THURSDAY PUZZLE — One thing I try to hammer home as often as possible is that to be a good solver, you need to be able to think in terms of what other meanings a word might have. The word “book,” for example, is both a noun (“Have you read this book?”) and a verb (“When the coronavirus is a thing of the past, let’s book a weekend away”).
Sometimes, a word or proper name can have more than just two meanings. And Alex Eaton-Salners has stumbled upon a jackpot.
Puzzling Ways to Stay Busy While You Are at Home
The crossword world has not forgotten the many talents of Merl Reagle, who died in 2015. His wonderful puzzles live on, and are still sold by his partner, Marie Haley. If you enjoy puzzles that are brilliant and clever and packed with puns, you will enjoy Merl’s work.
Buy his books here.
Tricky Clues
This puzzle is Thursday-level mainly for its clues.
If anything, Mr. Eaton-Salners showed me where my wheelhouse is and where it isn’t. I did not know Kennington’s cricket ground, the OVAL, nor did I know country music star Carly PEARCE. I did not know that Penn & Teller have a theater in Las Vegas inside a casino called the RIO. And while I knew the heteronym trick to “Current event?” at 3D — we’re talking about air currents, not things that are current — I did not have the brain cells to come up with EL NIÑO.
Ditto for “TRUE GRIT” and “TOP GUN,” even though I am a movie fan. And I got Tom BROKAW at 40D, but only after I had filled in the first letter from the crossing.
Today’s Theme
Tl;dr (Spoiler!)
All the different meanings that “Mercury” might have.
Mr. Eaton-Salners offers us five theme entries that contain pairs of planets. Each theme clue takes the form of “Mercury or [Planet], e.g.”
But are they just planets? You remember what I’ve said about “e.g.” clues. They are asking you for a category that the items or names in the clue might fit into. And it turns out that Mercury fits into a lot of categories.
For example, at 58A — this is where I figured out the theme — the answer to the clue “Mercury or Saturn, e.g.” is AUTO MAKE, because the Mercury was made by Ford and the Saturn was made by General Motors.
Similarly, at 26A, the answer to “Mercury or Venus, e.g.,” is ROMAN GOD, because, well, you know.
But we are not done yet. There are three more theme entries:
17A. Mercury or Sun, e.g.
WNBA TEAM
35A. Mercury or Earth, e.g.
INNER PLANET
(Both planets reside inside the asteroid belt.)
48A. Mercury or Mars, e.g.
MUSICIAN
(Freddie Mercury and Bruno Mars)
Constructor Notes
ROMAN GOD makes its New York Times Crossword debut today. Interestingly, it almost debuted back in 2018 in this puzzle. My original submission in that puzzle had the dual revealer of ROMAN GOD and PLANET. Continuing to think about that connection probably contributed to arriving at today’s theme (my jumping-off point was actually the Mercury/Mars pairing at 48A).
Having a central 11-letter theme entry (INNER PLANET) forces either vertical triple stacks of seven-letter words or more in two corners, or a bunch of three-letter words (if those longer entries are broken up). I chose the former.
Another decision point was how to orient the two Utah blocks breaking up the sides [The clusters of black squares in those spots are the shape of Utah. — D.A.] I chose the configuration needing words matching ????G??T and I??S???? rather than ??B????I and T????A??. ??B????I is very limiting, which means fewer options for smooth and interesting fill.
Of course, combining those decisions with the eight-letter themers in rows 3 and 13 creates large swaths of open space in the NE and SW corners. With only a couple of three-letter words interspersed between the 6s, 7s and 8s, solvers may have a hard time getting a foothold there.
That layout, plus the low word count (72) and perhaps some hard vocabulary, is likely what bumped this puzzle to Thursday instead of Wednesday, where it was originally slotted.
Hopefully solvers aren’t disappointed that the trickiness factor is less than a typical Thursday offering.
The Tipping Point
Almost finished solving but need a bit more help? We’ve got you covered.
Warning: There be spoilers ahead, but subscribers can take a peek at the answer key.
Trying to get back to the puzzle page? Right here.
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