Curses, Foiled Again

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TUESDAY PUZZLE — Occasional national news pages notwithstanding, The New York Times adheres to strict standards when it comes to profanity, and so I will admit that I broke into a mild sweat when I read David Steinberg’s notes for his puzzle.

I didn’t have to worry. Mr. Steinberg’s theme is most definitely family friendly, and very clever to boot.

Today’s Theme

Much to the relief of my copy editors, it turns out that Mr. Steinberg’s theme has nothing to do with cursing, despite the FOUR LETTER WORDS revealer that he has stretched across the center of his grid.

This is the kind of early week theme I really enjoy, because even though the solve is relatively easy, that “Aha!” moment is still there. How long did it take you to catch on to the fact that the words Mr. Steinberg included in his theme set were made up of only four letters?

As an example, at 18A, “Its root was once used in root beer” is SASSAFRAS, which contains only the letters S, A, F and R.

Got that? Now you find the rest of them. If you are on the sensitive side, trying covering your ears while you solve.

Tricky Clues

11A: We’ve seen this before, right? Are the newer solvers out there starting to get used to seeing subtle wordplay like this? “Cab alternative” could be any kind of public transportation, but it’s not in this puzzle: “Cab” is short for “Cabernet,” and the shortened alternative to that is ZIN, for Zinfandel.

17A: I’m a fan of Korean food, so in my book, kimchi is fairly ubiquitous, but you can find it in KTOWN, which is short for “Koreatown” neighborhoods.

68A: Yes, ZUMBA is a dance-based fitness program. It is also highly dangerous, if you are me.

3D: I had LOGO instead of ICON for “Blue ‘W’ for Microsoft Word, e.g.” until I successfully entered ROCHE for the clue at 14A, “Pharmaceutical giant that makes Valium.” Make of that what you will.

27D: OMOO is not Herman Melville’s best known novel, but it is one that solvers should commit to memory. Look at all those vowels! Constructors love that. Don’t believe me? It’s been in The New York Times Crossword 354 times.

47D: At first, I didn’t think I knew the answer to “Video game inspired by pentominoes,” but think about it: five-sided dominoes? What video game do we know that uses shapes like that? If you guessed TETRIS, you were right. See? You know so much more than you think you do.

Constructor Notes

$%#* %&*@ #^$*! Er, I mean “four letter words.” But seriously, how many times do you get to start a piece of writing with cuss words? My favorite of the theme entries I discovered was SENSELESSNESS, but as you can imagine, there aren’t exactly a ton of 14-letter words that use just four letters. So that one ended up on the chopping block.

Next came the challenge of building the grid. I’d normally stop at four theme entries plus the 15-letter reveal, but I decided to go big and use six. I must say I’m pleased with how the fill turned out. Not a lot of room for bonus material, but with OTTO I and OMOO as the only fill on my “this entry is %$^*” list, I’d say the extra theme entries were worth the price. I also tried to capitalize on the little flexibility I had by sticking in some fresh short entries (K-TOWN, ZUMBA, BAD PR, SLEAZE).

Hope you enjoy!

Thanks for not getting me fired, Mr. Steinberg.

Your thoughts?