Last April I wrote about a fine puzzle by Will Nediger where all the theme answers start with A and end with Z. Today's Wednesday, July 23 puzzle by Henry Quillen (answers) is doubly clever. Like Bilbo Baggins, it goes There and Back Again in an ingenious interlocking construction that's only mid-week difficult despite a very high Freshness Factor.
RENE Magritte is easy for puzzle solvers to love. Most of his paintings feel like "?" clues in crosswords. If your French is rusty, he's written "this is not a pipe" at the bottom of his painting of, of what? Not a pipe.
I TOO is a short but powerful poem by Langston Hughes. You can read it here. Or, you can peruse the latest news from ITAR-Tass in English here. Paella is a Spanish rice (ARROZ) dish. I love "N.Y.C. country club" as a clue for THE U.N. It's a club of countries. They probably play country music there. Ethan Frome in the novel of that name by Edith Wharton is a little bit country. He marries ZEENA which turns out to have been a mistake once Mattie enters the story. Stiller and MEARA was a much more successful marriage. They were a big comedy duo in the 60s.
Answer words unique to today's puzzle include OIL BARON, WENT TO POT, and the wonderful-sounding ZIRCONIA.
If you're a constructor doing a theme like this, the XWord Info Finder Page is a great place to seek ideas. You can easily see previous answers that go from A to Z or Z to A or whatever other pattern you need.
This seems to be a debut for Mr. Quillen. Congratulations. It's an excellent crossword.
Update: According to a reliable source (you can guess) someone named Henry Quillen was a top money winner on Jeopardy in 2002. Perhaps the cash has finally run out and he's looking to tap into crossword constructing for his next big jackpot.
I got mail asking what LINEARA was all about. Try searching for Linear A. It was a Greek script used before, you guessed it, Linear B.
Update2: SethG reports on the Rex Parker site that some paper editions have the wrong puzzle. The following correction appears in today’s NYT:
Because of a production error, some copies of Wednesday’s paper contain an outdated crossword puzzle and its solution. If you look here first, proceed with caution. If the answer in the solution to one across also appears in the puzzle above it, you have a paper with the wrong crossword. If the solution to one across matches Tuesday’s puzzle, you’re in the clear, and on your own.
