Welcome back to Puzzle Pieces, our weekly deep dive into the Weekender crossword, along with a look at one of Fraser Simpson’s cryptic clues. As always, clues are in [square brackets] and grid entries are in CAPS, and don’t read this until you’ve solved our Saturday crosswords (spoilers!).
Favourite moments in today’s crossword
In today’s puzzle, Emotional Stakes, constructor Will Nediger has done a masterful job of weaving in diverse references from popular culture. Not only is there great joy in spotting clues that connect with your own interests, but solving crosswords can also be a great way to learn all kinds of new things.
Digging through this grid and its clues, we can find mentions of:
- Writers, artists and musicians: EDITH Wharton, Maurizio Cattelan, IRA Gershwin, GIL Scott-Heron, Bedouin Soundclash, Eleanor ESTES, John Keats, IAN Thomas
- TV shows and movies: Star Trek, The Sopranos, Mean Girls, Avatar, Kim’s Convenience, The Avengers, Peppa Pig
- Sports: the Houston ASTROS, Ken DRYDEN, SABASTIAN SAWE, the Edmonton ELKS
- Geography: ETNA, UGANDA
- Food: BANANA, SUMAC, SOBA noodles, OREOS, IDA red apples
- Online culture: a BRA-sizing subreddit, YouTube VIDEOs, the #OOTD hashtag (“outfit of the day”), IIRC (“if I remember correctly”)
Some people argue that crosswords should stick to vocabulary and so-called general knowledge, asking how they’re supposed to know the latest celebrities or athletes or slang terms. But they don’t seem to complain about the inclusion of operas or old movie stars. Today’s movie stars will one day be “old” movie stars too; when should they be allowed into the puzzle?
A mix of cultural references helps make the puzzle accessible to a wider range of solvers and keeps it connected to today’s world. Every Weekender puzzle is vetted by a team of test solvers, and we work hard to ensure that all entries are clued fairly and supported by accessible crossings. Discovery is part of the joy of crosswords, and if this puzzle introduced you to some new things, so much the better.
Breaking down today’s theme
The theme today is revealed at 119A, with the clue [Pit-of-the-stomach sensations … and this puzzle’s circled strings?]. The answer is SINKING FEELINGS.
I’ve said several times in this column that a crossword’s theme typically appears in the grid’s longest Across entries. And despite the fact that the circled strings in this grid are clearly running Down, not Across, today’s theme is not really an exception to that generality.
Each of those strings of circled squares is actually the tail end of a longer Across entry that ends with a hidden word for a feeling. The word starts running Across but then the feeling part sinks into a Down slot. Hence, SINKING FEELINGS.
At 21A, [Gym accessory for gripping heavy bars] is WEIGHTLIFTING GLOVE, and the only way to fit it into the grid is to make a turn and write the letters L-O-V-E into the “sinking” circles. As a bonus, that same LOVE string is also part of a longer down entry, ALL OVER at 11D.
The same thing happens four other times:
- 37A: ICE COLD BEVERAGE (crossing 13D, DISPARAGE)
- 60A: SABASTIANSAWE (crossing 57D, RAWER)
- 76A: ENERGY VAMPIRE (crossing 73D, SIRE)
- 97A: PAUL SUN-HYUNG LEE (crossing 91D, EAGLE EYE)
A note from today’s constructor, Will Nediger
When writing puzzles for Canadian-specific venues, I have a list of Canadian entries that I like to use, but it’s mainly short entries (like TSN or CRA) that come up all the time, so it’s exciting when I can fit in a long one, like PAUL SUN-HYUNG LEE (especially when it’s part of the theme, like it is here). Speaking of full names in the grid, I misspelled SABASTIAN SAWE as SEBASTIAN SAWE when I sent this puzzle in – I’d seen the name a few times in the news, and somehow never noticed how the first name is spelled! Thank goodness for editors and test-solvers.
Cryptic clue of the week
My pick from today’s Weekender Cryptic is 9A, a clue that made me laugh out loud: [He wanted more love (and organ meat) (6)]. I mean, isn’t that what we all want out of life?
Part of the art of writing a good cryptic clue is making sure its surface sense, or just “surface” in cryptic lingo, almost seems like a plausible clue or at least paints a clear, coherent picture. The surface sense of [He wanted more love (and organ meat)] doesn’t really tell us anything or hint at anyone specific, but it sure sounds like it might. Pass the kidney pie, sweetie.
This is also the kind of pure, lovely cryptic clue that Fraser Simpson is famous for. The mechanism in this clue is a charade. Just like in a game of charades, the entry is simply broken up and clued piece by piece.
In cryptics, “love” is often used in the tennis sense, i.e., a score of 0, i.e., the letter O. And a type of organ meat is LIVER. One other thing to note: in cryptic clues, you can usually ignore any punctuation like parentheses. So “love (and organ meat)” equals “O and LIVER,” which gives us OLIVER. If you’re like me, that answer was already tickling the back of your mind because of the big hint in the front of the clue to the iconic line “Please, sir, I want some more,” which is, of course, spoken by Charles Dickens’s OLIVER Twist.
Want to study up before next week’s puzzle? Read Fraser Simpson’s How to solve The Globe’s cryptic crossword.