Welcome back to Puzzle Pieces, the weekly column in which I discuss our Saturday Weekender and Weekender Cryptic crossword puzzles. It’s filled with spoilers. As before, CAPS represent letters entered in the grid and words in [square brackets] represent clues.
Our Sept. 5 Weekender crossword, Transferable Skills, comes to us from Ontario constructor Jeffrey Martinovic, whose capacity for coming up with creative crossword theme ideas seems to be endless.
Favourite moments in Saturday’s crossword
Remember that clues that end in a question mark should not be taken literally – the question mark tells you that something wacky is going on.
At 79D, for example, [Bread boxes?] is not about those countertop containers for your weekly bakery haul. Jeffrey’s playing on the money meaning of bread, and ATMS are boxes full of it. (Alas, sort of like actual bread boxes, you can only take out what you first put in.)
On its face, 32A’s [Washers’ dryers?] clue is a tad confusing … something about matching sets of laundry appliances? But no, it’s just what someone doing some washing needs in order to do some drying: TOWELS.
The clue at 57D, [Viral property?], plays on our modern understanding of the word “viral.” There was a time when this clue could have only brought illnesses to mind. These days, we’re just as likely to think of memes and other internet trends. The joke is that the clue ultimately does mean exactly what it says: It’s asking for a property of actual viruses, CONTAGION.
67D’s [Teeny tiny?] is just plain cute: The answer is LIL. It not only means tiny, but the word itself is also pretty teeny. A teeny tiny. Or a tiny teeny, if you prefer.
Breaking down the theme
Our latest puzzle is a bit of a palate cleanser after a string of complicated Weekender themes involving removing letters, turning parts of words vertical and letting entries bleed off the edge of the grid. I really enjoy the challenge of those kinds of tricky themes (and I hope you do too!), but I also appreciate a more straightforward crossword full of silliness.
There are no tricks here, just good old-fashioned wordplay.
The fun starts at 23A with the clue [The successful server had …], but I’d venture to guess that most solvers would have no idea what to do with that on their first pass. In fact, if you’re the kind of solver who does a complete first pass through every Across clue, you might have no idea whatsoever about any of the theme entries before going back up to the Downs. They all use the same “The successful xxx had … ” structure, and you really need to get some Down entries into the grid to start figuring out what those clues are getting at.
Finally, with the help of some crossings, the gimmick starts to fall into place: Each is a familiar phrase, reimagined as a quality that someone in a given profession must have to be successful:
- 23A: The successful server had WAITING GAME
- 34A … salesperson had PERFECT PITCH
- 46A … locksmith had EASY PICKINGS
- 65A … clothing designer had TIMELY FASHION
- 83A … hairstylist had PARTING GIFTS
- 101A … gastroenterologist had GUT INSTINCTS
- 113A … chess player had SMOOTH MOVES
A note from the constructor, Jeffrey Martinovic
This puzzle developed from an idea I’ve been thinking about for years. I tend to mostly construct puzzles with “word architecture” themes, so whenever I have a more punny theme idea, it always feels special. Big thanks to Jess for pushing me to keep working and make this puzzle the best it could be. Hopefully you enjoyed solving today’s puzzle as much as I did making it! Happy Saturday!
Cryptic clue of the week
I like to start this segment with a reminder that Fraser Simpson’s How to solve The Globe’s cryptic crossword is a great place to start if you’re new to cryptics.
Over the last couple of weeks, I’ve introduced the charade clue type, which breaks an entry into parts and clues them individually. We’ve also seen that many cryptic clues combine mechanisms (such as the charade-with-reversal from last week.) The clue I’ve chosen from our Sept. 5 puzzle combines a charade with a container mechanism and a letter-selection device. With me so far?
The clue at 29A is [Doctor certainly acquires last of major appliances (6)].
Cryptic clue-writers love to misdirect (in the nicest way). Here, “major appliances” feels like a unit, doesn’t it? But in fact, the words have to be split up, because one of them is needed in the wordplay.
Cryptic clues often signal that you should take a specific letter from a word. “Last of” commonly means “take the final letter,” so “last of major” very likely means the letter R.
Just before that, we have “acquires,” a common container (aka insertion) indicator, meaning one set of letters goes inside another. Similar indicators include “takes on,” “hugging” and “assumes.” The clue can also be phrased to suggest “XXX goes around YYY,” using words like “surrounding,” “broken up by” and “lying about.”
“Certainly” can mean YES, giving us “YES acquires R” (YRES? YERS? we’re not sure yet …). At the start of the clue, “Doctor” can just mean the letters DR. Put that together with one of those options, and we get DR + YE(R)S, or DRYERS, which fits what we now know to be the definition, “appliances.” (A funny coincidence that both of our Saturday puzzles this week mentioned dryers. The appliance lobby must be hard at work.)