Illustration by Reuters, Getty Images
This weekly column, Puzzle Pieces, is designed to give you a deeper look at the Globe and Mail’s Weekender crossword, highlighting the puzzle’s clues, explaining its theme and celebrating the work that goes into making it. I also provide a beginner-friendly explanation of one of Fraser Simpson’s Weekender Cryptic clues.
As always, clues are in [square brackets] and grid entries are in CAPS, and there are spoilers, so don’t read this until you’ve solved our Saturday crosswords.
Favourite moments in the Oct. 17 Weekender
How Perceptive of You! is our latest Weekender from Jeffrey Martinovic of London, Ont. Let’s look at some classic crossword things in this puzzle.
97A [Kid’s cry?]: Don’t ask me why, but the crossword world decided long ago that sheep say “baa” and goats say “MAA.” That’s just how it is, so tuck that away for future reference. That’s the kind of deep insider information you can expect from this column, folks.
Here’s another thing to watch for: By convention, crossword clues start with a capital letter, so a proper noun can be disguised as a common one by putting at the beginning of a clue. For example, 5A is [Apple you shouldn’t eat]. Had the clue been, say, [Inedible Apple], that capital A would have been much more obvious, clearly signalling the company and not just the fruit. The answer, of course, is IMAC (definitely don’t eat one). Jeffrey pulled the same trick again at 84D with [Galaxies, for example], disguising the brand of phones made by SAMSUNG.
I also got a kick out of 88D, clued as [Western aides, for short?]. What kind of aides are specifically western? What could that even mean? But wait, is it the capital-letter trick again? It is! Aides at Western University are teaching assistants, or TAS “for short.” Jeffrey recently graduated from Western, so this is also a nice personal touch.
Breaking down the theme
This puzzle’s theme is a classic: add letters to known phrases, and hilarity ensues.
The theme is revealed at 116A, [Noticed, as a subtle hint … or what this puzzle’s theme entries have all done]. The answer is PICKED UP ON, and indeed, every one of the theme entries is a known phrase that has “picked up” the letters ON. The theme clues (those marked with asterisks) are all funny suggestions of what the resultant phrases could mean.
Because these are are made-up phrases with goofy clues, a solver should expect to need a lot of crossing entries before the theme answers start to click. That’s why it’s a crossword puzzle, after all.
It was not easy to build this grid. The more “locked-in” letters you have, the more constrained your choices are for the rest of the entries. Jeffrey set himself quite a challenge by introducing eight theme entries plus the revealer, totalling 119 letters, which is a third of the total white squares in the grid! That’s a lot. It took a lot of work to land on the lively, clean grid you see before you, but it’s a beaut.
Here’s the full list of phrases that have picked up ON:
- 22A [*Game of Thrones, for one?] – DRAGON SHOW
- 27A [*Meal plan that doesn’t allow burnt toast?] – LOW CARBON DIET
- 35A [*Tabloids’ zealous coverage of King Charles III?] – MONARCH MADNESS
- 51A [*Scrubs, gloves and masks?] – SURGEON PROTECTORS
- 71A [*Sir Isaac’s keen appreciation for style?] – EYE OF NEWTON
- 83A [*Murdered over a rude gesture?] – POISONED FOR ACTION
- 99A [*Storm of the century?] – VICIOUS CYCLONE
- 107A [*Extra USB port?] – BONUS TERMINAL
A note from constructor Jeffrey Martinovic
Some puzzles come together super easily and others feel like they’re constantly fighting not to exist – this one had elements of both worlds. Given the extremely high density of theme content (an ambitious constraint I put upon myself), it took a lot of back-and-forth as well as many revisions to create a reasonable grid. I’m really happy with how this new take “on” a classic theme type turned out. I hope the puzzle brought some joy to your weekend.
Cryptic clue of the week
From Fraser Simpson’s Oct. 17 Weekender Cryptic, let’s look at 14D: [Iron parts covered with dirt got unnecessarily involved (10)].
We’ve talked about insertion clues before. What’s fun about this one is the way you have to rethink every part of the clue in order to solve it.
If you’re like me, the surface reading suggests an invisible “that are,” as in “iron parts (that are) covered with dirt …” You know this is a cryptic, though, so you look to break it up a different way:
- “Iron parts” – what are those? Might that be the definition half of the clue? Or could it mean something like flatten components?
- “Covered with” looks suspiciously like an insertion indicator… or maybe we just want a word for covered that goes with something else?
- “Dirt” – mud? gossip?
- And what of the rest of the clue, “got unnecessarily involved”? Could “involved” be an anagram indicator? (I doubt it, since it would mean anagramming unnecessarily, which has more than 10 letters.)
It turns out that “parts” is not a noun at all, but a verb, meaning splits. “Iron” often means the letters FE, its chemical symbol. And “covered” is also being used here as a verb, rather than an adjective; “covered in dirt” is INTERRED.
So we have FE splits INTERRED – INTER(FE)RED – a perfect match for what we now know is the definition part of the clue, “got unnecessarily involved.”
Still baffled by cryptics and looking for some pointers? Start here: How to solve The Globe’s cryptic crossword.