So you want to have a New York Times tribute puzzle about yourself. Here's the simple recipe that anyone can follow:
- Be famous.
- Be recently deceased.
- Have exactly 15 letters in your name, or maybe 16 if David J. Kahn thinks you're interesting enough.
See how easy that is? Follow my specific steps and you too can enjoy the benefits and privileges with absolutely no money down.
The Thursday, June 26 puzzle (answers) closely follows the June 1 death of that French fashion designer with the famous monogram. (I love this photo that I posted earlier.)I'm not much into that world but I read several obits and found them fascinating for their insights into not just the man but also the strange business he was a part of. The best was this remembrance from The Economist, a publication with remarkably high writing standards.
SCALAR has appeared 8 times in the NYT, and half those times the clue is simply "graduated." This always trips me up because I only think of that word as meaning a magnitude-only quantity. You have to go further down the list of definitions in your dictionary before you hit something like "ladderlike in arrangement or organization; graduated" so the clue is correct despite how awkward it seems to me.
This is the second time this year we've had ERESTU as an answer. It's almost always clued as "1974 hit by Mocedades" so it's a song worth remembering for future crosswords. It's also known as Touch the Wind. The De Oratore writer whose bust appears above is CICERO.
I've blogged before (here and here) about my desire for more topical themes in crosswords. I wonder how hard it was for Mr. Kahn and Mr. Shortz to crank this one out quickly.
