Administrivial Puzzle Contest Alert! It’s that time of year again, and next week, Oct. 20 through Oct. 26, puzzles will make up a suite that you will have to solve in order to enter to win a prize. And you’ll want to enter this year: Twenty randomly chosen solvers who submit the correct answer to the challenge will receive a one-year online subscription to The New York Times Crossword. The rules will be on the puzzles, and I’ll be posting them here as well. Good luck to all who enter!
SUNDAY PUZZLE – Today’s puzzle by David Phillips asks the question “Why not?” Actually, it takes phrases or items that contain the “Y” sound, substitutes a soundalike word for it, then clues the resulting phrase in a punny way. This struck me as kind of business as usual, until I noticed that Mr. Phillips had avoided using the letter “Y” anywhere in his 21-by-21 grid. Nice touch.
The theme worked for me for some of the entries, and I particularly liked TRUSTEE SIDEKICK (instead of “trusty sidekick”) and CHAISE REBELLION (instead of “Shay’s Rebellion”). Some of the others seemed like stretches in the way they were clued, like NO RIME OR REASON (instead of “no rhyme or reason”), which was clued as “Lack of logic and a frosty coating?” GUISE AND DOLLS (instead of “Guys and Dolls”) also bothered me; it was clued as “Two concerns of a secretive voodoo practicer?” Well, yes; but you have to go a long way to get there, and when you arrive, it’s not all that entertaining. Also, I would be likelier to refer to someone who practices voodoo as a practitioner, not a “practicer.” The thing about changing real phrases is that the new phrase has to make surface sense, and the clue should make it sparkle even more. CLEAR THE WEIGH, to me, is not something even the most embarrassed dieter would say. Your mileage, and all that.
Kudos to Mr. Phillips for introducing the “Internet’s front page,” REDDIT. No matter how much minutiae you believe the Internet already contains, you can find even more on REDDIT. Whether that’s a positive or a negative, I will leave up to you. I also liked RICKROLL, SIZZLES and BOO HISS.
Clue of the Day for me was “Bass drum?” for ALE KEG.
Will Shortz’s Notes:
An unusual theme today that took me awhile to wrap my head around — puns involving homophones of words containing the letter Y. The Y’s are all gone. Usually, themes are based on what’s in the grid, not what’s not. But once you get it, the result is nice, and the puzzle has a perfect, explanatory title. I also like David’s elegant touch of avoiding Y’s anywhere in the grid, not just in the theme answers.
Constructor’s Notes:
Hello again.
Like my New York Times debut, this puzzle also has an Oppositeland twin, Patrick Berry’s “Words to the Y’s” Sunday New York Times crossword. After (eventually) solving Mr. Berry’s puzzle, I figured there had to be some words, like “hymn” or “sync,” that used this same trick in reverse.
Before I began searching for specific theme phrases, I first brainstormed as many “y-less” homophone pairs as I could. The website homophone.com was particularly helpful. Once I had amassed a good number of these pairs, I prioritized finding good entries for pairs with particularly odd/unique letter changes, e.g. SHAYS’ --> CHAISE, SORRY --> SARI, or IDYLLS --> IDOLS. Using these “odd” entries as a starting point, I then attempted to find corresponding symmetric answers with as much variety, interest and punniness as I could muster while also making sure to avoid letter changes that were too similar (e.g. DAYS --> DAZE, RAYS --> RAZE and/or [Willie] MAYS --> MAZE). If the theme entries evoke at least one or two chuckles, then I think they did their job.
Before and during the grid design process, I kept debating whether to use seven or nine theme entries. Since my theme entries were relatively short for a 21-by-21 puzzle, I wanted nine but also knew that attempting such might require some fancy gridwork or a sacrifice to the mighty crossword gods. Fortunately, there was no sacrifice necessary since SUNDAE BEST/DEVIL RAISE intersected symmetrically with TRUSTEE SIDEKICK/CHAISE REBELLION. Doing this really helped in spacing out the theme entries and creating some spots for 6s, 7s, and 8s in the fill. (Slight side note: Since the shortest theme entry was nine letters and since there were theme entries in the down direction, I tried to keep all fill shorter than nine letters to prevent “Is this theme or is this fill?” confusion.)
As for the fill, I particularly liked BUTTED (tehee), REDDIT, TOLKIEN, RICKROLL, SIZZLES, BAD RAP and BOO HISS.
If you were tripped up by or liked the clues for 1A, 72A, 116A, or the 11D/12D duo, you can blame/thank me. If this also happened for 65A (it’s certainly convenient that ROWLING and TOLKIEN have the same number of letters), 15D, 19D, 41D, 56D or 93D, you can blame/thank Will and his team.
Hands up if you were able to get through this entire “Why not?” puzzle without thinking of the Marx Brothers’ “Why a duck?” routine. It doesn’t appear on YouTube, unfortunately, but I found it elsewhere. The site will not allow me to embed it, but here are Groucho and Chico examining a map in a way only they can manage.
Your thoughts?