Jump to: Today’s Theme | Tricky Clues
THURSDAY PUZZLE — Those who have extensive experience with Thursday puzzles tend to hope for the mind-bending adventures and complexity that their themes are famous for. I count myself among these people, but to the puzzle editors, not all Thursday puzzles are meant to be tricky. To paraphrase Will Shortz, these grids are merely supposed to be “one harder” than Wednesday ones.
Sometimes that’s OK. At a time when we are stressed out about all sorts of things and the week has been the longest month of our lives, a bit of clever wordplay without the mental origami may be just what’s needed.
Kiran Pandey’s last New York Times puzzle made people highly suspicious of commas, but today’s crossword is a relatively gentle one. I enjoyed figuring out how the answers fit the clues, and you know what? That was just fine for me.
Who knows? Maybe next week we’ll have a rebus puzzle. (Runs like heck.)
Today’s Theme
İçerik Tablosu
There’s no real trick to Mr. Pandey’s puzzle, although it will test your knowledge of film and of slang terms for “great.”
The theme consists of five familiar phrases that are repurposed as two-word movie reviews. For example, at 17A, the answer to the clue “‘That 1978 musical? Amazing movie!’” is GREASE FIRE, where “fire” is means that something is very cool or good. So the entry should be read as “GREASE? FIRE!”
Similarly, at 51A, the phrase MOONLIT is the answer to the clue “That 2009 science fiction flick? Freaking epic!” The word “lit” in this sense means “really good, intense, fun or exciting,” and the entry should be thought of as “MOON? LIT!”
Tricky Clues
1A. Work those crossings, my friends. I tried “earl” and “duke” before I filled in LEGATO for 1D and, based on the L, realized that the answer to “Noble title” was LADY.
22A. “One in a black suit” is not someone in mourning or one of the “Men in Black.” In this puzzle, the clue refers to playing cards, and the answer is SPADE.
32A. The “e.g.” implies that we are looking for a category that the clue “Life or death” falls into. In this case, both words are NOUNs.
40A. What a great clue for one of my favorite couch-potato pastimes. When you “Experience four seasons in one day, say?” you are either living in Syracuse, N.Y. (home of my alma mater, where hourly changes in weather are a common occurrence) or you are trying to BINGE a streaming series.
4D. This is not about what you may think it is about. If it were, the clue “Pro choice?” would be hyphenated. The answer refers to voting on the “pro” side versus on the “anti” side, and the answer is YEA.
8D. Everyone resheathe your swords, please. The answer is not misspelled, nor did the editors run out of E’s. The “Collection of traits necessary for ‘the achievement of great things,’ as theorized by Machiavelli” is VIRTÙ, and the word is in Italian because Machiavelli was Italian. It’s a historical clue, but it’s also giving language clue vibes. In those, the answer must be in the same language as something in the clue.
12D. The lack of trickery in this puzzle’s theme was redeemed by punny cluing, in my opinion. “What one might say when the coast is clear?” is a clue I may expect to refer to audible relief when one makes a daring escape. Not today. The clue is really about pirates, because why not? The answer is “LAND HO!,” which is shouted when a coastline comes into sight.
43D. Today I learned something about music history and composition. “The key of glory, in the Baroque period” happens to be D MAJOR. According to the Tabernacle Choir’s analysis of Handel’s “Messiah,” D major “is a key of triumph and celebration” and “was the easiest key for baroque trumpets to play, and so became associated with victory fanfares.”
In contrast, the key of D MINOR was considered to be the “sad” key, and it is the one in which the Lacrimosa from Mozart’s “Requiem” is sung. Schubert called the sound of the key “melancholy womanliness.”
Constructor Notes
I’m thrilled to be back in The New York Times with a puzzle that I hope is a fun solve. I’m also quite happy with the longer answer stacks in the corners of this grid. In particular, the clue for 12-Down is possibly my favorite that I’ve written.
Some bonus theme entries that were left on the cutting room floor: AIR SICK (“That 2023 sports drama? Excellent!”) and INSIDE DOPE (“That 2021 Bo Burnham special? Real nice!”).
Happy solving!
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