Hit the Road

by Darby

• Play it ↗
• Difficulty: impossible

Sometimes you just have to throw in the towel. I don't think I had an answer for a single piece of trivia in this grid, and while that's normally not a requirement for solving a puzzle, this grid felt particularly nasty without it.

I count this grid as a themeless even though it clearly has a recurring motif. The editor notes MOVEALONG, GETONTHEBUS, WALKAWAY, and LOVETRAIN as "song titles that can be related to travel". Meh? Honestly the fill in this crossword is rough, and I'm not just saying that because I had to use at least 5 hints.

My first mistake was slotting DONTASKME as the "Response when someone should know the answer to their own question". IMO it's just as solid a fit for that clue as YOUTELLME, the actual answer that didn't occur to me until I had hinted 20A and 27A. It doesn't help that the Y and U are only revealed via a Ted Lasso reference and a Greek letter. Look, I understand that I'm missing the boat by not having watched Ted Lasso like every other sport-loving American, but throw me a bone!

After ten minutes of floundering, hinting, and arriving at YOUTELLME I'm finally starting to make progress on the grid. Unfortunately my next mistake was slotting LATETRAIN instead of LOVETRAIN, where the O and V are revealed by an All-American rejects song (which I had as NOTELLING) and some name from a cartoon from the early 2000s. Man, it took me long enough to figure out GETONTHEBUS (by the way, not to be confused with GETINTHEBUS) that at this point I've just given up and am hinting anything with the slightest level of friction.

I don't remember the last time I've been so wholly wrong during a crossword solve but this feels like a special moment.

Send your comments to [email protected].