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TUESDAY PUZZLE — An early-week crossword theme often rises to the surface of a grid like the pasta in alphabet soup, innocently bobbing into view for consumption. Every now and then, however, a constructor manages to craft a Monday, Tuesday or Wednesday theme that feels utterly inscrutable until it smacks you in the back of the head. And that’s just what Nate Cardin has done in today’s crossword, which is his third for The New York Times.
Three might be a fitting number with which to approach today’s solving process, too. Mr. Cardin has constructed a puzzle with a host of simple, three-letter Across entries throughout. Those tee up another three-letter word in the revealer, which is instrumental to the theme, and we fold that into a series of three-word phrases in order to crack everything wide open.
Ready? One, two, three — let’s dive in.
Today’s Theme
If your experience today was anything like mine, you sat narrowing your eyes at a completed puzzle and willed it to reveal what the heck it meant.
“Irritable,” reads the revealer at 54-Across, “or how you might describe all the words in the answers to the starred clues.” Oh, I was irritable all right! But I digress: The entry, as I learned from my crossings, was OUT OF SORTS.
After a period of prolonged squinting, and with the help of some generous gray shading over the words OUT OF, I suddenly realized what was going on. You might also “describe all the words in the answers to the starred clues” as — stay with me — “OUT OF” SORTS, because each of them can be slotted into a phrase that begins with those words. Take the entry at 15-Across, for example: Something can be OUT OF PRINT, or OUT OF ORDER. Just below that, at 18-Across: One might be OUT OF POCKET, or OUT OF DOORS (a somewhat fanciful way of saying “outdoors”).
Interestingly enough, OUT OF POCKET — the phrase that inspired Mr. Cardin’s puzzle, as he details in his constructor notes below — was the subject of a recent viral TikTok, and Ben Zimmer, a lexicographer for The Wall Street Journal, traced the origins of the phrase. Perhaps “out of pocket” is “in” the zeitgeist?
Tricky Clues
21A. Flip a coin: verb or adjective? In this case, “Shriveled” is a past-tense verb, so its corresponding entry is SHRANK.
49A. The word for this “Tight undergarment,” GIRDLE, may sound a little old-timey. And it is, kind of: It emerged as a type of ladies’ shapewear in the early 20th century, but its aesthetic function has largely been replaced by waist trainers. (What’s more, the term’s use peaked even earlier, during the 19th century, when it referred merely to a belt used to secure clothes!)
10D. I never could’ve predicted the adjective for “high-strung horses,” and it has appeared just a few times before in the history of the Times Crossword. Did you manage it? The word is SNORTY, which may also describe my laughter when I finally solved it.
13D. The average “Mountaineering enthusiast” may be well aware of this slang term describing the type; I would have assumed that a ROCK JOCK refers to someone who enjoys music, rather than climbing.
26D. If a greeter greets, does an usher … USH? I hope so, because that’s the entry for “Show people to their seats, informally.”
48D. The “Jeweler’s lens” used to assess the quality of gems is called a LOUPE. Peep this sparkling origin story, too: The word comes from an Old French term for an imperfect gem. J’adore!
Constructor Notes
The idea for this puzzle came from the phrase “out of pocket” popping up three times in one day, with a different meaning each time. I (early 40s) told my husband (said to say he’s 29) that I needed to pay for something out of (my own) pocket, but that I’d be reimbursed. My husband told a co-worker that he’d be out of pocket, as in unavailable to meet, later that day. My students, high schoolers, had earlier told a friend that they were acting out of pocket, as in out of line — in a “you can’t say that!” kind of way.
Needless to say, I was fascinated by the way this idiom has evolved, and at the out of pocket / out of line connection. This sent me down an “out of ___” rabbit hole, where I found a wealth of idioms that fit this pattern. I stumbled onto “out of sorts” and thought, What a silly idea it’d be to piece together theme answers where each theme word was the “sort” that could finish an “out of ___” phrase. Sometimes, the silliest ideas work, and I’m so grateful this one did. Thank you for solving! Cardin … out!
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