Grant Thackray alights with an incendiary Sunday puzzle.
SUNDAY PUZZLE — Well, everybody, back to school! This is a pretty tough grid, with an added factor that we see occasionally: It looks a little ugly when it’s finished, because the theme includes some entries that “go the wrong way.” I don’t think that’s a spoiler, but it is something you can show the person looking over your shoulder and pointing out all your mistakes — always so helpful when you’re hard at work.
Our constructor, Grant Thackray, makes fun and difficult puzzles (Thursdays through Sundays exclusively, so far). This is his third Sunday; the first two had movie themes, which fit with his current location (Los Angeles) and career goals (animation, either storyboarding or character design). He came up with the idea for today’s grid while restocking wood for a campfire, which is understandable.
Tricky Clues
This is challenging fill, no doubt about it. Or, I should say, doubt after doubt after doubt, until a few little flickers of theme coalesced into a reassurance that I might not be losing my mind. My journey was not eased by a couple of sizable misdirects that mystified me — “election” for ERUPTION, sure, but also “stone’s throw” for AT ONE’S ELBOW. (This odd expression, a debut, recalled the title of a 1960s literary compilation — with a much different meaning — that I read many years ago.) Oh, and eBay/ETSY crossing Yikes/YEESH. Yeesh, indeed.
42A: Balletomanes will know this term, and Francophiles will easily deduce it; I’m a little bit of both, but I needed crosses to figure out ETOILE, or “star” in French, the pinnacle of promotion at the Paris Opera Ballet. I found this whole patch of grid, from ETOILE to ERASERS, rough going.
120A: If you feel like unpacking this original clue for a crossword constant, you’ll find tantalizing reasons to believe or doubt a zany Knights Templar connection (Snopes.com says to doubt it, but I find myself doubting Snopes.com, so here we are). I hope every constructor agrees never to repeat an existing clue for OREO.
43D: This is unexpected wordplay: The remark is made by a gambler, not a marijuana farmer, and I RAISE indicates an addition to the betting pot. The next clue also kind of sneaks up on you: Snakes can grow new skins and scales as they age and molt, and they almost always grow LONGER.
54D: Aiding constructors (and addling solvers) since 1945, ARSÈNE Lupin is a sophisticated thief and detective in 20th-century French crime fiction. This is one of those maddening clues that I recognize yet often don’t remember the answer to, although it has appeared less frequently in recent years. SGS, or United Nations Secretaries-General, is obscure to me, too.
Today’s Theme
There’s an enjoyable unpredictability to a puzzle with a really well-tucked-in theme like this one, assuming that you didn’t luck out and pick up on the theme right away; I wondered over and over again which entries would finally connect to make the grid make sense.
There are five examples of the theme set today, each comprising three components. One is a Down entry, which is clued with a “-” in the grid and makes no sense when read conventionally, north to south. One is an Across entry — with no question mark, italics or pun — and involves a left-hand turn to the north using those letters in the crossing “-” down. The third component is an unclued word, term or person. Each of these has something in common that gives meaning to the puzzle’s title, “Go Up in Smoke.”
For me, things started to click in the center of the grid at 74-Across: “Addiction treatment locale.” I was already at least halfway into this solve, trying to negotiate the crazy entry that was forming at 30-Down through a series of locked-in Across answers: BUCS, CHINA, Lucy RICARDO, ELDERLAW, Joel OSTEEN and EXHALE. (What about AND? That’s a tricky little clue — AND translates to “e” in Italian.) I guessed “rehab” for 74-Across, but it didn’t fit until my eyes followed that left-hand turn and saw that 30-Down, currently RETNECB, could be read in reverse. I started 74-Across with R-E-H-A, turned north and got REHAB CENTER. For the first time, I was getting somewhere.
But what about the end of 74-Across? Knowing HUSHED and NICHOLAS (with its great Christmas clue) gives us a word, although its relevance is unclear: REHASH. Fair enough, let’s move on.
I had considered myself hopelessly muddled in the northeast corner, but when I revisited it with an eye for the reverse read, 31-Across made sense. “Like gasoline nowadays” is UNLEADED: U-N-L-E-A comes from the Across entry, and A-D-E-D is 17-Down, read from bottom to top. Oh, and 31-Across in its entirety? The answer is similarly puzzling: UNLEASH. REHASH, UNLEASH — let’s do one more.
In the southwest, at 114-Across, is one of the two big Harry Potter references in this grid: “Gryffindor, Slytherin, Hufflepuff or Ravenclaw.” I still haven’t read the books, and I am still not up on the whole world (although I adore HERMIONE, mainly from all of the crossword references to her, like the one in this puzzle). However, I recognize these terms — they’re all part of the magic school. I got the H-O-G-W, turned left on the A, and the long stream of nonsense at 65-Down made sense. If you turn E-S-U-O-H-S-T-R-A backward, you get HOGWARTS HOUSE; if you read 114-Across in its entirety, you get HOGWASH.
REHASH, UNLEASH, HOGWASH — all of these theme entries are rising from the ashes!
Yes, there is a revealer set at 50- and 97-Across that you might have gotten early in your solve: RISE FROM / THE ASHES. And yes, I did search in vain for a phoenix reference, which would have been a real cherry on top. Potterheads may have more to say about this, but there’s a phoenix named Fawkes in the series whose tears have healing powers, which seems fitting for this perilous theme.
Constructor Notes
This puzzle has had the longest gestation period of any I’ve published so far. I came up with the idea while (as Will’s blurb mentions) preparing a campfire at the summer camp I worked at on Catalina Island in the summer of 2018. I submitted several different grids to the puzzle team, completely starting from scratch each time, until the editors finally found one they liked. One earlier version I submitted had MONSTERMANUAL as a theme answer (a book any “Dungeons & Dragons” nerd would be familiar with), but Will thought it a bit too obscure for a keystone answer, which is fair. See if you can figure out how it would have worked with this theme, though! (If you’re stumped, here’s the spoiler.)
This puzzle also ended up with a handful of interesting answer pairings completely by chance, such as 34-Down and 58-Down, which almost made a famous book title; 25-Down and 36-Down, which were next to each other; and 125-Down and 3-Down, which mirrored each other, creating my favorite fashion accessory. I’m glad they kept the clues I wrote for 5-Down, 43-Down and 44-Down, but those smarty-pants at the NYT came up with some pretty good ones of their own, such as at 55-Down. I also was very interested to learn a new fact that I could clue for the oft-seen answer at 120-Across. Take a look next time you’re having one — who knew!
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