Frantic Rush

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MONDAY PUZZLE — We are in the homestretch of the year! In New York, we’ve yet to get snowed in, unless you count as a blizzard the ceaseless tide of cardboard boxes that block sidewalks and entranceways. Bruce Haight is our well-seasoned constructor today, and his grid presents a nice mix of old standards and originals as well as a thought-provoking theme. May the greatest internal conflict you face in 2018 be saying no to a second (or third) delicious piece of pie.

Today’s Theme

Today’s puzzle is a classic example of the hidden word, a tactic used in theme and cryptic puzzles. There are four long across entries — 17A, 26A, 36A and 52A — with something in common that is explained by 61A, “Personal struggles...”

The first theme clue, 17A, is a straightforward bit of fine art trivia: “Water Lilies” painter. If you’re up on your Impressionists, you might know this big name outright. (Especially if you’ve ever been given a desk calendar from the Metropolitan Museum, where a famous version of the subject resides). The answer is CLAUDE MONET. It’s always satisfying to fill out a long answer with certainty, which is not often the case when starting a grid.

26A is another factoid clue, but one I couldn’t answer off the top of my head: “June, in the L.G.B.T.Q. movement.” The logical inference from the clue is something commemorative. Although I didn’t remember this, the Stonewall Uprising in New York City took place in June 1969, and is the impetus for the declaration of June as PRIDE MONTH by President Bill Clinton in 2000.

36A, “Profited,” is an open-ended clue that requires some help from crosses unless you’re confident in your guesswork (or have realized the puzzle’s theme). The answer is perfectly sensible: MADE MONEY.

The last theme clue, 52A, is slang, another common feature of puzzling. “Computer programmer, disparagingly” rang no bells, and the answer, CODE MONKEY, seems less disparaging than endearing. It might have been coined as an insult, referring to the legions of earnest toilers at computer screens à la the infinite monkey theorem, but coders are cannier simians, and have used the catchy term as inspiration for a game and a TV show. There’s also a popular Jonathan Coulton song I’d never heard:

In this puzzle, you’re not looking for anything in the theme clues or the meaning of the answers; you’ve got to get more superficial and notice what letters the answers have in common. Running inside all the theme answers, bridging the two words, are the letters D-E-M-O-N, the “personal struggles” suggested by 61A: INNER DEMONS.

Tricky Clues

1A: Never stress when you encounter a vague clue like “Soothes.” Calms? Lulls? Dulls? Just maneuver until you have a couple of down answers. I didn’t fill in the answer, EASES, until I had ALLMALE at 2D and EMU at 4D. Cream SODA at 5D was a gimme but useless in that position.

31A: “Like the paths of satellites” looks esoteric at first, until you consider what satellites really are — not comets, not dishes, not asteroids, not meteors. Satellites do different things — take pictures, transmit data and provide all types of surveillance — but they’re all ORBITAL, most of them circling Earth in the thermosphere.

65A: Another nuance of the crossword is the alternate spelling, occasionally of a simple filler word like “Sailors’ yeses,” which would have to be “aye ayes,” or perhaps even “ayes,” right? If you’ve solved around and gotten this as AYS, you’re not wrong — it’s just a less-used variant. You won’t see these alternates often, but don’t let them make you doubt your eyes (eys?).

2D: “Like Chippendales revues”: Can I confess that I read “Chippendales” and thought of the animated chipmunks? The higher-brow among us might consider Thomas Chippendale, the fine furniture maker, who supposedly inspired the naming of the little critters in the cartoons and the big critters in the revues. The big critters (and the little ones, irrelevantly) are ALL MALE.

28D: If you haven’t encountered “__ go bragh!,” a.k.a. “the Emerald Isle,” “Hibernia,” “the Auld Sod” and others, then make a note of the answer, ERIN, referring in this case to Ireland. It’s a classic piece of crossword filler and you will be seeing it again.

40D: I knew a “Nascar devotee” would be a car buff, or a speed maven, or something having to do with cars going fast. I didn’t guess RACE FAN, but filled it in off crosses. I thought it was one of the harder clues.

50D: This is another clue I couldn’t guess. At least it makes perfect sense for a “Powerball winner’s cry” to be IM RICH!

Constructor’s Notes

I stumbled on INNER DEMONS as a nice revealer (albeit a bit dark), but you need some considerable luck to hide a five-letter word in reasonably interesting phrases of matching lengths. There were very few solid options. I would have never come up with CODE MONKEY without the xwordinfo word list, but I needed a matching ten letter entry.

I made a blank ten letter entry in a grid and tried shifting the word DEMON around in there and looking at the Wikipedia results ....et voilà, I got lucky with PRIDE MONTH. Will and Joel liked those two theme entries the best — CLAUDE MONET was not bad, but I think MADE MONEY was just decent enough to go along for the ride. Happy holidays!

What did you think?