THURSDAY PUZZLE — A warm welcome back to David P. Williams, who makes his eighth appearance in the New York Times Crossword today. This is his second Thursday puzzle, but I’m already starting to notice a pattern. His previous grid played with the NATO alphabet; today’s puzzle has fun with a different writing system. If you need some help untangling its trick, read on. Hopefully, you won’t be exclaiming 39-Across by the end of the column.
Today’s Theme
Like Lucy van Pelt informing us that her counseling is available, I’m flipping the sign in front of my Crossword Help booth: The rebus is in.
In a rebus crossword, certain squares contain more than one letter. (Learn how to enter multiple letters into a square here.) In this puzzle, the rebus squares are marked by circles. You also might notice that the entries with circled cells don’t fit in the grid, a telltale sign of a rebus. For example, the clue at 17-Across, [Hand-held communication devices], seems as if it should solve to WALKIE-TALKIES, but that has too many letters.
To help, the puzzle offers two theme revealers. The clue at 39-Across, [Admission of confusion … or a hint for interpreting four answers in this puzzle] solves to IT’S ALL GREEK TO ME. That interpretation is clarified by 59A’s clue-answer pair: [Like the alphabet of the circled letters in the Down answers, but not in the Across answers] solves to LATIN.
When read across, each theme answer’s rebus is a Greek letter. When read down, the Greek letter acts as a Latin glyph. So, the answer to 17A is entered as WALKI(E-TA)LKIES, with the Greek letter ETA as the rebus. It’s crossed by 5-Down, clued with [Feeling tender], which solves to ACHY, because the Greek letter eta is an H. (The puzzle will accept H, ETA, H/ETA or ETA/H as correct; the same logic applies to the other rebus squares.)
Think you can crack the rest? Here’s a link if you need to refamiliarize yourself with the Greek alphabet. And if the answers are still getting lost in translation, you can hit these comparatively more magical links below.
Tricky Clues
1A. Here’s a textbook example of how to defang a scary-looking clue with a bit of inference and logic. There’s a lot of noise in [___ Batlló, Antoni Gaudí masterpiece whose roof arch mimics a dragon’s back]. But we don’t need to be familiar with the specific design motifs of Antoni Gaudí. All we really need to know is that he was a Spanish architect (signaling that the answer will be in Spanish), and that the blank we’re filling in is something with a roof. What’s a four-letter Spanish word for something with a roof? CASA.
46A. This style of clue often appears in late-week puzzles, so remember this tip: If a question-marked clue contains words like “leader,” “starter,” “end of” or similar phrases that describe the position of something, it’s likely that clue is asking for a word that could be slotted in that position. Case in point: This clue, [Political leader?], wants a prefix that could be placed before the word “political.” The answer is GEO, as in geopolitical.
47A. Rack your gray matter to crack [Gray matter?], which doesn’t refer to a brain but to Thomas Gray, an 18th-century poet who penned ODES. Even though he was an English writer, his surname uses the American spelling of the word, rather than the British “grey.”
12D. Strap in. We’re about to experience the dizzying, high-octane thrill that is unit conversion. [0.1 nanometer], or one ten-billionth of a meter, is equal to an ANGSTROM, a unit that’s typically used for measuring the wavelengths of light. A shame, as my 5K race T-shirt would seem a lot more impressive if the event had been billed as a 50 trillion angstrom fun run.
37D. This [Unlikely buyer?] isn’t a shoplift, but a SKEPTIC — someone who isn’t quite buying the story you’re selling. Hopefully, you’ll buy the wordplay here.
66D. The solving masses yearn for more letterplay. The clue [Letter indicating ownership?] refers to the letter ESS, which denotes possession. For example, this was one of our constructor’s inspired clues in today’s puzzle.
Constructor Notes
For all the rebus (lov/hat)ers.
Improve Your Crossword Solving
Work your way through our guide “How to Solve the New York Times Crossword.” It contains an explanation of most of the types of clues you will see in the puzzles and a practice Mini at the end of each section.
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