Administrivial Puzzle Contest Alert! All the puzzles this week, from Monday to Saturday, have been created by one person, Patrick Blindauer. Keep your solutions handy, because the Saturday puzzle conceals a meta-challenge involving the solution grids of all six. When you have the answer to the meta-challenge, send it to crossword@nytimes.com. (Please do not post them here on the blog; they will not be counted as submissions.) Twenty correct solvers, chosen at random, whose entries are received by 6 p.m. Eastern Daylight Time, Sunday, Oct. 26, 2014, will win one-year online subscriptions to the New York Times crossword. Only one entry per person, please. The answer and winners’ names will appear on Oct. 31, at www.nytimes.com/wordplay. Good luck to all who enter!
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 gets fixed, so until then, please download your copy of the puzzle from the main puzzle page. Thank you for your patience.
WEDNESDAY’S PUZZLE — The work world has changed a lot since the Internet changed the way we do just about everything. It used to be that the more time you put in around the office where your boss could see you burning the midnight oil, the better you were perceived to be doing.
That burning of the midnight oil used to be referred to as “putting in FACE TIME” (now better known as the Apple mobile video chat app), and that’s precisely what we appear to have today. ["...precisely what we appear to have..." is not the kind of thing we normally approve of, but we've done this puzzle, so we'll allow it. --Ed.] The black squares form what looks like a smiley FACE, except that this FACE is throwing exceptional side eye, a look of disapproval that involves turning the head and peering out of the side of the eyes. Or maybe it’s a sly grin from the constructor himself.
At any rate, Patrick Blindauer seems to want us to look into his EYES. Is this relevant to the meta challenge? The only way to know is to keep calm and continue solving. We have PEEK-A-BOO I SEE YOU and FOR YOUR EYES ONLY, two excellent 15s on their own.
If you’re struggling, Mr. Blindauer has thoughtfully provided SANGRIA (with the clever clue “Strong punch”) and POT at the mouth of the smiley face. I ran into one speed bump: I had UNFURL before UNCURL, until I realized that there was never a composer named FARL ORFF.
Let’s hear from our contest constructor:
Constructor’s Notes:
This is definitely more “gridplay” than wordplay, but I hope people get a smile out of it, if nothing else. Not many theme entries here, which allowed me to include some longer, more interesting answers than I could have if I’d crammed in a bunch of theme. I toyed with other face-related phrases, but in the end the symmetry of a SEE phrase and an EYE phrase seemed the most elegant. Happy to feature a Demetri Martin ONE LINER at 38D, as well as give props to “Assassins,” which I just played Byck in (65A). My originally submitted NOËL Coward quote was “The higher the building, the lower the morals.”
This puzzle made me smile. In fact, I’m having so much fun, I don’t want this contest week to end. Time to move on to the next one.
Your thoughts?