Capital Losses

[HeadinHome]

Just getting to this one after a busy pre-Tgiving week. solved and submitted (without the hints) on crosshare and officially OTC!

Classic mechanism type whose steps unroll in a satisfying way — enjoyed!

[cbarbee002]

(Un)officially off the couch. Good one Jay! I won't lie - - yes I did look at the nudges. Like a mosquito to a bug light . . . . .

[hoover]

Got it before the nudges came in, but now that I've seen the nudges, I see something amazingly clever that I totally missed!

[hcbirker]

Finally off the couch! Had an error in the grid that tripped me up.

[Tom Shea]

Totally lost, even with cheating and getting the answer.

At least there's leftovers.

[Bird Lives]

The answer is KIEV.

The entry for each starred clue consists of the first letters of state capital, e.g. FRAN. The entry symmetrically opposite contains the last letters of the same capital, FORT. The middle letter, K, has been excluded. The missing letters are, in order, K, I, E, and V, This is the transliteration for the Russian name for the capital of Ukraine. It has since been replaced by the Ukranian spelling, Kyiv.
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The fifty solvers are
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At least one solver pointed out the inconsistency that while the cities in the grid are capitals of US states, the city in the answer is the capital of a country. I did not respond with a comment ending in Sherlock.

There is a glaring mistake in the clues. Elizabeth II (9Down) is not HRH. She is Her Royal Majesty. Royal Highnesses are other members of the monarch’s family, or something like that. The explanation in Wikipedia was too complicated for me to understand. I had no idea — no solvers here mentioned it so maybe it wasn't so glaring — and I would have remained blissfully unaware of my faux pas if my niece had not pointed it out to me this weekend. This new bit of knowledge was not one of the things I was thankful for.

[Dplass]

The whole state country thing was very odd/off to me too.

[hoover]

Well, the amazingly clever thing I missed was only the entire second half of all of the capitals, symmetrically placed in the grid! I solved it using only the first halves. So of course I started out with FRANKFURT, MADRID, before realizing there isn't a world capital that starts with PHO or NASH.

[MarkWoychick]

I liked this puzzle a lot. I briefly went down a rabbit hole of bygone currencies between the Capital Losses title and FRAN in 1A (thinking Franc) but couldn’t make it work for the others, of course. Eventually I landed on the answer. Thanks for the puzzle - very fun.