Interjection of Interest

SATURDAY PUZZLE — Christina Iverson is a puzzle editor at The New York Times and a prolific contributor of daily crosswords: This is her 31st construction. So much of her work is collaborative, however; although this is her fourth Saturday puzzle, it is her first without a co-author, and her gentle style really shines through. There’s great humor in the wordplay, and a lot of interesting trivia that will resonate instantly (and gratifyingly) with some solvers. There should be something for everyone. All the factoids that I drew a blank on weren’t too difficult, just not in my wheelhouse, and each of them had enough accessible entries intersecting them that I didn’t get stuck for long.

Tricky Clues

13A. This is a perfect example of if-you-know-you-know trivia: Some people are going to picture it the second they read the clue, and the rest of us have to hope that we know all of its crossing entries because the entry is a homonym. The [Baseball mascot with a fluffy green snout] is the Phillie PHANATIC, a creation of Bonnie Erickson, a puppet designer who worked with Jim Henson.

18A. This is a hidden-word clue, the kind you’d find in a cryptic or puns-and-anagrams puzzle. The [Woman in dire need?] in this case is RENEE, composed of consecutive letters in “dire need.”

27A. [Job that anyone could see themselves doing?] would also be at home in a cryptic puzzle, and makes a terrific seed clue and entry. I took the clue literally and came up with a “mirror washer,” a job that might exist at some carnivals (or Versailles, perhaps). The entry here is just as apt and a real vocation: It’s a WINDOW WASHER, who’s watching their own reflection while they dangle outside your building with a squeegee.

42A. I can’t resist including the self-referential back story on this one: [It once ran the headline “Santa Dies on Xmas Trip”: Abbr.] solves to NYT. On Christmas Day 1913, the story ran on the front page of the newspaper, but it wasn’t even the worst holiday-related news of the day. It was relegated to the second column (above the fold).

59A. [Apollo was conceived in them] reads like trivia from Greek mythology to me — the hills of the island of Delos, or something like that. The Apollo in this clue is a reference to the U.S. space project, which came to exist in the SIXTIES.