I hope the picture of a woman surfing north of the Arctic Circle, above, gives you the same visceral chills it gave me. I didn’t know the word WAHINE (“Surfer girl”), but Merriam-Webster tells me that it entered English from the Maori.
Ullman’s paternity leave (see his notes below), I have to imagine this entry’s inclusion was no accident!Ģ4D.
I love a good portmanteau, so I was delighted to identify that “Fatherly tips, to use a portmanteau coinage” must be DADVICE, a portmanteau of “dad” and “advice.” Given the origins of this puzzle during Mr. The pun (indicated by the question mark) is on the term “wet bar,” which is a small bar that has a sink, as opposed to a dry bar, which does not.ĥ4A. A “Whet bar?” is a bar used to whet a blade - also known as a GRINDSTONE. Today’s puzzle has the clue “Male’s name hidden backward in this clue,” and although the “backward” bit made this a tad harder than usual, the use of the word “male” instead of “man” made it easy to find ANSEL hidden backward in the clue.Ĥ3A. It makes the crossing letter unambiguous as long as you can get some of the other letters in the entry. Crossword constructors and editors love to use hidden word clues when they’re worried about proper nouns crossing, as we see at 38A crossing 29D. I eventually figured out that this clue should be read as “10 hundred hours,” which is military speak for TEN A.M.ģ8A. When I saw the clue “1000 hrs.,” I started trying to do the math to figure out what unit of time lasted 1,000 hours (as it turned out, 41 and two-thirds days did not fit in the five spaces available). Instead, the entry here is WBA, an initialism that meant absolutely nothing to me until I looked it up after the solve - the WBA is the World Boxing Association, and boxing is famously performed in rings.Ģ7A. The clue “Initialism that might have a ring to it?” made me think that perhaps this would be a telephone acronym, or maybe something to do with wedding vows. I was sure that a “Blue print?” would be some kind of racy photograph, so I was amused (and a little embarrassed) when it turned out to be the clue for SEA MAP, a print that is definitely blue but not even remotely racy.Ģ6A. But rarely in crosswords must you WIN OR GO HOME, especially if you happen to already be at home when you solve! Tricky CluesġA. Of course, this turned out to be HISTORY NERD, but it took a painful struggle in the SE corner before I recognized this mistake.Īh, well. Specifically, we were looking for a SPRING FLING, a term I know as a name for a concert or party annually held on a college campus in the spring semester, but not as a brief springtime relationship.įinally (for illustrative purposes, but not actually finally in terms of my mistakes!), I confidently threw in HISTORY buff at 21D (“One who loves to bring up the past”), feeling mighty proud of myself for seeing through the misdirect in the clue. Bzzt! Wrong again! The short relationship in question was a type of FLING, not a FLame. In the next entry over (17D, “Short relationship”), I had _FL_ locked in, and decided this had to be _FLAME. (For those who may not know the lingo, a “staircase” is a set of entries that are stacked but offset by one square - the two staircases in this puzzle are at 31A/34A/35A and 14D/17D/21D). To name just a few of the clues that I needed a second chance on, let’s take a look at the entire vertical staircase. Some of these were simple changes - think AhH to AAH at 5D (“This is the life!”) - while other mistakes required an entirely new understanding of the clue to rectify. I needed plenty of second, third and even fourth chances to solve this tough Friday puzzle, entering and removing tons of guesses as I made my way through the grid.
(This isn’t the case, I suppose, if you are solving in pen - and I don’t recommend that!) Fortunately, when you’re solving someone’s New York Times Crossword debut, you have as many second chances as you need to figure out a particularly tricky clue. Today’s constructor, Aaron Ullman, nails that shot, with this beautiful themeless grid featuring two intersecting staircases of entries, lively fill and outstanding clues. FRIDAY PUZZLE - When you make your New York Times Crossword debut, you have only one shot to make your first impression - no second chances.
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