ANSWERS: Pieces of Nine: Much Harder Edition

Remember how I had eight solvers for my "Section Six 4" puzzle? Well, the puzzle following that, Grant Fikes' "Pieces of Nine: Much Harder Edition", must've lived up to its title, as that number halved. See for yourself:

• Eric Maddy ***
• Lynn Sweeney ****
• Sam Levitin ****
• Mom ****

If you want to know the answers, just head below the break for that as well as a couple solver comments.

Two of the columns, highlighted above in cyan, spell out CONTROLLED SUBSTANCES

Not again!

Solver Eric Maddy initially got stuck, saying "I got the 10 nine-letter words, alphabetized them . . . and I see nothing in the columns that looks like an answer. The closest thing I see is SALE REP, which AFAIK isn't a phrase (SALES REP is)" It turns out he neglected to look at the numbers next to the grid, and he solved it once I pointed that out to him.

Solver Sam Levitin said that "I really enjoyed this puzzle. Especially how the words used atypical affixes. It wasn’t all (any?) Latin prefixes. Also, the ION was not an end, and you used RAT in two different slots. As a sometimes collector of words, I’m impressed with this collection of words that could be lined up in some order to make sense as you did in this puzzle."