2) Kansas City’s NPR affiliate is running an online crossword tournament this Thursday evening (June 24), featuring three puzzles by Amanda Rafkin, Erik Agard, and David Steinberg. Check it out here.
And second, some very exciting personal news … I have a nephew! My brother Justin and his wife Sarah are now the proud parents of Owen, who was born on June 17. Here’s a photo of the cute little all-star. We live in different states, but I hope I’ll get to see him in-person sometime soon and spend many years being the Cool Uncle of the family. I’m facing some competition from my oldest brother Matt, but I’m up for the challenge. If Matt wants some of my cool, I *guess* I can let him have some for Owen’s sake. Anyway, a public congrats from this proud uncle to the happy mama and papa.
The first odd thing you’ll notice about today’s puzzle is that some clues are apparently missing. The clues for 26A, 29A, 59A, 62A, 63A and 117A are completely blank. I didn’t just forget to write them, though. The clues to those six answers can be found in six other places in the grid itself, so it will take some work to uncover them:
- 22A: [Suggested … and a description of 26 Across] is DROPPED HINTS. If you work out the crossing answers, you’ll see that 26A is NUDGES, which is a synonym of HINTS and its clue has been dropped from the puzzle.
- 35A: [Unforeseen expense … and a description of 29 Across] is HIDDEN COST, which hints at the blank clue for OUTLAY at 29A.
- 47A: [Bit of excised footage … and a description of 59 Across] is DELETED SCENE, which hints at the blank clue for CLIP at 59A.
- 74A: [Squandered an advantage, maybe … and a description of 62 Across] is LOST GROUND, which hints at the blank clue for LAND at 62A.
- 89A: [Theoretical evolutionary connections … and a description of 63 Across] is MISSING LINKS, which hints at the blank clue for URLS at 63A.
- 103A: [Portal discovered in many a mystery … and a description of 117 Across] is SECRET DOOR, which hints at the blank clue for ENTRANCE at 117A.
But that’s not all. There are instructions at the top of the puzzle which read: “The first letters of six answers in this puzzle spell out an apt phrase.” If you take the first letters of the answers to the six blank clues (NUDGES, OUTLAY, CLIP, LAND, URLS, ENTRANCE), you spell out NO CLUE. That’s a literal description of this puzzle’s theme and something you might say when you’re drawing a blank.
This puzzle started with a similar idea titled “Empty Words,” and by building to the final answer HOT AIR, a figurative description of empty words. The trouble was, even when you find phrases that hint at words being missing, it can be very difficult to find appropriate synonyms of the missing words that start with specific letters, and those synonyms had to proceed in a strict order. I’m not sure I found a good “blank” word that started with I, for that matter. The best I found was STARK NAKED to hint at a blank clue for IN THE NUDE, which is funny, but still, I’m glad I scrapped the HOT AIR answer since NO CLUE is a more apt description of the theme anyhow.
Some other answers and clues:
- 33A: [Remove, as words] is ERASE. It seems fitting that this showed up in the puzzle.
- 65A: [Many-headed beast slain by Hercules] is THE HYDRA. Okay, it’s time for a not-exactly-sad-but-still-bittersweet story. I’d been waiting at least four years to use HYDRA in a puzzle, but I’d never had the chance since its letters aren’t the most convenient. It was sometime back in 2017 that I came up with what I thought was a fun clue, which was [Classic quadruple-header?]. I’m a sports fan and figured, well, the Hydra had at least that many heads, so what’s not to like? Then THE HYDRA dropped into my lap in this puzzle and I thought I’d struck gold. But there were two problems: 1) the starting article THE is slightly odd since it might be hard while solving to parse it as two words; but more importantly, 2) there’s no actual agreement in Greek myths about how many heads the Hydra had. Depending on the source, it was said to have had seven, eight, nine, fifty, maybe even a few hundred heads. The only common feature between the stories was that for every one of the Hydra’s heads that Hercules cut off, two would grow back in the same spot. Logically, it would only get to four heads after Hercules had already chopped several off, which meant it just wasn’t a solid enough clue to make sense. So I had to begrudgingly let the clue go despite keeping it on the shelf for a very long time. Crossword writers often tell each other not to be afraid to drop answers or clues you might really want in your puzzle, but it was especially difficult to do that this time.
- 97A: [Nation that celebrates Reindeer Herders’ Day] is RUSSIA. Shortly after writing this puzzle, I’d found what I thought was a good cryptic crossword clue for this answer: [Iowa, following breakup of USSR, forms a country (6)]. You parse it as the state abbreviation for Iowa (IA) coming after an anagram (“breakup”) of USSR, so RUSS + IA = RUSSIA. I’ve been getting into cryptics a lot more in the past several months, so I’m thinking of this as a silver lining for losing my clue for THE HYDRA.
- 101A: [NBA and NFL play-by-play announcer Adam] is Adam AMIN. He does TV play-by-play for my hometown Chicago Bulls.
- 3D: [Meet spoils] is GOLD MEDAL. Think of “Meet” as in a track meet and “spoils” as something you would win, like in the phrase “to the victor goes the spoils.” I thought it was amusing how something many athletes would treasure could sound really undesirable if you said the clue out loud.
- 14D: [Most current info] is THE LATEST, 15D: [Ames university] is IOWA STATE, and 16D: [Start time?] is NEW YEARS. I thought this made for a fun stack of answers in that northeast corner.
- 52D: [Lady ___ (nickname among jazz legends)] is ELLA. Anyone write in GAGA first?
- 68D: [Parent of a zonkey] is ASS. Count me as someone who’d never heard of a zonkey until writing this puzzle — it’s a cross between a zebra and a donkey.
What did you think?
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June 20, 2021 at 08:00PM
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Solution to Evan Birnholz’s June 20 Post Magazine crossword, “Drawing a Blank” - The Washington Post
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