Caitlin Reid and Andrew J. Ries serenade us with some stumpers.
SATURDAY PUZZLE — These two make for good collaborators, don’t they? This is one of those grids that I have to look at through my monocle from several angles before the ol’ hamster up in the attic starts spinning (in other words, my brain came up empty when I first went through these clues). This is the first time that Caitlin Reid and Andrew J. Ries have teamed up for a New York Times puzzle; they’re each formidably clever and sparkly, and now we know what happens when they combine forces.
By the way, as soon as Ms. Reid constructs a Wednesday, she’ll have hit for the cycle, and at what feels like a torrid pace. I’ll leave Jeff Chen to that statistic, but keep it in mind for 2021 if you like this kind of data.
Tricky Clues
There are trick clues that make you feel really smart when you get them, and there are trick clues that make you feel really, really silly. I’m referring to the clues for MOTHS, say, and TUSSAUD, ORE, WILL and ORBITS. All immensely enjoyable. Another bit of frivolity that you might have come upon was the staccato run of TSETSE, TETON and TATA in the southeast corner (are they playing off TREASURE TROVES? Maybe).
1A: It’s always a good idea to get people into a rhythm at the very start of these things, and a couple of Motown references should suffice. OTIS rings a (baritone) bell and runs into SADIE, which I didn’t know (and which didn’t click with me, but you may love it).
18A: My (possibly fanciful) read on this clue is that it’s an oblique reference to the board game Clue. If Mrs. Peacock gets caught with the candlestick in the study, that’s your CRIME SCENE.
24A: This is a nice little encapsulation of the deftness in this puzzle: It took finding every letter via crossing entries to get TACT for a “Delicate touch,” but the connection is unassailable.
34A: Maybe it’s another reach, but it’s still fun to see MAIN THEME across the middle of a tricky themeless Saturday grid.
55A: There are only two new entries today — goes to show that not every themeless needs to be stuffed to the gills with neologisms. STRIP STEAK, here, is one of the debuts (ABOUT THE AUTHOR is the other).
3D: I always took this expression to mean “I’ll take the bait,” something that you’d say when being asked a jesting kind of question (something that we might call “trolling,” these days). Other sources posit that ILL BITE is really from “I’ll buy it,” quickly spoken, which has a slightly different vibe.
7D: I am personally partial to the public figure behind this span. The constructors nearly took a different route here, but I’m happy to see ELIZABETH WARREN again, and my fondness for her has nothing to do with the political stage. I distinctly remember watching her on television in the 1990s dispensing advice on debt and money management that stuck with me for the rest of my life, so far. (I thought I saw her on “Oprah,” but my memories are from analog days and digital records are pushing “Dr. Phil.”) Less tangentially, this clue refers to a more recent event, Senator Warren’s appearance at the 2017 nomination of Jeff Sessions for attorney general.
12D: Everyone’s thinking presidential cabinet, right? Nowadays, they all have Twitter HANDLES. Just kidding!
36D: This clue/entry combination is a first, and another crowd pleaser (if you’re in a crowd of solvers like me, anyway). I never knew this reference for adult male kangaroos: BOOMERS (babies are joeys; females are flyers). Fun fact: Kangaroos can’t back up, but they can ask for help opening packages.
Constructor Notes
ANDREW: I first worked with Caitlin when I commissioned a puzzle from her for Aries Freestyle, which is a themeless puzzle-by-email subscription service that I run. I quickly found that we share much of the same constructing philosophy when it comes to themelesses — prioritizing clean grids with difficulty emerging primarily from tricky, misdirecting clues. So I couldn’t wait to co-construct with Caitlin, and this puzzle is the first of our collaborative themeless efforts. Most of this grid is Caitlin’s, whose stellar ABOUT THE AUTHOR clue/entry pairing was the killer seed. I was able to open up the center with an ELIZABETH entry in the central down slot — I originally had TAYLOR and Caitlin found a good fill with the more-current WARREN. It was a great pleasure working with Caitlin, and I hope that solvers will see more from this byline in the future!
CAITLIN: An admirer of Andrew’s puzzles (especially his themelesses), I jumped at the chance to make one with him! Collaborating with him is easy, as we do indeed share a similar style. We went back and forth on this one with gridding and then split the clues for the most part. I particularly liked his clever ones for 13- and 28-Down. Always glad to collaborate with Andrew, and I’m excited to finally get a Saturday under my belt!
Al dente, or still crunchy?
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What did you think?
December 19, 2020 at 10:00AM
https://www.nytimes.com/2020/12/18/crosswords/daily-puzzle-2020-12-19.html
Hard and Fast - The New York Times
https://news.google.com/search?q=hard&hl=en-US&gl=US&ceid=US:en
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