that he solved without instructions. Given that the mechanism clearly points to an EA answer, I suspected that some would be able to jump from there to Erik Agard, especially given the title. Obviously it would be tricky to know for sure though.

[MMe]

Note that in addition to @Abide, Joon mentions over at Fiend that he solved without instructions. Given that the mechanism clearly points to an EA answer, I suspected that some would be able to jump from there to Erik Agard, especially given the title. Obviously it would be tricky to know for sure though.

Right. I wasn't aware of the ACPT coming up, so that a "winner" would refer to that contest would have been the very last thing to come to my mind -- but obviously not to Joon's! e.a. also came very close to being the winner of the crossword contest he was (as "a winner") the answer to. Would have been pretty "meta".

[ajk]

e.a. also came very close to being the winner of the crossword contest he was (as "a winner") the answer to. Would have been pretty "meta".

Yeah, I saw that. Would have been a nice touch.

[Abide]

My thought on this being not necessarily "inside baseball":
... if you are a Gaffney subscriber, you are familiar with the leaderboard, and are likely familiar with the fastest submitters, including Jangler and e.a.
Matt has commented before that Erik (e.a.) sometimes submits a logical guess within the first minutes. I estimate his first place badges are in the mid-double digits.
When I solved without the prompt, I think that helped me focus on the pattern faster. When I needed an entry for EA that was also a winner, I thought Erik was more likely that Ethan Allen or Eddie Albert.

[BrennerTJ]

Is it already Tuesday again?

[MikeyG]

Since Erik has also guest-constructed a MGWCC, he might be the first to both be a guest constructor and a meta answer! (I don't know if Gaffney himself was ever an answer, but I do think "MGWCC" itself being an answer a while back was hilarious.)

[woozy]

So... somehow, trying to do it with downs only put me in the blindset that I saw we had a chain of AY, YU, UO, OI, IE but I became insistent we had to build from scratch as though


AY
_YU
__UO
___OI
____IE
_____EA

were steps to building something. I just wasn't in the frame of mind to think we were supposed to come up with a six in a match. I thought I needed to find an winner whose name was somehow circular or contained all the vowels and y (preferably y,o,i,e twice and a,y once) are something. Felt kind of dumb when I couldn't even understand the nudges I got (which were basically "Well, don't you see the pattern?")