SATURDAY PUZZLE — The first word of the first clue of the puzzle today made me think “Aw, yeah, it’s Erik Agard.” One of my high school professors had a placard on his desk, à la President Truman’s “the buck stops here,” that said “Eschew obfuscation.” He was wickedly sharp, and always prepared to handle any of our angsty, teenage nonsense with good-natured dry humor that always settled things down.
That personality type reminds me of Mr. Agard’s grids. Today’s is about par for the course for him, with seven debuts including one totally wild head-scratcher, and a heavy scattering of cultural references and echoey riffs.
Tricky Clues
31A: The top two entries on the center stack weren’t impossible to suss out, and neither are debuts, but they made for a really entertaining couple. Mr. Agard spikes the nail right on the head with his clue here for STILETTO HEELS. Right under that, a song that should be in everyone’s mental libraries, ITS RAINING MEN (making its sophomore appearance after a fun debut several years ago).
37A: It’s eye-opening to encounter a foreign term in a grid that’s not based on a romance language. There are so many locations in North America based on Native American place names, and most of them are rich with meaning, but there’s too much complexity for me to be able to fill in any blanks on an entry like this. The Iroquois Confederacy comprises the Mohawk, Oneida, Onondaga, Cayuga, Seneca and Tuscarora nations, and goes by the name HAUDENOSAUNEE, pronounced hoe-dee-no-SHOW-nee, which roughly means “They made the house.”
39A: After the odd, funny clue for CENTAUR at 15A, my ears were pricked for equine terms, so the idea of a SUITCASE on an airport carousel didn’t occur to me — I was thinking of wooden Central Park ponies. Did you know about this “suitcase scooter?” It looks like something that ought to exist in an electric version, if any engineers are stuck at home right now.
52A: After figuring out this entry with a few crosses, I cut Mr. Agard some slack for what I thought might have been a clumsy reference to “Tylenol number 3” or some such medication. Actually, a PAIN MED is something that numbs, right? Took a few good passes through the grid to get this joke.
57A: There are the four “Anemoi” of Greek mythology, gods of the winds from each direction. This clue refers to something scientific, the ETESIAN winds, part of the Asian monsoon system that controls annual weather patterns.
3D: This is a debut, although its short forms have appeared in the puzzle before. Adherents of the PALEOLITHIC DIET eat the foods in the clue and follow simpler, preindustrial rules of life, like relying on dial-up internet when they order their meal kits online.
32D: 37A was impossible for me to fill in on crosses, so it figured that those crosses would be harder to noodle out, too. I’m unfamiliar with the term for “Burp,” here, ERUCT; I wanted “erupt" but that “c” was a necessity and I wound up looking this up to confirm.
Constructor Notes
Periodic reminder: the Crossword Puzzle Collaboration Directory is a resource for puzzlemakers from underrepresented groups. If you’re interested in writing crosswords (or other puzzles) and would like some tips on getting started, someone to critique your work or someone to collaborate with, give it a look.
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