them's crossing words

about - archive - rss

New Yorker: Wednesday

by Robyn Weintraub

Changing it up this week with a full-sized solve. As far as I can tell The New Yorker doesn't title their puzzles, so I haven't figured out how to title these reviews. This is cutting-edge stuff.

The New Yorker runs its easy puzzle on Wednesday and today is no exception. It's a light and breezy solve, yet still crunchy enough to be an enjoyable puzzle. The bottom third took me the longest to fill, with a few crosses not ringing any bells against an unfilled STILETTOHEELS. Once I filled the shoe (pun intended) the grid unlocked.

PAX Romana is a new one for me, which is somewhat surprising from someone who spent four years studying Latin. There's another Roman reference in the lower-right corner with TROY, "City infiltrated by means of a giant wooden horse, in the Aeneid." The downfall of Troy marks the beginning of the journey of Aeneas (the hero of, you guessed it, the Aeneid) goes on to meander around the coast of Italy in search of a new home town. That town eventually becomes Rome.

Anyway there's already enough Latin nerd going on in this review so it's time to move on.

Without the Puzzmo editors to tell me whether a crossword is themed, I keep second guessing myself that this is a themeless grid. Where's my post-solve letter from the constructor? The longest fills in the grid are the full-lengthed acrosses WHATMORECANISAY and GOTINTOHOTWATER, a couple of fun idioms. Both were a joy to piece together, not immediately guessable but inferrable after a couple of the words are partially filled.

I was especially impressed by IDINA, which strikes me as an incredibly well-placed name. It's fun to puzzle out with the crosses ATTIC and OHIO, both of which have a few different possibilities given their clues. This was probably my favorite section in the grid.

Send your comments to [email protected].