One Drawing Lots Nyt Cross

wordplay, the crossword column

So It Goes

David W. Tuffs forces solvers to make some hard choices.

Credit... ANDREW CABALLERO-REYNOLDS/AFP via Getty Images

Oct. 19, 2021

WEDNESDAY PUZZLE — Hello and happy Wednesday! Today's puzzle takes us halfway to Friday with a rollicking good time built around one of my favorite kinds of wordplay. A hearty thank-you to its constructor, David W. Tuffs, for making this delightfully weird puzzle.

My journey through this puzzle was smooth sailing, except for one little hitch at an unfamiliar cross. Sometimes these unfamiliar crosses can really trip up new solvers, who may feel defeated when they encounter a square where they have to guess. When I run into squares like this (and I do — all the time), my best advice is to run the alphabet in your head or by typing each letter into the grid. Sometimes all it takes is seeing the right letter in the mystery square to realize that somewhere, buried deep in your brain, you knew the correct letter all along.

And if that doesn't work, plugging in each letter of the alphabet in sequence eventually, by brute force, brings the online puzzle to completion. I admit that this approach isn't as satisfying. And, of course, it isn't useful advice for paper solvers. So it goes, sometimes!

Tricky Clues

1A. Kicking it off with a toughie! "Museum wings?" is the clue for EMS because the letter M can be found at the wings (edges) of the word "museum," and EMS is the phonetic spelling of the plural form of the letter M.

23A/12D. German is not a language I am particularly familiar with, so I always stumble when I come across it in the puzzle, and in today's grid we see it twice. "One, in Berlin" and "German winter hazard" are the clues for EINS and EIS.

24A. This clue could have used a "?" if the editors were feeling a little less sneaky. A "Fashion line" might be a line of products from a particular fashion designer, but in this case it's the clue for SEAM, which is a line in a garment.

30A. This is not actually a tricky clue, but I wanted to note how much I love the "Broken Earth" trilogy by N.K. Jemisin, which is one of my favorite FANTASY series. Highly recommended!

55A/55D. This is the cross I was momentarily stumped by. The "Polynesian crop with medicinal properties" is KAVA. I had never heard of this crop before solving, so I struggled a bit with its intersection with "'Blazing Saddles' actress Madeline" KAHN, whose name I thought was spelled with a C. When that didn't work, I ran the alphabet and realized the K was equally plausible, and voilà — problem (and puzzle) solved.

56A. I giggled at the clue "Where to find lots of Letts" for RIGA. Letts are the inhabitants of Latvia, so you can find lots of them in the Latvian capital, RIGA.

1D. New solvers, tuck this one away in your memory bank. The "1962 Paul Anka hit" is ESO BESO, which frequently shows up in New York Times crossword puzzles as a complete song title (13 times), as well as in clues for ESO (33), BESO (three) and ANKA (three).

3D. "Handsome trait?" is a wordplay clue (as signaled by the "?") for SILENT D, because a SILENT D is a characteristic of the word "handsome." I really had to think about whether I pronounce the d in handsome; I'm not convinced that I don't, but many people probably don't.

49D. "Ones unlikely to enjoy the land of milk and honey?" is another punny clue. The land of milk and honey is a literary name for a luxurious place or a paradise, but in this case the solver must take the clue literally — as a land of actual milk and honey, both of which are animal products that VEGANS avoid.

Today's Theme

This puzzle hinges on the silly reparsing of five words that begin with OR. I am an unapologetic die-hard fan of wordplay via silly reparsing, so I thoroughly enjoyed this theme. The OR words are parsed (that is, syntactically split) after the OR, such that they complete fill-in-the-blank clues as if they were offering an alternative (an "or," if you will).

For example, the very first theme clue (17A) reads, "Who's your favorite roguish 'Star Wars' character? Han ___?" This initially seemed like complete jibberish. The only thing that follows Han, in my experience of the "Star Wars" universe, is Solo, but that doesn't fit in the seven spaces provided. This entry turns out to be ORLANDO, parsed as OR LANDO. As in, "Who's your favorite roguish 'Star Wars' character? Han OR LANDO?"

What a perfect, silly clue! It forces the solver to break down a real word in a humorous new way, and I am here for it. I especially love how the clues for each entry must contain a descriptor of the option mentioned in the clue and the option in the entry (e.g. "roguish 'Star Wars' character," which could be either Han, who is a rogue for sure, OR LANDO, who is also a rogue).

My second favorite of the theme set came at the last theme clue (63A): "What kind of greens do you want? Spinach ___?" Following the same logic as above, we need to find a word that starts with OR and ends with a type of green. OR CHARD fits the bill!

In the interest of not spoiling the rest of the silly clue/entry pairs, I'll leave it at just those two examples. There's no revealer, but this puzzle absolutely did not need one because the clues for the theme entries were just so darn enjoyable. Please add your own OR options and silly clue phrases in the comments.

Constructor Notes

This is my second puzzle in The New York Times, but it was the first one accepted. I sent it in while I was still filling my grids manually using an online crossword maker and submitting them in an envelope. So, this being a puzzle by a novice constructor, there are high points and low points. The MARRIED and SAID I DO crossing is great, as are LAVERNE / COX, CHIA PET and HENDRIX, but I don't think solvers need the nearly identical German words for "one" and "ice." And while SILENT D (I think) was saved by the cluing, it's pretty arbitrary.

I do think the theme holds up better than the fill. ORANGE-RED was fun to discover. I couldn't include ORBITING in the grid, but it was equally fun to think of potential clues for that, too. Because the theme involves wordplay over the entirety of each theme answer, the one downside is that those answers will tend to be short. I considered adding even shorter answers, such as "Who's your favorite Ghostbuster? Winston ___" and "Who's your favorite composer? Liszt ___" (can you figure out what the options are?), but I was still in my phase where theme answers needed to be the longest Across answers, and I can't imagine the effect on the fill if I had gone down that path. In sum, I'm happy this puzzle was accepted, because I was proud of its unique approach to a fairly simple theme, but I could have definitely gone further with it.

(Answer: Winston OREGON; Liszt ORBACH)

Want to Submit Crosswords to The New York Times?

The Tipping Point

Almost finished solving but need a bit more help? We've got you covered.

Warning: There be spoilers ahead, but subscribers can take a peek at the answer key.

Trying to get back to the puzzle page? Right here.

Your thoughts?