ANSWERS: Family Reunions 3

Boy, "Family Reunions 3" proved to be a LOT harder than I expected! Not only did Grant Fikes fail to solve it, which hasn't happened since who-knows-when, if at all, only four people have managed to correctly solve it! That's less than half of last week's total! Take a look:

• Eric Maddy ****
• Sam Levitin ****
• Tyler Hinman ****
• Debbie Benford **** 

I think the next time I make a puzzle of this type, it won't solely consist of proper names. Anyway, head below the break for the answers as well as comments from two solvers who noted how hard this one was!

1. CHEST = TESH (C)
2. LANCE = CENA (L)
3. MYRTLE = TYLER (M)
4. REDEEM = DEERE (M)
5. AMENDED = MADDEN (E)
6. CANUCKS = CUSACK (N)
7. GLEANED = LEGEND (A)
8. SWEATER = WATERS (E)
9. GRAPHISM = GRISHAM (P)
10. PRECENTRAL = CARPENTER (L)

The Category is "Famous Johns", and the deleted letters unscramble to spell out MELLENCAMP.

Solver Eric Maddy said that this "Took me a minute. I had CHET and LANE (or CALE) for the first two and thought we were going for male first names. That went nowhere, so I started looking for other roads and got TESH and went from there"

Earlier, he saw a "Red herring of the day -- SWEATER can also anagram to (Jon) STEWART, with no letter deleted" (STEWART was an answer in the first draft of this puzzle, but then my test-solver pointed out that his first name didn't include an "H", which would've wrecked the theme. However, Eric wasn't entirely correct, as SWEATER scrambles to STEWARE, not STEWART)

Meanwhile, solver Sam Levitin got this "With much help from Nutrimatic. Very challenging."