VOWEL-LESS CROSSWORD — This kind of puzzle is growing on me, and today’s grid is extra alluring because of its constructor. Ryan McCarty regularly creates gnarly Saturday crosswords but has never before ventured into the weird world of variety puzzles. The vowel-less crosswords are strange enough that I find myself giggling when I solve one; I can’t help but imagine someone looking over my shoulder at a jumbled sea of consonants, for starters. I also find myself counting letters on my fingers throughout and becoming lost in the process, which is a bit humbling.
If Mr. McCarty clued a vowel-less crossword like one of his Saturday grids, all the fingers in the world wouldn’t save me. Fortunately, he takes mercy on his audience in this venue with very specific and wide-ranging trivia, some of which should resonate with each solver. I certainly didn’t know most of it, but I knew enough.
For example, to warm up and get started on this venture, take 11A: “Nero or Hirohito (7).” Each is an EMPEROR; to fit this entry into its four squares in the grid, though, you must discard every vowel and jot down MPRR. At 18A, “Gentle sound from the crowd (6),” the entry is MURMUR, which is entered as MRMR. 43A, “Elena on the Supreme Court (5),” is KAGAN; toss the letters “A” and write in KGN.
Not so bad, right? Well, we haven’t discussed a feature of this grid that makes it especially imposing: There are 14 expansive, multiword entries to solve, including a fabulous set of stair-steps in the center. Although the entries, sans vowels, top out at 11 letters in length, the complete answers (of course) are much longer. 32A, “Salivating to a ringing bell, in Pavlov’s experiments (11,8),” is the meatiest term: CONDITIONED RESPONSE, or CNDTNDRSPNS. That kind of trivia is up my alley, but 55A, “Snoop Dogg’s first #1 hit (4,2,4,3,3),” is not; the answer here is DROP IT LIKE ITS HOT, or DRPTLKTSHT. I drew a blank at 35A, “Manhattan locale for major fashion labels (7,8),” despite having spent roughly half my life in its vicinity. This is the GARMENT DISTRICT, or GRMNTDSTRCT.