David Leonhardt and his wife, Laura, take on a puzzle by Matthew Stock and Christina Iverson.
Jump to: Tricky Clues
Deb Amlen is on vacation this week. David Leonhardt, the senior writer who oversees The Morning newsletter, has kindly agreed to step in and talk about today’s puzzle by Matthew Stock and Christina Iverson.
FRIDAY PUZZLE — When my colleague Deb Amlen asked me a few weeks ago to spend a day filling in as the Wordplay columnist, I was thrilled. When she told me that I would be writing about a Friday crossword puzzle, I was a little less thrilled and more than a little daunted. Friday, as you all surely know, is one of the week’s most challenging puzzles.
I may be a journalist — I’m approaching my 25th anniversary at The New York Times — but I feel more comfortable playing games that are based on numbers and strategy than on language. I was an applied math major in college, and I don’t pretend to be an expert Scrabble player or crossword completer. Fortunately, I am married to somebody who is an expert at language games. My wife, Laura, an obsessive and joyous reader, was happy to help me with the completion of today’s puzzle.
Whether you’re more like me or more like Laura, there’s much to savor in today’s puzzle.
Tricky Clues
1A. We admit it: We couldn’t resist immediately scribbling S-ALSA in response to a “Mexican condiment” of five letters. But that’s why we were using an erasable pen. The error of our ways became clear as soon as we saw that the second letter of the answer needed to be an R, for RIC (2D’s “Singer Ocasek”). With an assist from MINA (the “Kimes” of 4D), I thought back to a delicious meal we ate last month at Tacos El Gordo in Las Vegas. One of the toppings there? CREMA. And, yes, you should endure the lines at Tacos El Gordo if you’re in Las Vegas.
11A. “Alternatives to booths, perhaps” may immediately conjure restaurants or, for those of us of a certain age, phones. This uncertainty encouraged us to come up with a longer list of potential booths, and we soon thought of one that was less salient because it rarely appears without its modifier: voting booths. From there, and again with some help from Ric Ocasek and Mina Kimes, we got to MAIL-IN BALLOTS.
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Source: Elections - nytimes.com
