NYT Crossword Answers for Aug. 20, 2024

Jump to: Today’s Theme | Tricky Clues

TUESDAY PUZZLE — There’s nothing wrong with using the “Check” feature to probe a puzzle for mistakes. It can help you identify a false square, or isolate a specific entry that’s troubling you. Even Deb Amlen, my Wordplay colleague and one of the sharpest crossword solvers on the Games desk, recently reiterated her preference for solving the Crossword with Autocheck turned on.

I admit that I’ve had trouble allowing myself to use the feature in the past. I convinced myself that, as long as a machine never identified my mistakes, it would be as though I hadn’t made any. My solving report card was unblemished.

That all changed in today’s crossword, constructed by Sam Buchbinder, when the completion text insisted that I was at least one square off. I scanned my work over and over, but I couldn’t identify an error. Finally, I swallowed my pride and checked the puzzle, at which point I discovered that I had made a pair of wrong (but plausible) guesses at the intersection of 47-Down and 50-Across. Would you like to know what they were? I’ve laid out my embarrassment for all to see in the Tricky Clues section below.

Today’s Theme

If clever puns strike a chord with you, then you’ll really like what this puzzle has in store.

Mr. Buchbinder has used the title of the [Best Picture winner of 1965] — THE SOUND OF MUSIC — as a witty descriptor for three entries in the grid, because the ends of those entries sound like the names of musical instruments. A [Superscript by a brand name], for instance, is a TRADEMARK SYMBOL (17A). The end of this term is a homophone for “cymbal.”

I’ll leave you to identify the remaining homophones in 30- and 45-Across. Hint: They belong in the horn and string sections of an orchestra.