THURSDAY PUZZLE — Ah, a nice, flat crossword puzzle by the constructor Grant Thackray. It’s not flat, you say? I’m going to need an iron to solve this, you say?
Whatever could that mean?
Puzzling Things to Do While You’re at Home
No one is sure what the fall semester will look like for school-age children, but if you are interested in learning supplements for kids ages 8-12, or are interested in turning them on to the joys of solving, Solving Fun is a company that has packs, books, cards and activities available for purchase on its website, as well as a free puzzle on Fridays.
Also, if you are missing tournament life but want to solve tournament puzzles, or if you feel too shy to compete at a tournament and can’t anyway because they are all virtual right now, you can compete in the “honor” version of the Finger Lakes Crossword Tournament, being held from the comfort of your own home. The tournament puzzles are to be solved on your own time, and it runs until Sept. 26. Registration is here, and the tickets cost whatever you are comfortable paying.
Tricky Clues
7A. Your first thought might have been bases on a baseball field, but the answer to “Bases make up a part of it” is the PH SCALE.
40A. For the benefit of those of me who did not go to law school, I looked this up. Mens REA is not, in fact, a rea that belongs to men (no apostrophe, for one thing). The Latin translates to “guilty mind,” and is used to mean “criminal intent.”
54A. LOC cit. is a footnote abbreviation that can be used in place of “ibid.,” but also cites the page number of the previous citation.
58A. I didn’t really understand this one, even after I got the answer. The answer to “It can be broken, but not fixed” is LAW, because, as the puzzle editors explained, the idiom is “break a LAW,” but there is no idiom where you “fix a LAW.” I overthought it and figured that you could fix a law by changing it, but that’s not where this one was going.
4D. Cute one. A “Tiny beef” is not a miniature steer. It’s a beef that you might have with someone, and the answer is NIT.
8D. I had never heard of a HOLE SAW before — I would think of it as just another drill bit — but I am not much of a power tool user.
30D. “Request that’s risky if you’re over 18?” sounds both risky and risqué, but that’s not what the clue is asking of you, so just get your mind out of the gutter. The “18” in this clue refers to the game of blackjack, and the command HIT ME runs the risk of putting the player over 21.
Today’s Theme
Mr. Thackray gives a shout-out to Madeleine L’Engle’s “A WRINKLE IN TIME,” a wonderful book for preteens and, as the revealer clue says, young adults.
The wrinkle, of course, is in the word TIME, but you are going to have to hunt for it in the theme entries. If you are a relatively new solver and have never seen this before, be prepared to learn how rules are sometimes broken in crosswords. And yes, the puzzlemakers are totally allowed to do this.
Let’s take a look at the starred (theme) clues. At 16A, for example, the answer to the clue “An old wedding dress might have this” should be SENTIMENTAL VALUE, but that’s not what you’ve written into your grid, is it? No, you probably have SENTENTAL VALUE, which makes no sense.
But what if you looked just above that line in the puzzle, at the entry MINI ME (14A). Start at the first “T” in 16A, hop up to the “IM” in MINI ME and come back down a line to the E in that theme entry. If you are reading from left to right (Don’t say “Why wouldn’t you be reading from left to right?” That’s a whole other rule to break.), you have a theme entry that has a small bump, or wrinkle, in it, which spells out the word TIME.
And that, my friends, is your WRINKLE IN TIME.
Crosswords Live
Tune in at 1 p.m. Eastern to help my co-host, Sam Ezersky, and me crush the Thursday puzzle. You can find the livestream on Twitter (@NYTimesWordplay) and on YouTube (NYTWordplay).
And join us on Thursday, Aug. 27, when our special guest will be the comedian and podcaster Adam Conover, host of the Tru channel show “Adam Ruins Everything” as well as the podcast “Factually!”
Yes, we will be solving, but we will also be “ruining” crosswords. You won’t want to miss this one.
Constructor Notes
I love me a good tricky “change-the-path-of-an-answer” Thursday puzzle. I realize that turn-the-corner puzzles might be a bit played out now, but to my knowledge I haven’t yet seen a “wrinkle,” so hopefully this one is a fun twist to solvers.
When making this puzzle, I waffled over replacing 45-Across with MORTIMER SNERD [Hi, kids! — D.A.] instead of MORTIMER MOUSE [Hi again! — D.A.].
Both references are equally dated (Snerd, the ventriloquist dummy, debuted on the radio in 1936, the same year Mortimer Mouse was introduced in the short “Mickey’s Rival”), but I went with the mouse because of my love of things Disney. He still appears in short films and on “Mickey Mouse Clubhouse” occasionally, making him a bit more accessible to younger solvers. That, plus even to someone not familiar with Disney, it wouldn’t be too hard to figure out this character might also have the surname “Mouse.”
Also, every time I look at 29-Across, I can’t help but read it an annoyed British accent because of Rowan Atkinson as Zazu the hornbill in “I Just Can’t Wait to be King.”
The Tipping Point
Almost finished solving but need a bit more help? We’ve got you covered.
Warning: There be spoilers ahead, but subscribers can take a peek at the answer key.
Trying to get back to the puzzle page? Right here.
Your thoughts?
"time" - Google News
August 20, 2020 at 04:33AM
https://ift.tt/32b05H5
Risky if You’re Over 18 - The New York Times
"time" - Google News
https://ift.tt/3f5iuuC
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