Solution to Evan Birnholz’s Aug. 27 crossword, ‘Two’s Company, Three’s a Crowd’

Lollapuzzoola 16 has come and gone. I finished this year’s tournament in 11th place in the Express Division, which is far better than I expected to do, and that was with one crossword that I finished with at least one error. The puzzles themselves were adorable; I can’t really say much about them since I don’t want to post any spoilers, except that the error in that one puzzle was hilarious when I found out about it. Also, when the Lollapuzzoola team said that they could not offer an online or electronic solving option, they weren’t kidding. These tournament puzzles are basically required to be solved on paper, and I’d strongly recommend getting yourself a set if you haven’t already at that link above.

But anyhow, the tournament was a great time as always. They said they would be throwing a party and they delivered. Let’s do it again next year.

A rebus puzzle in a giant 21×25 grid? Yes indeed, although you’ll notice as you go through the puzzle that some rebus squares have two letters and some have three. In fact, just in case the trick was difficult to uncover, I threw in a hint near the bottom of the puzzle in the clue for HINTS at 121D: [Tips such as “some squares have more than one letter”]. In the top half of the grid are the two-letter rebus-square answers:

In the bottom half are the three-letter rebus-square answers:

There’s also a note above the clues that says: “When this puzzle is complete, a pair of six-letter words will be revealed.” Take the double rebus letters in order and you spell out FRIEND, representing the “company” of the puzzle’s title. Take the triple rebus letters in order and you spell out LEGION, representing “a crowd.”

I started storyboarding this puzzle in either late May or early June, but shelved it for a couple of months because I didn’t like many of the options I found for the triple rebus letters. Many of the synonyms I found for “crowd” or “group” have letters that don’t often appear three times in a row in common phrases. You’d think that something like MASS or even a shorter MOB would work fine, but how many decent phrases are there with three M’s in a row? There’s the Hanson song “MMMBop” … but after that it would likely be a random Roman numeral above 3,000 which I didn’t like, or some play on a phrase like MMM GOOD which seemed too similar to “MMM-BOP.” Maybe WILLIAM M. MEREDITH, the secretary of the Treasury during the Zachary Taylor administration, but he would be a major deep cut at best. The G of LEGION wasn’t exactly friendly in my searches, either, but MAH-JONGG GAME and EGG GRADING pulled me out of that jam.

Here’s a note that next week I’ll be sharing a pair of important announcements on this blog. Stay tuned.

What did you think?