Puzzle #242: 3 Through 5, Too

Some theme content in this one (pdf, puz, pdf solution), but I think it'll play more like a themeless (hopefully in a fun way). Happy solving!

 

Created by Will Nediger with the online crossword builder from Amuse Labs

Indie puzzle highlights

December 31: "In a Sarlacc Pit, but Emotionally" (August Miller, lost for xwords)

March 20: Pet Theory (Ben Wilson, zerofiftyone)

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"In a Sarlacc Pit, but Emotionally" (August Miller)

It's true, December 31 was a long time ago. But I'd been sleeping on August Miller's blog until a couple of recent AVCX puzzles and a profile in Daily Crossword Links inspired me to work through the recent backlog. Not only am I very late to covering this one, Quiara Vasquez's new Substack has already covered it, and that Substack promises to do basically the same thing as my highlight roundups, except much more comprehensively and with much better writing.

Still, I liked this puzzle a lot and therefore I'm going to talk about it! One thing I like about it is that, like many of August's puzzles, this one features triple stacks of 15s, which are way less popular than they used to be because they tend to involve significant sacrifices in fill quality (or at least they did in their heyday). August's triple stacks are consistently good, both in terms of the 15s themselves and in the short fill crossing them. But in this puzzle, I particularly want to highlight two entries: DORITOS ROULETTE and EMO KYLO REN. These are both phrases that will be totally unknown to a lot of solvers, and it's worth taking a look at how August chose to clue them. EMO KYLO REN is at least partly self-explanatory: it's a version of Kylo Ren who's emo. But with no context, that's still going to be pretty baffling to solvers who aren't already familiar. Cannily, August clues it as [Who tweeted "i get all my winter clothes from Hoth Topic"], which not only shouts out a great pun, but concisely tells the baffled solver that EMO KYLO REN is a parody Twitter account, without having to explicitly spell it out. Contrast that with the clue for STONED APE THEORY in another of August's puzzles that I recently solved: [Disputed hypothesis that ingestion of psilocybin mushrooms helped to catalyze the deevlopment of art and language among early humans]. That's a great entry that I've being hoping to use as a 15 for a while, but it's also totally opaque to someone who's not already familiar. So opaque that a glancing clue like the EMO KYLO REN clue wouldn't land; you've really gotta go straightforward with this one.

DORITOS ROULETTE, finally, is less transparent than EMO KYLO REN in a vacuum. But it's certainly one of the very few obvious potential meanings for the phrase, so the clue doesn't actually have to be so explicit at all. [Gamble with chips?] is a perfect piece of wordplay, but it's also perfect as a disambiguator of the meaning of DORITOS ROULETTE: it confirms that, yes, it probably means Russian roulette with dangerously spicy Doritos instead of bullets. (I mean, I guess it could also be a game of actual roulette with Doritos instead of balls, but... how would that even work?)

Pet Theory (Ben Wilson)

A lot of crosswords I've highlighted on here over the years have been Schrodinger puzzles, in which certain squares have multiple correct entries that work with the crossing entries. After all, Schrodingers are a staple of the hard crossword niche, and it's always impressive when they're pulled off well, without clues that feel too stretchy. So it's funny that my favorite recent Schrodinger puzzle isn't actually a Schrodinger puzzle (or should I say, both is and isn't a Schrodinger puzzle). Instead, it's got a mini-theme with SCHRODINGER'S CAT as an entry; the other entry is BOX-AND-WHISKER PLOT.

When I finished solving, I thought "Cute! Two science-y theme answers that are related to cats" and moved on with my life. But later in the shower I realized that, of course, the connection is much tighter: the Schrodinger's cat thought experiment involves a cat in a box, so Schrodinger's scheme could literally be described as a box-and-whisker plot. That's a beautiful reinterpretation of the phrase, remarkably affecting the meanings of both "box" and "whisker" (and even, metaphorically, "plot"). Cap it off with a perfect title and you've got the platonic ideal of a mini-theme.

Indie puzzle highlights

February 21: Seeking Joy (Rebecca Goldstein, AVCX+)

March 1: Let Me Be Perfectly Queer ... (Rafa Musa, These Puzzles Fund Abortion 5)

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Seeking Joy (Rebecca Goldstein)

Rebecca is one of the few true triple threats in puzzledom, in the top tier of constructors in theming, gridding, and cluing. I always think of her primarily as a great constructor of themed puzzles, so the fact that she can also construct themelesses like this one really cements her as one of the most versatile constructors around. The grid pattern here is very smartly designed, featuring an interlacing of long slots interspersed with regions of short fill that make the marquee entries easier to fill around without compromising the grid's overall flow. And those long slots are really well used, with entries like BOSS BATTLE, SHABBAT SHALOM, LET'S DIG IN, SHANGRI-LA, and NERDSPLAIN. The cluing shines, too: [Sock drawer?] for PUNCHABLE FACE is an all-timer, but there are clever clues around every corner, including [Activity with more than just a couple of participants?] for THREESOME, [Gas lighting?] for AURORAS, [Over head?] for UBER, [Supreme court figure, maybe] for ALL-STAR, and [Box checking activity?] for PAP SMEAR.

Let Me Be Perfectly Queer ... (Rafa Musa)

Now that These Puzzles Fund Abortion is in its fifth year, I have to imagine it's hard for the editors to produce a full slate of puzzles with relevant themes. They've been incorporating more cryptics and variety puzzles, lately, which helps (including a stellar variety puzzle by Sid Sivakumar which I'm not highlighting here only because I already highlighted one of Sid's variety puzzles very recently), but of course another route is to include themelesses. Personally, when I write for TPFA, I always pitch themed puzzles, because there's an art to writing a "themeless" for this sort of puzzle pack. I put "themeless" in scare quotes because it really has to have a significant amount of marquee content that feels topical, so from a construction point of view, it's not entirely unlike making a themed puzzle. There's a balancing act between including enough topical content, and making sure that it doesn't feel forced and that it still plays like a themeless.

In this puzzle, Rafa threads that needle adeptly. There are the obvious marquee answers (TRANS JOY, GAY SEX, TRIAMORY, SAPPHO, SHANTAY, SHE/THEY), plus shorter stuff like HRT and other queer-related clues like THREE for [Number of colors in the bisexual pride flag], REAL ME for [Post-coming out self, maybe], and [School periods in which I was stressed about being clumsy and unathletic and not at all about who was using what changing room] for PE CLASSES. None of these feel shoehorned in, nor do the reproduce rights content like [Feeling upon learning Roe v. Wade was overturned] for IRE, [Place to host someone seeking reproductive healthcare] for SPARE ROOM, or RESISTS for [Fights for reproductive rights in an unfavorable political climate, for example]. It's a perfect themeless for TPFA, but it's also just a delightful themeless in its own right; I particularly like the pairing of AESTHETE and HAS TASTE (which share a letter bank!).

Puzzle #241: I Just Had the Most Awful Dream

You know how you have to write down a dream right away if you want to remember it, before it fades? That's why I'm posting this puzzle (pdf, puz, pdf solution) today instead of on the usual Monday schedule. Mind you, this puzzle didn't come to me in a dream - it came to someone else. Details after the puzzle, but they contain spoilers, so wait until after you solve.

Made by Will Nediger using the free crossword puzzle builder from Amuse Labs

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Here is a random image so that the spoilery image below doesn't pop up as a thumbnail preview:

Yesterday Quiara Vasquez posted the following on Discord, and I just had to make her dream (nightmare?) come true:

Puzzle #240: What's the Deal with Doug?

Doug is not a real guy, he's just someone I made up for this puzzle (pdf, puz, pdf solution). But still, you may be wondering - what's the deal with Doug? Solve this puzzle to find out!

Built by Will Nediger with the online cross word builder from Amuse Labs

Indie puzzle highlights

February 5: Cleaning Rotation (Erik Agard, Puzzmo)

February 5: Look Before You Leap (Jeremy Newton and Matthew Stock, AVCX)

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Cleaning Rotation (Erik Agard)

A lot of Puzzmo's crosswords have "apt pair" themes, consisting of two theme answers that are tightly related in some way. For example, the puzzle from the day after Erik's puzzle, by Rebecca Goldstein, is called "Eat Like a King" and has the theme entries KAISER ROLL and CAESAR SALAD. These are very tightly related, because they consist of a word for a ruler plus a type of food, but not only that, the word "Kaiser" derives from "Caesar" (so, for instance, throwing KING CAKE in would significant loosen the theme). There's a special knack to noticing these apt pairs. I've encountered the phrases "Kaiser roll" and "Caesar salad" dozens if not hundreds of times, and yet I've never thought to make theme into a theme.

I think, though, that if I encountered both items on the same menu, I'd notice the connection. I suspect this is the case for most apt pairs published at Puzzmo - if I happened to encounter both phrases in close succession, the connection would jump out at me. After all, the phrases have to be very closely connected, so the connection should be obvious, right? Well, Erik's puzzle is a great example of an apt pair theme where the connection is tight and yet subtle enough that it would be very easy not to notice it, without the fact that they've been placed together as an apt pair as a nudge. Erik's apt pair is CHORE WHEEL and TURN TO DUST - dusting is a chore, and a wheel turns, so if you use a chore wheel, you might turn the wheel to find out that you have to dust (more pithily, you might turn to dust). The connection also works on a second level, which is that a chore wheel might indicate when it's your turn to dust, "turn" being used here now as a noun instead of a verb.

It's a beautiful apt pair that changes the meaning of the phrase TURN TO DUST in a wonderfully revelatory way. I can easily imagine encountering the two phrases in the same paragraph and never noticing the connection, so it's lovely that the puzzle forces me to notice it, changing the meaning of TURN TO DUST in the same way that, once an optical illusion flips from looking like (say) a pair of vases to a face, it's impossible to unsee the face.

Look Before You Leap (Jeremy Newton and Matthew Stock)

One of my favorite genres of puzzle is the puzzle that visually represents a game or other activity. These puzzles can be very hard to pull off because of the nature of the canvas - it's inherently difficult to represent non-crossword-like things in a rectangular grid of squares. From working on a pachinko-inspired NYT puzzle with Matthew, I know that he in particular is very adept at this, and that adeptness is on full display in this collaboration with Jeremy Newton. Jeremy and Matthew represent a game of FROGGER in the grid by having the letters of the word FROGGER jump on a series of LOGs, replacing one of the letters in LOG; for example, the F jumps on the G in BEEF BOLOGNESE, so that it intersects with the F of LEFT LANE. In alternating theme entries, the letters of FROGGER deftly avoid CARs. Impressively, each of these theme entries contains the string CAR twice, with the letter from FROGGER landing between them: THE OS(CAR)S (R)ED (CAR)PET, (CAR)VIN(G) OUT A (CAR)EER, and (CAR)RY PR(E)CIOUS (CAR)GO. It's wild that the constructors managed to find natural-sounding phrases that fit the bill, and I suspect that the task required creativity in addition to wordlist lookup (THE OSCARS RED CARPET is certainly an in-the-language phrase, but it's not in any of my wordlists, and it's unlikely to be in any dictionary). Possibly the Platonic ideal of a Frogger-based theme, and I like that the FROGGER revealer is symmetrically paired with the apt phrase HOP TO IT, when it's short enough that they could just as easily have left it unpaired.

Puzzle #239: Ope, Just Gonna Sneak Right Past Ya

I'm not from the Midwest originally, but I did live there for a while, and I am from Ontario, which is the Midwest of Canada. So here's a puzzle (pdf, puz, pdf solution) that comes from my lived experience.

Constructed by Will Nediger using the online crossword maker from Amuse Labs