SUNDAY PUZZLE — This is probably a celebrity puzzle for a lot of word lovers out there; Ben Zimmer is a prolific writer on language, formerly at the Times, currently at The Wall Street Journal and The Atlantic. According to Will Shortz’s print introduction, Mr. Zimmer and Brendan Emmett Quigley met about 12 years ago while working on the Visual Thesaurus. (Mr. Zimmer had a column there as well, “Word Routes,” which we have cited before in Wordplay.) This grid is a collaboration from start to finish, a fusion of two maven brains on a molecular level, if you will.
Tricky Clues
I need to play it straight today and not make up any etymology! It’s like writing a book report about a novel that was written by your professor. This is a smooth solve, I think, and there are a lot of touches that make the wordiness and nerdiness of its constructors really shine. Take a look at the corners, for example, and the last letters on those three across entries, SOCKO, STOLI and NEHRU. You also can’t miss the language-related notes throughout, like the clues for OBOE, ERIC, and SAMOAN, and puns in the clues for tiny fill like INNS and MON that provoke little double takes.
71A: There are dangerous elements in the grid today (it’s fitting that the ACME Corporation appears as well, purveyor of “instant feathers” and “instant boulders”). SPEAR, ÉPÉE, NTEST all made me think of “strips” as a noun, hunting for “weapons” that come in bunches, instead of a verb — UNARMS.
95A: You might think there were lots of options for this entry, since bird cage décor so often includes a little mirror. But there’s a difference between seeing a face in the mirror and seeing your face in the mirror, and the only birds on record to get this are MAGPIES. So all of those other birds have an imaginary friend or foe, apparently.
123A: Give doctors any and every award, but a documentary can get an OSCAR.
63D: My knowledge of crime families and international law degree terminology is paltry, so I had no idea what to put as the fourth letter of this entry. Because of its proximity to an affectionate description I use for my partner, HIMBO, I got a laugh at the notion of “carbo” here. Call me Creta Carbo, I want to be alone with my quarantine waffles. This clue actually refers to CARLO Gambino, who the Mob Museum refers to as “the face of organized crime in New York City,” but who I still can’t picture. LLB, at 75A, stands for “Legum Baccalaureus” or Bachelor of Laws; the double “L” is how Latin plurals are abbreviated, like “pp.” for pages.
Today’s Theme
Today’s theme consists of eight entries, at 23-, 29-, 58-, 76-, 107- and 117-Across, and 3- and 79-Down. Depending on the trajectory of your solve, the puzzle’s title — “Shifting Sounds” — might have been a giveaway, or it might have been a misdirect! Let me elucidate by explaining the first clue that I solved, at 3-Down, because that was the way the cookie crumbled for me.
It’s really because THEIR and AA MILNE were quick lit fill-ins for me, which led me to notice and get wrapped up in the interesting three-step dance of SHIPMEN, AHOY and KINSHIP. I jumped on “Bad shot by Dracula?” and answered it correctly — COUNTMISS — but for the wrong reason. I figured that “Shifting Sounds” was just an indication of homonyms (“Sounds”) that change position (“Shifting”) so COUNT MISS was the theme-ization of MISCOUNT, which isn’t the cleanest way to say “Bad shot” but it was good enough for me for a minute. I needed to fully solve another example for things to snap together correctly. At 23-Across, “Dog’s order at a malt shop?” looked like “hound” something right away (I wanted something that would transform to “newshound” by moving its parts around, if you catch my drift). I didn’t know what to do with HOUNDSHAKE — hound’s hake? Voilà: HOUND SHAKE is handshake, transformed; COUNT MISS is can’t miss. In other (spoken) words, you’re shifting “sands” to “sounds;” anywhere in the theme entries that you want to say “wa” say “wou” instead (you want phthongs? Read the constructor notes).
Even if you can wrap your head (or the mouth in your head) around the “shift” you need to make, none of the rest of the theme entries solve themselves. There’s a great mix of cultural references: Chess and the “magic kingdom,” to name a couple. My favorite was at 29-Across, where the clue referenced a show I knew absolutely nothing about but the entry is a beloved icon from “The Simpsons,” trying to stride the Scottish highlands — NED FLOUNDERS. Here’s evidence that “The Simpsons” touches every touchstone, including this puzzle, as there’s a clear reference to another theme entry.
At 117-Across, I wanted “Fuzzy novel” really badly, but the correct entry is an interesting blast from the past.
Constructor Notes
Mr. Zimmer — It’s a real pleasure to be making my debut as a Times crossword constructor, and it feels as if it’s been a long time coming. I’ve been addicted to crossword puzzles — and word puzzles more generally — ever since I was a wee lad and joined the National Puzzlers’ League. As an adult, seeing the documentary “Wordplay” rekindled my love of crossword puzzles, and I started attending tournaments and falling in with the cruciverbalist crowd. Around the same time, I became executive editor of the Visual Thesaurus and got to know Brendan, who created a monthly crossword for the VT. Since then, Brendan and I have had countless conversations about puzzles, music and life in general. I suppose it was inevitable we’d make a crossword together.
The original idea for this theme came from Erik Agard, who has been nudging me into crossword construction for quite a while. Erik actually suggested a phonetic theme going the other way, with the vowels changing from /aʊ/ to /æ/. (As a linguist, I feel compelled to use the International Phonetic Alphabet!) Erik’s proposed title for the puzzle was “Shifting Sands.” Brendan and I kicked the theme around and discovered there were better possibilities doing the phonetic substitution in the other direction, so we switched it up and called it “Shifting Sounds.”
After we brainstormed theme entries, Brendan took the lead in grid construction, and then I took the first pass at filling the grid. Brendan fine-tuned the fill and also improved the clues I came up with, bringing everything up to his usual sparkling professional level. Thanks to Will and team for tweaking the clues even further.
I’m glad we were able to make this into a Sunday puzzle, since it’s a delight to make a return to the Magazine, where I had the honor of writing the “On Language” column for a couple of years after the passing of William Safire. These days you can find me in The Wall Street Journal’s weekend Review section, where I write a weekly column called “Word on the Street,” as well as in The Atlantic, where I’m a contributing writer.
Puzzle News
Caleb Madison, the editor of The Atlantic crossword, is adding a 15 x 15 crossword to his roster and looking for puzzles with fresh, fun and intuitive themes at a medium difficulty (think Wednesday level) with a word count of under 78. The Atlantic puzzle is online only, but in the future there may be opportunities to publish in the monthly magazine. Constructors should email their theme sets to cmadison@theatlantic.com.
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What did you think?
"sound" - Google News
May 03, 2020 at 04:40AM
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Shifting Sounds - The New York Times
"sound" - Google News
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