I chose the above title in hopes that people using an Internet search engine will find their way to this blog and then be amused when they click here for the answer.
Ashish Vengsarkar is a bit of a meany in the Friday, June 6 puzzle (answers). The first gotcha is at 1 Across where "R.B.I. or E.R.A., e.g." (man, the NYT style guide requires a lot of periods!) isn't STAT but rather ABBR. Speaking of periods, you have to make sure you notice the dot at the end of "One driving a bus." to get that it's a CEO.
There are some absolutely outstanding clues today. Sometimes crosswords make you solve a meta-puzzle along the way and "Fortune 500 company whose toll-free number ends with 23522" is a great example. Find the nearest phone and work out the corporate name that fits those numbers. That was one of the easier clues. Think insurance. Here's another puzzle. "Chlorure de sodium" sounds French, seems like it ought to be NaCl, so it's got to be SEL.
"Something about Mary" is an absolutely heavenly clue for HALO, completely without the taint of original sin. (Here's a good trivia question: to whom does the term "immaculate conception" refer? Jesus is incorrect.)
The are seven 15-letter answers in this puzzle and only one has appeared in a NYT crossword before. They're all good, they range from creepy to seductive, and they're all hard but gettable. Even the sextuple-eight event could be deduced if you steered your mind around to the Chinese concept of lucky numbers. When Hong Kong reverted to China a few years ago, many wealthy residents fled to Canada. Vancouver house prices shot up at the influx of money, but some homes far more than nearly-identical others. Why? Some street addresses had sequences of numbers considered fortunate. It was certainly good fortune for the lucky sellers.
SCAG for heroin? Really? I wonder what that means. I hope some junkie leaves a comment to explain. An AIT is a small island. Remember that one.
Mr. Vengsarkar has had some memorable puzzles in the past too. Spell Check and Anagrammatic Who's Who are both Sundays, both easier than today's, and both very clever. The links go to NYT Across Lite files so you can try them out yourself. PhillySolver points out that Ashish has a brief bio on Cruciverb and you can see what he looks like in this photo from the Crossword Puzzle Tournament. He's on the right.
