My weekend’s puzzling was mostly taken up by eight hours of Panda Magazine (I still need to go back and find the hidden contest and solve the non-meta-impacting portions of the issue.)

I also solved Kevin Wald’s latest cryptic themed on his birthday, which was fun.

This week’s MGWCC was about half an hour for puzzle and meta, which I was pretty happy with.  The puzzle is here and my log is after the cut.

0:00:00

Reading blog post… Matt leaked meta-meta information via email, he misspelled a theme entry in a way that we have to preserve for the meta…. should help some.

0:00:41

Five letter food, got it. starting in on my printout.

0:01:00

57D IAN (saw one of his tweets today) 60A ZAIRE

0:01:51

SIRE ANTES ATIT ASU USES(?) to finish that corner. don’t know the -ZA word. guh

0:03:15

30D JAPAN? no crossings work. maybe not, could be a trick.

0:03:56

62A TEXAS (why in spanish?) are 55 and 56 EKE and REX?

0:04:46

ugh. stuck there (feeling a bit slow tonight). going up to the top.

0:05:34

is 14A LEONI? 1D PLOW? 4D ANN?

0:06:07

WTS, SEPT, PSHAW, dirty… HOES (!!!) WINGSIT.

0:07:10

7D ORGY (fits with the dirty HOES)… 6D OCTET doesn’t fit if GDAY is right

0:07:53

6A OOZED. another Z. probably not important. is 15A just CROPS?

0:08:39

ZOO EPA DSLLINE seem to work. OPENNETGOAL going across… isn’t it “EMPTY NET GOAL”?

0:09:36

if 24A is -ED then 18 EDE- must be EDEN. tip of my brain until then.

0:10:02

27A PAQUIN (I think)

0:10:35

I don’t know French, but ADIEU I know. 28D.

0:11:20

ADULT and EER… if that’s QUARTZ going down we get another Z… ZOOEY deschanel.

0:12:04

PAVED VIAL BULL. DUTCHMEN. so JAPAN my work after all.

0:12:41

43D,40D COM SHOTPUT (should have known that one)

0:13:20

how is 47A -MT stumping me? attack from below I guess. 58A ALI

0:14:16

PIT LILT… is it KLIMT? oh duh, I knew 61A XTC but hadn’t looked at it yet.

0:14:54

QUARTZITIC theme answer… hmmm.

0:15:11

37D TIME (which I would use far too much of if I went to the ACPT)

0:15:36

40A SITAR, 34D MATEY, 37A TAPAS (ha!)

0:16:30

25D SOLAR? 25A SPIRO of course. 26D PHDS

0:17:23

is 22A LIZZY (from Party Down, a great show, available on DVD and Netflix Streaming)? Not sure if that’s how she spells it. 12D would be PREZ?

0:18:12

23D IRK. 32D… oh, GREEN. so 30A is JOHNKING. then PAR, NACHO, MACE, CACHE, MANU, … don’t know 44A. not HINGEON, doesn’t fit.

0:20:13

19A is REX, above those two Zs which I’m starting to believe in. BPS for 11A gets me PRES and BORZOI going down (about which I know nothing). and 16A ORE (no “it’s found in veins”?)

0:21:26

is it BORZOIPACK? what a strange answer. then BANKON going across that K?

0:22:04

46A is a guess (with the trailing U) of BADU. is 46D BATES? seems right. 41D CADENZA? maybe.

0:22:53

with 49A SALE 44D is BALI… and we’re back to the bottom middle.

0:23:38

assuming EKE and REX, we have PERxTINITIS and UKExE…

0:24:22

Oh, I had misspelled TEXAS… it’s SOSA going down. PEROTINITIS and UKESE… which still doesn’t look like a thing…but I’m done.

0:24:58

So, we have “OPEN NET GOAL”, “BORZOI PACK”, “PEROTINITIS” (with an important misspelling), and “QUARTZITIC” for the long answers…we have the title “You’d Better Shape Up”, and we want a 5 letter word.

0:27:24

googling, it’s UKASE… so 46 down is ?AX… RAX? ok. It obviously can’t be REX, since that’s 19A. But anyway, back to googling words I don’t know.

0:29:51

so, there’s palindromes TINIT and ENNE… and ITI, TZITI…. looks like ZITI… oh! and ROTINI.

0:30:23

we have PENNE up top… and ORZO…

0:30:42

Those are all… PASTA! That must be it.