Praying Figure in Christian Art N Y Times Sunday Crossword Puzzle
Wordplay, The CROSSWORD COLUMN
Think Twice
You'll need to be fast on your feet (and your fingers) to solve Aimee Lucido and Ella Dershowitz'south Dominicus puzzle.
SUNDAY PUZZLE — This filigree's substantial amuse is due to its 2 constructors, of course, and enhanced by the mere fact that they came as a pair this calendar week, a couple of bicoastal friends who bonded over crossword puzzles and the arts. Aimee Lucido, who lives in Berkeley, Calif., is a constructor and children's writer (with an upcoming book that's preorderable); Ella Dershowitz, of New York City, is an role player. Each has constructed daily grids for The Times, but this is their collaborative and private Lord's day debut.
Tricky Clues
6A: If you came up with LOLZ here right away, with a Z, instead of "lols" (or "haha," ala Nelson Muntz) at 6A, then I'm afraid of y'all. I put in "lols*" and figured that Carl Sagan would be our "Star man?" It took ages earlier I got to ZAGAT, the family name behind a eating house ratings company. I think in that location were multiple family unit members in the business, not all of the "human being" diversity, simply I won't accept whatever stars off this clue considering the misdirect worked so infernally well.
25A: I don't desire to spoil a themer here, merely LOUDMOUTH running into (something) FACED and and so EAR legitimately threw me off for a bit.
43A: We don't meet enough composer puns: When you've added your magnum opus to musical staff paper, yous've NOTATED.
98A: This factoid is worth today'southward price of admission, honestly. The commissioned artists in this clue are APES, and their work met with high praise before (and afterwards!) fine art critics knew it.
115A: The clue was tricky for me considering my memory of Stone SOUP was that information technology'south about a con human being who managed to go around and convince people that his special rock made a delicious meal (when fortified with bodily ingredients, provided by others). Information technology looks like the meaning of the story has softened over the years (for the record, I did not read this in 1720).
63D: This is the kind of product placement I endorse in the crossword: The ENIGMA is a beautifully crafted package of puzzles that veer from cryptic minis to word squares to anagrams and across. Continue information technology on your radar for an fantabulous challenge.
*Speaking of "lols," Lollapuzzoola is this week!
Today's Theme
There isn't a overabundance of theme in this grid, only there's more than than meets the eye. For starters, y'all'll notice four shaded runs of three messages each, at 1-, 39-, 80- and 82-Down. That starting time instance is so inviting, right in the beginning of the puzzle, and if you lot're dystopian at all (and who isn't, these days) your get-go inkling at 1-Down, "Novelist Margaret," has to be A2OD. Retrieve, the championship of the puzzle is "Think Twice"; couple that with TWO, and you lot've got something of a theme — a start, anyhow, and pretty early in the solve. If you looked at the residual of those entries with the shaded boxes and fabricated a couple of valid guesses, I did too; the last one is tricky, a bit of modern vernacular and a debut to the grid — JUST WOW. These filled in then early in my solve that I was a little taken aback: At worst, could that be all there is to this thing? I mean, it works, only in that location's gotta exist more, right?
On to the acrosses. There are iv relevant entries, each crossing one of the down entries in a higher place; individually, I actually found them rather easy to miss, but once I connected some dots they snapped into focus speedily. At 27-Beyond, "Duplicitous" wanted to exist 2-faced, of course, but in this puzzle nosotros get ONE FACED, how odd. Could that be important? Odd vs. even? Check 85-Across, "Pushing up daisies," a classic reference to ane's potential equally flower fertilizer from the grave, which is typically vi anxiety under. Just here, nosotros're Iii Feet Under.
Oh, wait. ONE instead of two; THREE instead of six; TWOs everywhere; "Think Twice." Check out 52-Beyond, #$%&, 2 (half of 4) LETTER WORDS, and 113-Across, a reference to the FOUR Brawl in billiards (doubled, that'd exist the eight ball, of class). Notice how we count from ONE to FOUR in sequence in the grid as well.
I should probably have mentioned the revealer already, at 69-Across, "Betray" — DOUBLE CROSS. I'm still trying to figure out how "Some tax breaks," WRITE OFFS, can fit into this neat package, since it crosses DOUBLE Cross; ideas are welcome.
Constructor Notes
Aimee: This is my first Sunday puzzle in the NYT! Ella and I actually started out by trying to brand this a Thursday puzzle but the theme was so constrained that we were forced to deal with really long answers that would have made a 15x near impossible to fill. Information technology always surprises me how much harder it is to make full a puzzle that includes both down and across themers, especially when they're intersecting each other. But I call up this one turned out really well! I'm particularly fond of some of the long non-thematic answers. I hope you lot like information technology!
Ella: Aimee and I both really loved Andrew Kingsley's 2020 "Red Cross" puzzle and were intrigued by the idea of doing a similar blazon of transformation. We landed on this revealer considering nosotros idea the phrase itself was super fun and liked the theme answers it immune for (I was especially excited to include 85-Across, which is one of my favorite shows of all time).
Initially, nosotros also wanted to include an answer where the "real" reply and the gridded answer both had zero, considering we both thought that was a fun, weird edge instance, but alas there didn't stop upwardly being a expert spot for it in the grid.
This was the first Sunday sized puzzle I worked on, and somewhere in the procedure I went from finding such a large grid totally intimidating to finding it extremely fun!
Something odd?
Subscribers can take a peek at the answer primal.
Trying to go dorsum to the puzzle page? Right here.
What did you call up?
Source: https://www.nytimes.com/2021/08/14/crosswords/daily-puzzle-2021-08-15.html
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