Puzzle Notes

Hi friends: 

Erik Agard is back this week with a 21x21 ("Sunday-sized") puzzle at 3/5 difficulty, called "If I Had a Nickel ..." Happy solving!

Francis's bonus, promised for late last week, is actually in the pipeline for tomorrow--sorry for the delay there.

The meta solution to last week's puzzle is contained in the attached answer page. We had 76 entries, much fewer than the last contest, indicating either that it was more difficult or that people saw it more like an easter egg than a necessary part of the solve, or possibly both. Two winners, chosen at random from among the correct entries, are Joe Miller and J Bolster. Congratulations! You've won a three-month subscription extension. Four more solvers win the same extension for being the first to find a legitimate bonus theme answer from pairs of words in the grid. These legitimate answers are listed below a spoiler space, followed by some silly answers people suggested that seemed worthy of mention.

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Legitimate:

ALLSTAR (sol / tar)

ALWAYS (sol / wei)

CATALYST (scat / alit)

EASTWICK (eat / whisk)--accepted as a bonus entry, but not as a substitute for GET SMART; it's not the full movie title, which is "The Witches of Eastwick"

Just for fun:

CATSTAR (cast / tar)

STARWRECK (tar / recs)

DAYSEAT (stay / eat)

DAYSTAR (stay / tar)

HURRYSLEEP (Hersey / leap)

WICKBASE (whisk / bae)

COCKSPAR (cox / par)

CATSLEEP (cast / leap)

WHOOPASS (swoop / ahh)--the pronunciation doesn't quite work here, but it's funny.

And then, finally, uh, a bunch of unprintable ones half-derived from COX ...

Thanks all,

Ben and the AVCX crew [avxwords.com, @AVCXWord]