Original Peoples Continued Crossword Puzzle Answers for School
wordplay, the crossword column
Something Special
August Miller's puzzle offers some words of comfort.
MONDAY PUZZLE — Hello and happy Monday, solvers! Today's puzzle features some sage words from the constructor August Miller, although you may need to solve the puzzle all the way through to uncover what they are.
When I first started writing for the Wordplay column, I was a little jealous that Deb Amlen and Caitlin Lovinger would be covering puzzles from Thursday to Sunday. I worried that there just wouldn't be much to say about a Monday, which is generally the most straightforward puzzle of the week. As I've continued to write these Monday columns, however, I've come to feel that there's something special about Monday puzzles. They're the easiest of the week, sure, but that also means they're tailor-made for the brand-new solver.
So many lifelong solvers got their start here, picking their way through a Monday and encountering the strange language of crossword puzzles for the first time. The ", say" and "abbrev" clues, the question marks and the cross-references — to a new solver, nearly every clue must feel like it's in a foreign language! And so the Monday puzzle exists to ease people in, gently introducing crossword lingo and conventions with simpler wordplay and more "gettable" trivia.
Anyway, I just wanted to tell you all that I've realized what an incredible honor it is to be here to guide beginner solvers through this strange new world. Thanks for being here with me!
Tricky Clues
13A. I always confuse cARAT and KARAT, and even though the clue made a point of contrasting the two ("Measure of gold's purity, not its weight"), it didn't help me remember the difference. Anyone have a useful mnemonic for this?
25A. This is a useful bit of fill that shows up from time to time in crosswords, so I recommend filing it away for future solves: "Private eye, in old slang" is TEC, short for deTECtive.
26A. I love the clue "C-worthy" for OKAY. It's a play on "seaworthy," but instead describes an effort on a school assignment that is worthy of a C — it's just OKAY.
33A./5D. We've got two internet/texting initialisms in the puzzle today: "Texter's 'Hold that thought'" and "Tweeter's 'alternatively'" are the clues for BRB ("be right back") and OTOH ("on the other hand").
42A. Did anyone else throw in pRAM instead of TRAM for "Trolley"? This mistake cost me a good chunk of time when I had to hunt down my error after completing the puzzle!
62A. A question mark in a clue signals to the solver that there is a pun going on. In this case, the "Rough patch in adolescence?" is not a particularly stormy period of time for a teenager but rather a rough patch on the face of an adolescent who may be dealing with ACNE.
12D. The ellipsis in the clue "Peel … or, phonetically, a fruit you might do this to" indicates that there is an interesting relationship between the two halves of the clue that the constructor wants to emphasize. Here, PARE means "peel," but it's also a homophone of "pear," a fruit that one might PARE.
33D. The "Uncle 'we don't talk about' in Disney's 2021 film 'Encanto'" is BRUNO, and if you don't know the song "We Don't Talk About Bruno," do yourself a favor and watch this clip from the movie:
37D. Finally, we've got the punny clue "Good name for a financial planner?" This name, of course, is IRA!
Today's Theme
This puzzle is somewhat unusual for a Monday, because I was utterly unable to piece together the theme while solving. Each long Across entry, where one would usually find the theme material, seemed totally unrelated to the previous one. I absolutely could not have predicted what the revealer (at 67A) would be!
The first long across entry, THIS ONE'S ON ME ("Have another round — my treat!"), is a lively entry that gave no hints whatsoever to the nature of the theme. Likewise with the second one, TOO BAD FOR YOU ("Gloating words of mock consolation"), which is so delightfully sassy and mean! At this point I had noticed the "me" and the "you" and thought perhaps the theme related to pronouns in some way.
The third long across, SHALL WE DANCE ("Invitation to a prospective waltz partner") did not disabuse me of this theory, with "WE" right in the middle, but the fourth theme entry, PASS THE TORCH, made me toss my idea out the window. What on earth, I wondered, connects these four entries?
It turns out that the theme entries of this puzzle contain a hidden message in their first words: THIS / TOO / SHALL / PASS. The revealer at 67A notes that this expression derives from the work of the "Sufi poet thought to have coined the adage found at the starts of 19-, 27-, 45- and 52-Across." That Sufi poet is ATTAR of Nishapur, a Persian poet born in the 12th century.
Congratulations to Mr. Miller on this excellent follow-up to his tricky rebus debut. We look forward to the next one!
Constructor Notes
I submitted this theme just a day or two before the Times ran an excellent Ross Trudeau puzzle with the revealer THIS TOO SHALL PASS, so I was initially quite doubtful it would be accepted. I hope enough time has passed since then that solvers are ready for a different take, and that this one feels fresh and sweet. The adage, I think, is at once timely and timeless.
If I were making this puzzle today, I would choose different fill for the upper middle region of the grid; the pileup of proper names in this version — in particular the TEC/JOSEF and PEET/REA crossings — seems far from ideal, especially for a Monday. I will also have to hope that my clue for PARTY BUS ("Vehicle you can raise the roof on?") finds another home somewhere down the line.
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Source: https://www.nytimes.com/2022/05/08/crosswords/daily-puzzle-2022-05-09.html
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