FRIDAY PUZZLE — You have to admire how much Joe Marquez has packed into this standard 15×15 grid. Trios of nine-letter entries tower at the corners, pairs of 10-letter entries run along the remaining ones and two intersecting spanners form cross hairs at the center. It’s all arranged with the breathtaking efficiency of a father of four Tetris-ing luggage into a sensible, midsize sedan. Magnificent.
This is Mr. Marquez’s eighth puzzle for The New York Times and his second themeless grid. He normally likes to experiment in the crossword lab — half of his puzzles have run on Thursdays — but if this Friday offering says anything, it’s that you can take the constructor out of the Thursday, but you can’t take the Thursday out of the constructor. There are plenty of clues that satisfyingly stretch the brain without feeling unfair, and a playfulness to the big-ticket entries that I enjoyed. Your mileage may vary, but you’ll have to take the puzzle for a spin to find out. Let’s ride.
Tricky Clues
1A. I love it when a crossword takes a left turn right out of the gate. The clue [Important figure on staff?] refers to a musical staff, so the answer is CLEF.
14A. If we’re talking pet names, a common [Sugar substitute?] could be babe, honey or SWEETIE PIE. To shake things up, you might try nicknaming your partner Splenda or beginning love letters with “My dearest Truvia.”
28A. This clue, [Request after eating a habanero, perhaps], cleverly masks its foreign language indicator by using a loanword, or word that one language has borrowed from another. In this case, English has adopted the Spanish word “habanero.” Because the clue uses the spicy pepper’s Spanish name, its answer is Spanish too: AGUA, or water.
42A/43D. Constructors typically avoid intersecting proper nouns in a puzzle, but I felt these cities were recognizable enough to be deduced from crosses, while still putting up some Friday-worthy resistance. At 42A, the [Home to the Basilica of St. Clare] is ASSISI, an Italian town with a rich Catholic history. St. Clare was one of the first followers of St. Francis of Assisi, one of the most celebrated saints in the Christian canon. At 43D, the [European capital with layers of Thracian, Roman, Byzantine and Ottoman history] is SOFIA, the capital of Bulgaria.
45A. The question mark in [Highly controlling?] signals that the answer isn’t a straightforward synonym, like “domineering.” Here, “highly” isn’t intensifying “controlling,” but specifying that it’s up high. The answer is PILOTING.
59A. [They’re stretched out before some workouts] is a minefield of misdirection; there are several four-letter words for muscle groups that frequent the Crossword. This entry could be “tris” or “pecs,” but the most sinister decoy is “lats, ” because it’s one letter off the correct answer: MATS, which you might well unroll before a workout.
3D. It seems like [Written posts?] refers to blog entries or units of a newsfeed. It’s actually using post to mean “after,” so the clue describes EPILOGUES.
6D. It can be tough to craft clues for entries that are lengthy conversational phrases, because the writer can’t use any of the words that appear in the answer. Consider [“I need to get a word in!”], which nicely captures the thrust of its debut answer, LET ME SAY MY PIECE, without using any of the same words.
11D. The lowercase L of “lord” in [One doing the lord’s work?] is our clue-within-the-clue, a hint that it’s not referring to a higher power. It’s a feudal lord, so the answer is LIEGE.
Improve Your Crossword Solving
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