dorm in the middle of my freshman year, I didn’t think I’d be coming back, a year and a half later, with a New York Times crossword on my résumé.
#COINAGE CROSSWORD FREE#
What other alliternative phrases can you identify? Feel free to add brainstorm in the comments! Constructor Notes Sefkow’s theme entries FRENCH FRY and CHINESE CHECKERS do capture the digraphs FR- and CH-, which enhances the excellence of the theme. So far, I’ve come up with “American Airlines” and “Canadian Club,” although that second one doesn’t capture the digraph CL- at the start of “Club.” Mr. This is a delightful coinage that took me down a rabbit hole of trying to find other alliternative (?!) phrases. Sefkow invented that is a “Portmanteau coinage describing this puzzle’s theme.” That portmanteau is ALLITERNATION, which combines “alliteration” and “nation” to describe the four theme entries, all of which are alliterative phrases with a nationality in them. The clue “Where model workers can be found?” refers not to paragons of industriousness (although they may also work here), but rather to people who work on car models at an AUTO SHOP. I loved this meta clue for ERA, which tells us that it is the “Most common answer in New York Times crossword puzzles (more than 6% of all puzzles).” The crossword podcast “ Fill Me In” has been doing a deep dive into these “most common answers,” and ERA was discussed at length in this recent episode.ģ7D. We have a wordplay clue here, as indicated by the “?” at the end: “Professional you might need to see?” is one that you might literally need in order to see - an OPTICIAN.ģ5D. For some reason, I was certain this park was spelled with an “m” in place of the “n” and pronounced like the unprintable slang word that roughly translates to “one not to be trifled with.”ġ2D. This was my 7D (ERROR) that sent me on the lengthy hunt described above. “Canada’s oldest national park” is BANFF. Now you know, in case you ever stumble across these five useful letters again in a future puzzle.ĦD. Speaking of words more commonly seen in crosswords than in real life, the “Tip of a shoelace” is called an AGLET. TOPO map is short for TOPOgraphic map, which is a “Map with elevation lines” - the “in brief” lets you know that the answer will be an abbreviation.Ħ7A. ESPORTS is one of those rare e-words that really is a distinct, stand-alone concept that essentially translates to “competitive video games,” two of which are named in the clue (“Counter-Strike or League of Legends”).Ħ2A. We often see gripes about the addition of the letter E- to the beginnings of words to create new, digital versions of the same word (see e-ink or e-tail or e-zine). I’m guessing the editors pinned the number to “over 115” to keep the puzzle accurate even if new elements are discovered.ĥ4A. The clue “One of more than 115 on a table” refers to a very specific table - the periodic table, which has over 115 ELEMENTs on it (currently 118, to be precise). I enjoyed the clue “Nile biter” for ASP, the official snake of the New York Times Crossword, because it sounds like “nail-biter,” which I assume was the point.ģ2A. Once more through the Acrosses, and I realized the truth: I had a wrong letter in one of the long theme entries, which I had mentally skipped over on the first pass because I was so certain the theme entries were right. I’m certain of all of these too, I grumbled (internally).
These all look right, I thought, beginning to get frustrated. What, I thought, how can that be? I didn’t have to guess any of the letters at all! And so I began my hunt for a typo. I filled in my last letter, all ready to hear the victory jingle, when BAM! “Not quite!” appeared on my screen. I moved through the next section with scarcely a second thought, and the rest of the puzzle flowed in a regular, sometimes sticky but never impossible, voyage through the grid. My solving experience today is potentially instructive for new solvers, so I will briefly recount the saga of my hunt for a “Cause for correction” (7D):Īt first, everything was going swimmingly - I knew 1A right off the bat, and that whole corner came together shortly thereafter. I love hearing the origin stories of creative themes like this one (described in more detail below), and I am particularly fond of clever portmanteaus, which, as far as I’m concerned, are the height of wit. Sefkow coined himself and just knew he had to build a puzzle around. TUESDAY PUZZLE - Congratulations to today’s constructor, Conor Sefkow, for making his New York Times Crossword debut! This puzzle is built around a term that Mr.
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