Here are the original phrases, with the stripped film titles underlined:
BUBONIC PLAGUE; CHEAPSKATE; JEHOVAH'S WITNESS; EVERYTHING IS AWESOME; IF THE SHOE FITS, WEAR IT; GIUSEPPE VERDI; CHARACTERIZE; IMPLEMENTATION; SHIPWRECK; JABBERWOCKY; JUNK FOOD; PROCRASTINATION; GRANDCHILDREN; MARTIN LUTHER KING DAY; STATISTICALLY SIGNIFICANT; SALAD DRESSING; TRANSGRESSION; GUIDING LIGHT; WESTMINSTER ABBEY; WAYNE GRETZKY.
The filled-in crisscross:
The word spelled by anagramming the shaded letters is CURLY; the longer word which can have a film title stripped out to become that word is CURRENTLY.
6 valid entries were received. The randomly-selected first-place winner of my board game Mammalath (with the Mammalath Plus expansion) and a $15 gift card for RiffTrax (LONDON INTERNATIONAL FINANCIAL FUTURES AND OPTIONS EXCHANGE) is John Bulten! The randomly-selected second-place winner of a $10 gift card for RiffTrax is Anuraag Sahay! I highly recommend the RiffTrax version of Aladdin, one of the films used in the above puzzle. If you prefer for your terrible films to have more video games in them, then the RiffTrax versions of Super Mario Bros. and The Wizard are also great. Congratulations!
Stay tuned next week for a special collaboration with Ryan Faley!
