Back in Again Nyt Crossword Clue
wordplay, the crossword column
Dig Right In!
Dylan Schiff's puzzle pushes boundaries.
Wed PUZZLE — Delight welcome back Dylan Schiff, who is making his second appearance in the New York Times Crossword today. Mr. Schiff's debut puzzle, which was published a petty over a yr ago, demonstrates his talent for noticing interesting patterns in words, and his follow-up effort makes good on the promise of that first outing.
His puzzle reminded me of an important lesson I've learned over the course of the by 9 months as I've been writing almost the early on-week puzzles here at Wordplay. The lesson is that, despite my inclination to dig right in and push through a puzzle as quickly as possible, it's sometimes more enjoyable to ruminate, and so to speak, on the theme equally it reveals itself. When I accept the time to figure out the wordplay or pattern of the theme, the puzzle goes more slowly, for sure, simply I besides feel a greater sense of accomplishment at having had that "aha" moment during the solve, rather than waiting until the puzzle is over to figure out the flim-flam.
Only, of course, sometimes information technology's just equally satisfying to stampede right through the crossword and salve the clever bits for later on! Permit'due south take a look at these clues.
Tricky Clues
1A. "The daughter adjacent door, for 1" is an example of a TROPE, which is a clichéd archetype that can exist found in sitcoms, movies, novels or music. Y'all name the fine art class, it'south probably had a girl side by side door in information technology.
15A. "Act like some poles" is the clue for REPEL, referring to the tendency of like magnetic poles to REPEL one another.
20A. I beloved the clue "Record of the year," which had me thinking of the Grammy Awards. Instead, a "record of the twelvemonth" is an ANNAL, a historical record of the year.
27A. A inkling with an abbreviation generally signifies that the entry will as well be an abridgement. In this case, "Like some meds" is the clue for OTC, brusque for over the counter.
35A. The inkling "Brandish one'southward humanity, in a fashion" is an allusion to the saying "To ERR is human being." If you take that saying to be true, then to ERR is to display your humanity.
45A. I was totally fooled by the clue "Dug-out material," thinking it peradventure referred to the material used in the construction of baseball dugouts or dugout canoes. Instead, this "dug-out material" is ORE, a cloth that is dug out of the globe.
65A. "Going from 0 to 100, say" is another clever inkling, and, although information technology didn't have a question marker, information technology'south certainly a pun on the phrase that unremarkably means to accelerate very apace past going from 0 to 100 miles per hour. For the purposes of this clue, however, going from 0 to 100 is Aging, which takes a lot longer than accelerating in a car!
66A. I wasn't certain what to make of the inkling "Line to the house" at first. Was it referring to a clothesline? A phone line? But no, information technology's an ASIDE, which is a line that an thespian delivers "to the house," or the audience.
1D. This 1 also stumped me: "Mail service office enquiry" is the clue for TRACER, which I had to look up. Apparently a TRACER tracks down the whereabouts of a missing bundle.
11D. "Kickoff of a Caesarean boast" is a common clue for the Latin discussion VENI, every bit in Caesar's famous boast "VENI, vidi, vici" ("I came, I saw, I conquered"). Yous'll see this one once more!
50D. In high school chemical science grade, y'all may have learned that "Stable electron configurations" are OCTETS, because electrons tend to occupy orbitals in groups of eight. I may have too learned this fact, merely to tell the truth I had mostly forgotten information technology in the grade of my AGING. Fortunately, nosotros accept the New York Times Crossword to remind the states of things we've forgotten!
Today'southward Theme
Although this puzzle doesn't have a revealer, I was able to effigy out what was going on with the theme entries after filling in the offset one from the crosses, and then using that information in my solve of the second and third entries.
The theme entries, in each case, contain 3 geographic locations of the same blazon (world capitals in 21A, U.S. states in 38A and countries in 59A). At first glance, however, they appear to comprise but two of each type of place, despite the clues insistence that there are three. How tin can this be?
When I was solving for the first theme entry, I truly had no idea. From the crosses, I was able to identify CAIRO and Mexico City, but I couldn't for the life of me run across where a tertiary world capital entered the moving picture. But then I remembered the enumeration at the end of the clue, and I guessed that it indicated the lengths of each city's name. Armed with this information, I realized that CAIRO was the five-letter of the alphabet capital letter, MEXICO City was the 10-letter capital and, wedged between them and subconscious at offset glance, was ROME at four letters long.
The second theme entry asks for "3 U.S. states (4,iv,ten)," and solving and filling in blanks "Wheel of Fortune"-style yielded OHIO and WASHINGTON. Clearly, OHIO must be the kickoff four-alphabetic character country, WASHINGTON is the 10-letter state and, again sandwiched between the two, we find IOWA, with four messages. The third entry plays out in exactly the aforementioned fashion, except with the names of countries instead of world capitals or states.
Hats off to Mr. Schiff! This is a corking, original observation nigh language and geography. I appreciate the decision to brand the filigree an actress square wider than usual (xvi blocks Across) to adjust theme entries of lengths xv/14/15, which could not be symmetrically placed in a 15x15 grid.
Constructor Notes
I've been told all my life by friends, family and co-workers that "my brain works differently." Noticing and admiring oddities in the English language linguistic communication is second nature to me. While I don't remember the serial of idle thoughts that led me to realize that OHIO and WASHINGTON could overlap to grade IOWA, I exercise remember that I immediately went to an atlas to run across if other places shared this belongings. Luckily, there were many!
Though no other states fit the pattern, a surprising number of world capitals and countries practice. In deciding on a theme set, I tried to pick combinations of locations that were well known and that spanned the globe. I likewise included the revealer Edge DISPUTES in my original draft of the crossword to supplement the numbering in the themed clues, only it was establish to be excessive. So, I dropped it and designed my outset-always 16-column-wide grid with simply the three themers. It was a fun claiming to construct, and I'thousand happy with the mix of conversational and trivia-based entries in the rest of the puzzle.
Endless thanks to Marker McClain, Rich Proulx, Kyle Dolan and the members of the Crossword Discord community for their generous feedback and thoughtful insights.
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Source: https://www.nytimes.com/2022/03/01/crosswords/daily-puzzle-2022-03-02.html
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