them's crossing words

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Mixing the Mark

by erik

A lot of SZA representation going on in the last couple of crosswords. I wonder if she's that popular or if it's input from the editor? Regardless, it doesn't detract from today's puzzle, which if I may, has a very aesthetically pleasing shape to it.

It's not clear to me whether this grid has a theme. On one hand, the puzzle presents two highlights for words that are clued with an anagram. On the other, is that enough to qualify a theme? I don't see any other relationship between MANSPREAD and GRANTOBRIEN, unless I'm missing something hidden in the words. If that's it I'm a little disappointed.

I don't share Puzzmo's enthusiasm for anagrams, a fact I've mentioned many times when discussing their hint system. It strikes me as a cool flex but an otherwise tedious mental exercise that I obtain no pleasure from participating in. The themers in this grid are no different, I mostly ignored the acronyms except to fill in the O and E for GRANTOBRIEN.

I generally had a great time with the difficulty curve, aside from a couple of sticking points. ROZ crossed with PROTO was hard for me to nail down, the former being a complete guessing game on my part and the latter a jumble of attempts that start with PRE. "Pounded ___" (YAM) is a dish that I'm totally unfamiliar with, and was surprised when that was the correct answer. Everything else in the grid was a smooth, fun solve.

Well, except for PITA. Wow did PITA give me a hard time. Look, PITA is rounded and generally cut in half when in bread form. I stand by that. Were the clue referencing PITA chips, I'd be more willing to concede defeat, but for "Bread often cut into triangles"? I get what the constructor is trying to do here but it had me dismissing PITA as an answer as I tried to fill in an alternative, like FILA. Is FILA even a type of bread? It doesn't help that the surrounding clues are esoteric, with the world's longest Beyoncé reference crossed with geoduck.[1]

Whew. OK now that that is out of my system I can talk about some of my favorite clues. "Points to you, holds up phone, mimes typing, points to self" is legendary (TEXTME). What a fun clue to piece together, kind of like some sort of textual charades. "Spilled the beans, for example?" (MADEAMESS) was also a great aha moment.

  1. I really need to learn my keyboard shortcuts for typing in e-acute. Every time I bring up Beyoncé I copy-paste her name from somewhere else, I don't think that's going to scale with this blog. ↩︎

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