SATURDAY PUZZLE — This grid is an exhilarating run around the track, isn’t it? It’s only Katie Hoody’s third construction for — her debut ran on a Saturday last year, and she followed up with a Thursday puzzle — but it has a number of traits that make it feel really polished, in my opinion.
First of all, the four span entries, crossing in the corners like fancy gift wrapping, are active, invigorating terms (and about as “fresh” as can be — two debuts and two entries making their second appearances). Then there’s the sophistication of the grid’s geometry: All the black squares, or blocks, are regimented into mirrored pairs. It looks like Art Deco tilework to me, and also like a beast to build a puzzle around.
Finally, practically every entry in this puzzle is worth a mention, whether for its witty clue or misdirection; a vivid, unusual term; or really pleasing trivia.
Tricky Clues
1A/1D. This is a charming pair of clues, one of which was news to me. I figured correctly that 1A, [Style of Duchamp’s so-called “readymades”], was DADA, because I know my Marcel Duchamp (and knew a few of his “readymades,” which include a shovel and a bicycle wheel). 1D, [Style influenced by Cubism, informally], solves to DECO. I thought Cubism came later, but apparently not. (Dadaism began after Cubism but before Art Deco did.)
17A. [It’s not as random as it seems] is a great clue for the debut entry CONTROLLED CHAOS. Who among us doesn’t have a personal realm that fits this description, even though we know exactly where everything is — trust us (and don’t move that; it’s not trash). This term was likely popularized after it was used in a 1985 article about innovation and bureaucracy in business.
27A. This artist has never appeared in a Times puzzle, which is definitely an oversight. The [Surrealist painter Carrington] is LEONORA, who was born in England but moved to Mexico in 1942 and had a long, successful career producing novels, paintings, textiles and sculptures, among other artworks.
3D. [“Stay still!”] solves to DON’T MOVE A MUSCLE, which was used in a puzzle once before, in 2011. When you solve this and read it back to yourself, you might think of a dramatic moment (I hear Amanda Plummer as Honey Bunny in “Pulp Fiction,” although her words were much more profane). DON’T MOVE A MUSCLE passes through CONTROLLED CHAOS and TICKING TIME BOMB (56A) — pow! Awesome action.
9D/19D. This pair runs side by side for a few rows, and both entries have a retro element, if you define retro as any time before people received data from thin air. For 9D, [They protect some software purchases], I thought of licenses before I landed on CD CASES. Some of us will remember how impenetrable those little boxes were, protecting discs that were once worth hundreds of dollars but are now used mainly to keep birds from eating your raspberries. 19D, [Early Netflix offering], solves to DVD RENTAL. Those came in red envelopes that arrived in the physical mail, and more than 5 billion of them were shipped over about 25 years before the offering ended in 2023. Some of us may still have some in a (slightly chaotic) drawer, but that’s allowed.
24D. This is another crossword debut. I was unfamiliar with the [Annual Atlanta gathering of sci-fi/gaming fans] and found it impossible to guess. It’s DRAGON CON, and it started all the way back in 1987.
Constructor Notes
Credit for the design of this grid goes to my husband. When his idea for a themed puzzle with a grid built entirely of two-square blocks didn’t pan out, I asked him if I could adopt the grid for a themeless puzzle because I liked how it looked. I tweaked his design just a bit to reduce the number of three-letter words.
I seeded the grid with four spans that seemed to leave ample options for the surrounding fill. After a thorough exploration of the rest of the grid, I had several complete fills that seemed good enough to clue. I liked this one best overall, even with the duplication of ICE. Filling a grid is a long series of trade-offs, and in this case, permitting ICE to appear twice seemed worth the relatively clean, lively fill I got in return.
I’d like to dedicate this puzzle to my mom, Mary Hoody, who loved DAISIES. I was happy when I noticed they could grow out of the SEEDS at the bottom of the grid. I was about to say that my mom never got to solve any of my crosswords, because she died before I started constructing puzzles, but then I recalled that last fall, when I was going through a box of memorabilia she had saved for me, I found two criss-cross puzzles I created in my youth. If my mom were still alive, I have a hunch would have sold a few more print copies today. She likely would have gone around Bemidji, Minn., buying up all the copies she could find, and she would have added at least one to that box of memorabilia, where it would sit as a seed ready to bloom into a memory for my future self.
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