Tricky Situation

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THURSDAY PUZZLE — I approach the Thursday puzzle each week with a maximum expectation for shenanigans. I know there’ll be a theme, often one so intricate and well-crafted that a solver can be forgiven for following the wrong threads for miles, since constructors like Timothy Polin here can work their creative wiles and dream up any manner of groundbreaking innovation. Wink wink.

Today’s Theme

Four down answers, two the full height of the grid and two two-parters, just don’t fit. The last two letters of each are the same and must dangle beneath the grid, sinking in the bottom margin of the page (for online solvers, you just end those clues early and omit the extra letters).

First is 3D, “Butt out!” — either an admonition against smoking or nosiness. A solver might reasonably try NONE OF YOUR BUSINESS, and reject it as too long; the actual answer, the slangy NONE OF YOUR BEESWAX, is too — but in the right way. Put the extraneous AX outside the grid, and it’s important that it gets interred underneath.

(There are several possible theories on the origin of this phrase. It ought to be in heavier circulation in protection of our precious, precious bees, although in all probability beeswax was just a cutesy ‘20s way to say business. My favorite hypothesis involves women in the 1800s using melted beeswax, lavishly, as foundation — if someone looked too close, that is to say if someone tried to see your actual face, you could tell them to mind their own beeswax, not yours. This also supposedly led to the expression “crack a smile,” for obvious reasons. Probably apocryphal but fun).

Right after this is 5D and 45D, in a straight line broken by two black squares. The “effect used by astronomers to measure distance” is a bit technical: STELLAR / PARALLAX. Ordinarily I wouldn’t have heard this term since my school days, back when we minded our beeswax, but I am somewhat bemused to say that this came up recently as proof against the lamentable modern Flat Earth movement. I would say what’s next? Leeches? Except they’re back too. As is riding one’s horse to the polling station, and gaslight.

At this point, if you’ve got these two, then you’ve got the theme. But there’s more.

At 9D and 46D, a somewhat broader clue, “chill out.” I assumed the last word from the theme but used crosses to get SIT BACK / AND RELAX (or REL, with AX sitting under the grid).

At 11D, “Everyone’s duty?” is even more general — service to others? First, do no harm? Nothing so noble, just one of the three things you can count on in this world — there’s life, there’s death and there’s PERSONAL INCOME TAX, with the AX, again, overflowing the bottom of the grid.

At this point, with four AXES down under, you could try to figure out how having “an ax to grind” might work, but there’s a pair of punch line clues at 40D and 43D. “Make peace … or what you must do to complete this puzzle?” is BURY THE HATCHET. Since a hatchet’s an ax, and you’ve driven four of them into the, well, ground beneath the grid.

Tricky Clues

1A: Right off the bat, since I’m so wary of Thursdays, I clung to CHOKE as an answer to “Fall apart in competition”. Even though the entry was four letters, I thought there could be something afoot (and was right about that, just wrong about this clue). The answer is TANK — a term which I do think implies an intentional falling apart, which isn’t specified in the clue, which makes it a Thursday clue — tough.

27A: Lab rats fit the grid for “Involuntary test subjects,” not that grid-fitting was the thing today, but Mr. Polin wanted us to feel guilty about tinier, squeakier creatures — LAB MICE. Surprisingly, this is a new term to the Times puzzle.

53A: Again with the “it fits, I’ll put it in” autopilot — “Very basic things” is a very basic clue that usually enters as “ABCs.” Today, the very basic things were LYES, basic meaning high on the pH scale.

44D: I’m not up on my Watergate Seven figures, at the moment, so didn’t know Chuck COLSON, so looked him up. Plus ça change, I guess, people. Plus ça change.

What did you think?