First, the basics: We received 187 entries correctly identifying the Fake Ad for Gatsby Granger’s on page 44 of the February issue. Harry D’Souza was our winner. He’s taking his gift certificate to Cardamom.
Now, the weird part. Gatsby Granger is a name the Fake Ad Czar made up in high school for a lot of reasons, but mostly because of teenage self-importance. It’s even on his yearbook page, right next to a picture of him (not in blackface or a Klan robe). We used the name because it gave us the two big “G’s” we needed to spell out the name of last month’s winner, Biggs (Big G’s, get it?).
Then we heard from Matthew Hickey. “As far as the name of last month’s winner, that took some research,” he wrote. “There was a Catherine Biggs who was a hairstylist for the movie The Great Gatsby but that seemed too obscure even for the Fake Ad Czar. But not to be deterred, my wife pressed on, determined to find a connection … then voila. It turns out that F. Scott Fitzgerald’s college roommate was John Biggs, who … would bail Fitzgerald out of jail when he got drunk and into fights, was the executor of his estate and became guardian of his daughter. This had to be the connection, even though it also is quite obscure.”
All that stuff about John Biggs is true. We looked it up. It’s also a complete coincidence. Weird, right?
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To enter this month’s contest, find the fake ad in the March issue and follow the instructions in the box on the Back Page. The fake ad always contains the name of last month’s winner in some form.