The American Crossword Puzzle Tournament is coming up on April 5-7. Seats for in-person solving are sold out, but if you still want to participate, you can sign up to solve virtually at its website here.
Here’s another crossword from the new “I’m a Dad” puzzle series. Today’s starred theme answers are punny homophones (or at least near-homophones) of baby products.
- 23A: [*Drive by some blaze?] is PASS A FIRE, based on pacifier. This was the seed answer that got me thinking of the theme in the first place.
- 30A: [*Non-glossy finish inspired by former CIA officer Valerie?] is PLAME MATTE, based on play mat.
- 42A: [*Gained a pair of letters from puzzles?] is WON ZEES, based on onesies. In this case, the pair of letters are the two z’s in “puzzles.”
- 44A: [*Indications that a cat is happy that its fur changed from gray to green, say?] is DYE PURRS, based on diapers.
- 65A: [*Cold songbird’s comfortable feeling in a shop?] is CHILLED WREN’S STORE EASE, based on children’s stories.
- 88A: [*"Harrumph to highway fees!"?] is BAH TOLLS, based on bottles.
- 91A: [*Make derisive sounds suggesting sentiments like “These Lipton and Twinings beverages are terrible!”?] is BOO TEAS, based on booties.
- 103A: [*Confused utterance from a quartet of equine pack animals?] is FOUR-MULE UH, based on formula.
- 114A: [*News headline about how smallmouth and largemouth fish have been caught?] is BASS IN NET, based on bassinet.
There’s a bonus revealer at the Omega Across answer of 123A: [One whose parents might need the baby products heard in the starred answers (he’ll learn how to spell them when he’s a bit older)] which is SON. Vicki and I have bought all of the referenced products for Elliot, but we haven’t done any bass fishing for him, nor have we smuggled a cold wren into a store to see if it can be comfortable there, and I don’t even want to think about how hard it’s going to be to get four mules to say “uh” at the same time. Parenting is tough, sometimes. Thankfully, we have occasionally won some z’s as Elliot’s gotten some more sleep now than he did when he was first born.
Before I settled on baby products exclusively, I was originally going to use any baby-related phrase that could be turned into a wacky homophone. A few answers that I left on the cutting-room floor were GNU BORNE, PIQUE ABU, POD EACH REIGN, CUE TAZ ABUTTIN’ and MUTT TURN ITTY LEAVES. Some of them probably would have been tough to clue in a decent way.
Other answers and clues:
- 28A: [Sch. with student journalists producing the online news publication Borderzine] is UTEP. Per its website, Borderzine covers stories such as “immigration reform, unaccompanied minors from Central America, the impact of crime and drug violence on Ciudad Juarez and El Paso, and domestic violence protections for undocumented women.” Interesting stuff, and it seems like a neat opportunity for young student journalists.
- 93A: [The ___ Boys (WWE tag team with a mean-sounding name)] is NASTY. That brings me back to my WWE fandom heyday, as an 8-year-old who watched the Nasty Boys wrestle in the early 1990s.
- 102A: [Thing cued in the game Hues and Cues] is COLOR. I played this game for the first time a couple of years ago. The idea is that you’re given a one- or maybe two-word description of some object or character that has a specific color, and then you have to place a marker on a large board of different colors to see how accurately you can guess the exact shade. You can’t just give cues like “purple,” but rather something that you’d associate with the color purple (like amethyst, eggplant or maybe Grimace). A cue like “purple” wouldn’t help, anyway; there are too many purple hues on the board for that to be a good cue.
- 112A: [Raised, as a kid] is REARED. Crossword clues imitating life again.
- 3D: [Return specialists?] is IRS AGENTS. For those who don’t follow football, return specialists are players on the special teams who return punts and kickoffs. You don’t need that info to solve this clue since it’s about tax returns, though. Speaking of which, here’s a timely reminder: File your taxes.
- 8D: [The rest of us?] is SLEEP. Or, something that Vicki and I are trying to get as much of as we can.
- Small spoiler alert for AVCX subscribers who are a bit behind on their puzzles, but 35D: [“___ to Autocorrect” (Martha Silano poem)] is ODE. I got scooped on this clue by a few days by Shannon Rapp and Will Eisenberg in their recent themeless crossword. I came across that clue while solving it on Thursday and thought, wait, didn’t I just submit that one?
- A more subtle baby-related combo with SWAY at 37D: [Rock back and forth] and TONE next to it at 38D: [Musical sound]. Two things that Vicki and I do with Elliot a lot when he’s restless.
- 63D: [“Wishing You Were ___” (Chicago song)] is HERE. I’ve always been a big fan of this song; the Beach Boys provide some nice backing vocals for it.
- Another musical clue, but much more experimental, is at 64D: [Beat generation?] is DRUM SOLO. The “beat” part might be easy to understand as drumming, but “generation” has to be read like “a thing that’s produced or generated.” So something that’s produced by drumming would be a drum solo. Like I said, it’s experimental, but I like it because it twists both words in the clue.
- 75D: [Take action on the fly?] is SWAT. Credit where due: Vicki came up with that clue.
- 84D: [“Forever ___” (musical revue whose singers wear tartan-patterned jackets)] is PLAID. I saw “Forever Plaid” back when I was in high school, then saw a college production of it a couple of years later. One of my test-solvers reminded me that the plaid jackets don’t come into play until near the end of the show, but I think the clue still works.
Here’s a heads-up that next week’s crossword is going to be a strange puzzle in that it has not one, but two meta answers to figure out. Good luck.
What did you think?
