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Solution

This is Chris, from another Chris Words post in Columbia. And we’re up to our meta puzzle explanation. I got an email from one of the solvers of this puzzle who loved the puzzle, but still had a lot of questions. He writes:

Dear Chris,
Another great puzzle, but I just could come up with who you were looking for. I’m sure when you post the answer, it’ll make so much sense, but until then, I’m just going to keep kicking myself. Keep it up!

Well, here’s your meta puzzle explanation.

We’re looking for someone we lost in 2014, and this clue has four starred answers:

17A – *What keeps Oral Roberts University going? = TULSA PULSE
62A – *Adventure for a spelunker inside a really gunky cave? = SLIMY CLIMB
11D – *Payraise that Homer Simpson would surely agree to? = DONUT BONUS
28D – *Possible entrée at a themed Liverpool pub? = RINGO WINGS

The title is “Core Demographic”, which points to that these four answers consist of 10 letters, specifically two 5-letter words, and the center three letters of each word is the same (TULSA PULSE, SLIMY CLIMB, DONUT BONUS, RINGO WINGS).

So, the person who we lost is someone whose name follows this same pattern, which points to CASEY KASEM, this meta’s answer. Something that no one mentioned in any of the correct responses was the fact that the clue for 40D [Gyroscopic toy] is TOP. If you did catch this, well done!

Twenty (!) correct answers came in for the third meta, and Jim Quinlan was the randomly selected winner. He will join Jon Delfin and John L. Wilson in a future section of the site.

I’m only a few days away to heading up to Cambridge to play in the MIT Mystery Hunt! Longtime followers of the Hunt will recognize the name of this puzzle as a name of a long-running puzzle type in the Hunt, all engineered by logic master Dan Katz. Well, today’s puzzle won’t be that hard. My puzzle is just a bunch of duck puns.

I’m not exactly sure if I’ll be posting a puzzle new week, or a post about puzzles, but I will have something published next week. The future is exciting.

Enjoy the puzzle, and wish me luck!