For any solvers on the West Coast: If you’ve been looking for a crossword tournament that’s closer to your neck of the woods, there’s one coming to Northern California next summer. Friends of the show Rebecca Goldstein, Kate Chin Park, Stan Park and John Lieb have announced the first-ever Westwords Tournament in Berkeley on June 23. It will be held in person and online. Most crossword tournaments are based on the East Coast, so it’s great to see them expand their reach for a West Coast audience. More puzzle tournaments, I say!
Today’s puzzle features a larger grid than usual (21×25 squares) and longer theme clues than usual — a combination that proved to be a challenge in fitting the whole thing on one page. There are 10 pairs of adjacent Across answers presented as 10 loosely connected fill-in-the-blank recollections, where the first answer is a real word or phrase and the second answer reverses it to make something wacky. The second clue in each pair begins with “Looking back on it” as a signal that the first answer has been turned around.
- 23A: [You know how I bought a dress with a ___ on it? ...] is RUFFLE and 24A: [... Looking back on it, I’m glad I bought that and not the ___. Luxurious Santa is a bad look!] is ELF FUR.
- 26A: [Remember how I got into that ___ on Wikipedia? ...] is EDIT WAR and 28A: [... Looking back on it, I could’ve avoided that fight if I hadn’t mistyped that old TV western as “___.”] is “RAW TIDE.”
- 45A: [Remember when I rented a ___ truck? ...] is FLATBED and 47A: [... Looking back on it, it’s weird the rental company was named ___. What does an ET owing money have to do with trucks?] is DEBT ALF.
- 56A: [You know how we got stuck in traffic behind a ___ who barely moved? ...] is LAGGARD and 57A: [... Looking back on it, the driver was a ___. You’d think she’d have moved faster since she loves car racing!] is DRAG GAL.
- 73A: [Remember “___” by Pearl Jam? ...] is “EVEN FLOW” and 75A: [... Looking back on it, I wish it were called “___.” A song about actress Campbell howling at the moon would be awesome.] is “WOLF NEVE.”
- 84A: [You know how I used to grow corn as a ___? ...] is CASH CROP and 89A: [... Looking back on it, I should’ve invested in a ___ instead. Veranda plant pouches are hot right now!] is PORCH SAC.
- 106A: [Remember how I used to ride a ___ on a farm? ...] is TRACTOR and 108A: [... Looking back on it, it was more like a ___ since it could only haul fruit that decayed.] is ROT CART.
- 120A: [Remember that scary time when we heard a survivor shout “___”? ...] is “I’M ALIVE” and 122A: [... Looking back on it, he actually cried “___.” He was warning us about a wicked French friend!] is “EVIL AMI.”
- 133A: [You know how we used to play the baseball variant ___? ...] is ONE O’ CAT and 137A: [... Looking back on it, the best part of that game was when composer Brian gave you a TexMex treat. That’s why we called him ___.] is TACO ENO.
- 143A: [You know how I said I randomly passed by the actor Chuck ___? ...] is NORRIS and 145A: [... Looking back on it, it was actually the director ___ Howard. He was just knighted.] is SIR RON.
What ties all these strange pairs together is that the first letters of the first answers (and thus the last letters of the second answers) spell out REFLECTION. That doubles as a word meaning “thinking back on something” and also “mirror image” because 10 answers have been literally reversed. Cryptic crossword solvers are used to seeing words such as “reflection” and “retrospect” and “back” as signals to reverse something to get to the answer, so I took some inspiration from that to make this crossword.
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I’m a fan of puzzles that can be interpreted as storytelling, because it gives you more freedom to be expressive in the clues. Of course, these are bizarre stories of someone’s memories, so one of the challenges for me (besides trying to cram a larger number of clues into a tight space) was to find pairs of words that could be plausibly tied together in as natural a way as possible. That was never going to happen perfectly — FLATBED and DEBT ALF couldn’t be further apart in their surface sense, which is why I basically admitted in the clue for DEBT ALF that they have nothing to do with one another. ONE O’ CAT has nothing to do with the odd phrase TACO ENO, either, but I enjoyed the creative liberty to imagine that one of the rules of ONE O’ CAT is that Brian Eno has to give you a taco. This is what happens when you let your mind wander writing a crossword.
Some other answers and clues:
- 1A: [Strobe light] is FLASH. I started off with something tricky-ish because I think “strobe light” typically refers to the device, where FLASH refers to the light you see from it.
- 53A: [CD or LP, e.g.] is BIGRAM. Another tricky clue here; it doesn’t refer to music, but the fact that CD and LP are pairs of letters.
- 116A: [“Our Flag Means Death” activity] is PIRACY. I’ve heard that the first few episodes of Season 2 were just released, so I plan on watching them when I get a chance.
- 32D: [Clicks on a puzzle?] is AHA MOMENTS. My favorite non-thematic clue today.
- 50D: [One halting the running of the Bulls] is NBA REF. The 2023-2024 season is approaching, but sadly I’m not expecting the Bulls to be a serious contender this year.
- 54D: [CNN polling editor Edwards-Levy] is ARIEL Edwards-Levy. I understand she’s a crossword fan.
- 76D: [He plays Viktor Hargreeves on “The Umbrella Academy”] is ELLIOT PAGE. I really appreciated how they seamlessly wove Elliot’s transition into Season 3 of the show.
- 111D: [1/11 card] is ACE, as in the dual value of an ace in blackjack. I also only just noticed that this answer appeared in 111 Down — I swear I didn’t plan that, but that’s neat.
What did you think?
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