I like themes like in today's Wednesday, August 13 puzzle by Victor Fleming (answers) where there are multiple 15-letter answers to a single clue. This is Mr. Fleming's tenth NYT puzzle which means he starts showing up in the Constructor categories on my stats site.
Yesterday's puzzle was all about TV game shows and today we have ACTRESS Kitty CARLISLE Hart who was a mainstay on one of the longest running such programs — To Tell the Truth. Famously, of course, she was also Rosa in Night at the Opera. She died just last year at the age of 96.
Another Miss Kitty, played by Amanda Blake, was the saloon proprietress on Gunsmoke. Long before I'd ever heard the phrase "sexual tension" I could tell there was something fishy going on between her and U.S. Marshall Matt Dillon.
The answer word DUSTIN has never appeared before today in the Times. HOFFMAN has had only a single occurrence as well. What's a method actor gotta do? "I'm walking here! I'm walking here!" KERMIT, a fuzzy star in his own right, is reduced to being "Miss Piggy's pal." It ain't easy bein' green. That's GUY Smiley in the image.
According to dictionary.com, a gadfly is "a person who persistently annoys or provokes others with criticism, schemes, ideas, demands, requests, etc." I gather the thinking on 39 Down is that a "corporate gadfly's purchase" would be ONE SHARE, allowing her to attend the shareholders' meeting and demand the current board be ousted or something.
Suppose you're a constructor and you need the oxymoron IN OUT to make your grid work. It turns out five previous authors included that answer but none clued it as cleverly as Mr. Fleming today: "Come ___ of the rain." It's a phrase you don't realize has juxtaposed opposites until you think about it.
"Where to get off" is a good clue for DEPOT but my favorite clue is the one for RNA. This is a very common crossword answer, appearing well over 100 times. So what's a constructor to do to make it fresh? It's a "cellular carrier." Nicely turned.
