PCC#11 "Doughboy Contraband"

the theme answers are all smuggling drugs: FRAN[CO KE]LLY, GA[ME TH]EORY, ANTI[HEROIN]E, NUT[CRACK]ER, and E[LSD]ORF... the meta answer is HI[GH B]AR which is smuggling GHB (note that DOU[GHB]OY is also hiding this as well)... "high bar" is also known as "horizontal bar" (hence the note in hint 5) but I can only accept "high bar" as the meta solution... finally, in the words of Mr. Mackey "Drugs are bad, m'kay?"

Thanks, Philip! I learned something today :-)

Proudly ignorant of this substance I guess :-) Fun puzzle, thank you

Really fun!

I've been binging Ugly Betty lately. I'd never watched it before!

The struggle I had with this meta is that HIGH BAR doesn't come up when you search for events in artistic gymnastics, and, unless you just know it already, you have to dig pretty deep to see that it's sometimes an alternate name for horizontal bar. If you wanted to make it a little easier, you could clue the meta instead as something punny like "what a crossword editor might set for aspiring constructors." But that might be too easy. Fun puzzle though! Lotta great fill. :)

Nice! Knew what this would be right off the description, but was more than happy to work through the puzzle and find my way to the answer! Thanks Philip!

Fun puzzle! On the meta, I got halfway there but needed the last couple hints to get me "over the bar"

Thanks Phil!

I saw the "drug smuggling" but I never heard of GHB so I had to cheat and peek at the solution. Very clever construction!