Go to: Today’s Topic | Clever clues
THURSDAY PUZZLE — A note to those who want their Thursday crosswords to have no gimmicks, one letter per square, and no pop culture references: I hear you. Indeed. And your opinions are more than welcome. But you won’t convince me that Kareem Ayas’ puzzle isn’t an excellent example of how creative constructors can be within the confines of a 15×15 grid.
Mr. Ayas made his New York Times crossword debut in 2023, and this is his third puzzle to be published.
Today’s topic
You probably noticed that there were three unmarked squares in Mr. Ayas’ puzzle. If you’re not familiar with the term, an unchecked square has no entry or clue to intersect. If solving online, dashes take the place of these clues.
You may have also noticed that the answers resulting from these unchecked boxes are incomplete. There’s a good reason for that.
These unmarked squares are the WORMHOLES openings (39D). Parts of the answers come out of these portals, but we must find their entry points. Fortunately for us, these entry points are represented by round squares in the first row of the grid.
For example, the answer as written in 1A [Indy 500 directive] is STAR, but that doesn’t make sense. There has to be more to it, right?
It turns out that the R in the ringed square is where we enter the WORMHOLE and exit at 23D, which is written T YOUR ENGINES. Put these entries together and you’ll START YOUR ENGINES.
Pretty clever, Mr. Ayas.
And if that’s not enough for you, there’s a very optimistic ASTRONAUT floating in the center of 33A’s grid. Let’s hope the space traveler doesn’t get sucked into one of the portals.
Clever clues
I feel like the clues are written as relatively easy to give the solver a leg up on the theme, but here are a few that stood out to me.
28A. This [Group of assets?] it is not financial investment, but spies in a spy ring.
54A. [The green light in “The Great Gatsby”]from F. Scott Fitzgerald’s novel, is a SYMBOL of Gatsby’s hope to be reunited with Daisy and his dreams for the future.
62A. The [Small change in party parity?] is the addition of AN I because that letter changes “party” to “parity”.
4D. The quotation marks around “Hello” in the clue [“Hi” follower] make it look like the word is a greeting, but it isn’t. It’s short for “high,” and the answer is RES, as in “high resolution.”
Designer’s Notes
No, I’m not a physicist. In fact, of all the fields that exist in our observable universe, physics is the one I’m least familiar with, as is clear from my sloppy conflation of celestial objects, space events, and theoretical space jargon all under one heading.
My trades are in literature and writing in a fun way, so I hope I at least did the latter and it provided you with a smile or a disappointed keyboard strike (both I value equally, because what is art if it doesn’t evoke a passionate response?).
It was so much fun to construct, but I was lost in space for months because I created this crossword before I had a great word list or good networking software, and helpful sites like xwordinfo.com were foreign to me.
The stars must have aligned while I was filling out the grid, because discovering a necessary opening phrase that happens to cross all four theme entries, like 57-Across, happens once in a blue moon. Not to mention the astronomical effort required to center the grid with our 33-Across space explorer. I like to imagine that the brilliant 71-Across will find this puzzle out of this world.
The only thing left on the cutting room floor was “PLANET→◯→ICKET.”
I am over the moon to have Wednesday, Monday and now Thursday. Tuesday, you better watch your back: I’m coming for you.
Thank you for the solution. I hope you liked it. See you soon!
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