Administrivial Links Alert! As many of you have noticed, the box that contains the links to the puzzle and the syndicated Wordplay posts is not working. I am removing it from posts until it is fixed, so until then, please download your copy of the puzzle from the main puzzle page. The New York Times apologizes to its syndicated readers. Thank you for your patience.
TUESDAY PUZZLE — Sometimes a theme is just a set of items that all have something in common. Sometimes it can present an observation that turns out to be a fun fact. Today, Andrea Carla Michaels’s theme offers us both.
From our The More You Know department, there are a total of 30 teams in the N.B.A., and apparently only four of them — the Utah JAZZ, the Oklahoma City THUNDER, the Miami HEAT and the Orlando MAGIC — have nonplural names. That’s your fun fact right there.
In nontheme news, we have DISCOUNTED and SEMITROPIC making their debuts (DAYS OF THUNDER in the theme is fresh as well), and Clue(s) of the Day for me were 32 Across’s “Bad things from sharks?” for LOANS and “Place for a kiddie hawk?”, which is wordplay for Kitty Hawk, for AERIE.
Will Shortz’s Notes:
Andrea’s puzzle today does something I like. It involves a complete set of things — in this case N.B.A. teams whose names don’t end in the plural -s. There’s something neat about completeness that appeals to a puzzle solver’s mind. Or at least my mind. And as the N.B.A. season opens tonight, this puzzle couldn’t be timelier.
Constructor’s Notes:
The original idea came as a follow-up to the FOOTBALL MATCHUP crossword made with my neighbor Kent Clayton (Dec. 7, 2010). This is really a naming puzzle disguised as a sports theme. Unbelievably, all the sports clues are mine (ROY, TONYA, LET, YDS).
It might surprise some folks to see me on a Tuesday, but I swear I send 90 percent of my puzzles thinking they are Tuesdays…inevitably, Will asks me to get rid of some “later-week” entries and try again! In this case I had to get rid of ECZEMA and a few other entries, but I’m glad I did. I had to start from “scratch” (pun intended!) and this is my fifth rendition.
I feel giddy getting in GLITTERATI and the “Splish Splash” clue.
In the earlier versions, at least three of the clues had Beatles lyric references (AND I love her, Come TOGETHER, I’M A Loser, but I didn’t want to cause a STIR.)
There is my usual Minnesota shout-out (See if you can spot it!)
It’s still technically the beginning of the week, and we need something to open our eyes. Coffee won’t do it. We need an electrifying Broadway number to wake us up and ALL THAT JAZZ. Let’s do a Bob Fosse strut over to the Wednesday puzzle.
Your thoughts?