LAST WEEK’s PUZZLE:

Title: “Something’s Missing”
Prompt: This puzzle’s contest answer is a familiar breakfast cereal.
Answer: CAP’N CRUNCH, found by 331 solvers, 281 of whom were solo solves

Quite a SAD (Simple And Difficult) meta! We had four nonsense phrases:

17-A: [Vessels with which Dennis won his four America’s Cups?] = CONNER SHIPS
27-A: [When Sergey declared war on all other tech companies?] = BATTLE OF BRIN
48-A: [What Cindy Brady’s parents shelled out a lot of money on?] = CURL SPENDING
63-A: [Singer Shannon, finally getting his bearings?] = DEL ORIENTED

Studying them reveals we have taken the letters TAI from the phrases CON(TAI)NER SHIPS, BATTLE OF BRI(TAI)N, CUR(TAI)L SPENDING, and DE(TAI)L ORIENTED. What breakfast cereal loses the same three letters in its title? That would be CAP’N CRUNCH, found by 331 solvers.

THIS WEEK’S PUZZLE:

Today’s puzzle is Week 4 of 4 in September. Instructions: