Note: Puzzles were updated on 12:48pm Sunday, due to major misspelling. Thanks to Jenna LaFleur for letting me know.
Hey everyone, and welcome to Week 116! Today’s puzzle is a nice and pleasant crossword. Feel free to solve it downs only, and throw it up on Twitch. Is it asymmetric? Does it matter? It’s fun! I hope you enjoy it.
Let’s go over the answer to #115, and it appears I haven’t written a meta recap since April 2018. Jesus. Let’s get into this.
For the puzzle, I noted I was looking for a creature, and this puzzle had four clues that featured an *asterisk as well as [bracketed numbers]
18-Across {*Swiss, in other words [6] } = EMMENTALER CHEESE
23-Across {*Professional who studies exits [2] } = HIGHWAY ENGINEER
54-Across {*Carpenter’s bottleful [10] } = WOODWORKING GLUE
59-Across {*Czech tennis player and former world No. 1 who lost to Angelique Kerber in the 2016 US Open finals [9] } = KAROLINA PLISKOVA
A few long answers, but circles were left in 18-Across, and those letters spelled out MEECHEE. If you had no idea what that word meant, hopefully you Googled it, and discovered it is the name of a character from the 2018 animated film Smallfoot, about abominable snowmen living in Nepal. While the movie I think did fine, it might be best known for a meme titled “Zendaya is Meechee“, with a fantastically catchy song.
It turns out, the other three entries also contain the name of an abominable snowman from the movie. GWANGI in HIGHWAY ENGINEER, DORGLE in WOODWORKING GLUE, and KOLKA in KAROLINA PLISKOVA.
The [numbers] in each of the clues come in here. The [10] isn’t very useful for DORGLE, but if you use the voice actor names, it works out. After all, Zendaya is Meechee.
Meechee = ZENDAYA [6] = Y
Gwangi = LEBRON JAMES [2] = E
Dorgle = DANNY DEVITO [10] = T
Kolka = GINA RODRIGUEZ [9] = I
Those letters spell YETI, which is the appropriate creature that is this puzzle’s answer. I had this idea for the puzzle back when the meme was super trendy, but hey, nothing wrong with a puzzle about a 2018 movie. That’s what the last meta was about too.
Altogether, 47 readers submitted the right answer. Coming back after a long absence might do that, so thank you regular viewers who check their inboxes. Congrats to those who got it! This week’s randomly selected winner was Grayson Holmes. He will join Jon Delfin, John L. Wilson, Jim Quinlan, Eric Maddy, Andy Keller, David Cole, Roger Barkan, Patricia Miga, Erik Agard, Charles Montpetit, Steve Blais, Mike Ruslander, Matthew Breen, David Stein, Justin Weinbaum, Tyler Hinman, Kathy Johnescu, Regina Cassidy, Tim Harrod, Laura Mendyke, and Anna-Marie Ruoff in a future section of the site. Congrats Grayson!
New puzzle soon. Hope you’ve got a great week ahead!
Chris
Chris Words 
