Solution: META: National Gallery of Art
Answer: BAROQUEOUTGINEVRADEBENCI
Written by Grant Yang and Dawson Do
This metapuzzle starts as a barred crossword in the shape of the National Gallery of Art (NGA) floor plan. The first step is to solve the crossword.
Solvers then will realize that seven of the cells in the grid are rebus cells which contain the name of a famous artist.
Every feeder answer can be paired with one of these artists by linking the answers with one prominent work in the NGA. These works can be found on the NGA Highlights page. The clues that contribute to the names of the artists each end with an index. These indices correspond to either the beginning or the end of the artists name, and should be ordered accordingly. The indices are then used to extract from the answers. Placing the extracted letters into the grid and ordering the pairs of letters by the date of the painting gives the intermediate phrase: PRIME GALLERIES
| Answer | Work | Year | Artist | Beginning Index | Ending Index |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| BLOCKPARTY | The Boating PARTY | 1883 | Mary CASSATT | P (6) | L (2) |
| CEREMONIALDANCER | Little DANCER Aged Fourteen | 1881 | Edgar DEGAS | R (3) | L (10) |
| MAIDENVOYAGE | The VOYAGE of Life: Youth | 1842 | Thomas COLE | I (3) | E (5) |
| EMPIRICALSTUDY | The Emperor Napoleon in His STUDY at the Tuileries | 1812 | Jacques-Louis DAVID | M (2) | R (5) |
| TIGERSHARK | Watson and the SHARK | 1778 | John Singleton COPLEY | E (4) | I (2) |
| SEEINGRED | Girl with the RED Hat | 1666 | Johannes VERMEER | G (6) | E (2) |
| BARBARYLIONS | Daniel in the LIONS' Den | 1616 | Sir Peter Paul RUBENS | A (5) | S (12) |
While we are going to PRIME the GALLERIES for a particular activity, it won’t be the ultimate thing we do.
This clue indicates that you should look at the galleries in the NGA that correspond to prime numbers.
Extracting the corresponding letters from the grid reveals our true intentions: We will have BAROQUE OUT GINEVRA DE BENCI, the Leonardo da Vinci painting that is housed in the NGA.
| 2 | B | 19 | O | 31 | G | 61 | D | 71 | B | ||||
| 3 | A | 23 | U | 37 | I | 67 | E | 73 | E | ||||
| 5 | R | 29 | T | 41 | N | 79 | N | ||||||
| 7 | O | 43 | E | 83 | C | ||||||||
| 11 | Q | 47 | V | 89 | I | ||||||||
| 13 | U | 53 | R | ||||||||||
| 17 | E | 59 | A |
Author’s Notes
Grant: Filling the grid was quite challenging because some prime galleries are double wide, so I wanted to make both squares the same letters to disambiguate which one to take. This necessitated some less-than-ideal fill. Additionally, it would have been nice to have the paintings appear in the gallery that the artist name occupies, but the spread of famous artist/paintings would have made the fill impossible.
I wanted to use some of my favorite paintings from the NGA. A cut artist/painting that was in the initial grid was Bosch/Death and the Miser.
Dawson: We're glad to hear that people enjoyed this puzzle. I constructed the the puzzle from the back (answer + prime galleries extract) and Grant came up with the feeder mechanic, as well as the initial grid. However, the first time we constructed it, we forgot about 43, a rather early prime. Fortunately, this mistake let us fit in the pun answer you have today! (The old answer did not have a pun)