Hal Moore lets things escalate.
Jump to: Today’s Theme | Tricky Clues
WEDNESDAY PUZZLE — Considering how many films I’ve consumed over the course of my life, it feels disingenuous to claim I have a favorite movie. Just one favorite? Impossible. But today’s crossword brought to mind one of my top contenders for the slot, an animated French movie from 2003 called (in translation) “The Triplets of Belleville.”
To describe the film in any detail would spoil the secrets of Hal Moore’s puzzle when you’ve hardly scrolled past the headline. Rather than letting you spin your wheels to figure out the theme, though, I’ll take you on a 48A of it below.
Today’s Theme
Right away, we notice two diagonal strings of circled letters in the upper-left quadrant of the grid. That’s our first cue to expect a somewhat visual theme. But what could they mean?
48A is a good place to start, with a [Three-week bike race, such as the one featured in this puzzle]. The answer is GRAND TOUR. Three European races hold this designation, but the best known among them is the Tour de France. Lucky us: That happens to be the one featured in Mr. Moore’s puzzle, as we discover with the [Typical ending point for this puzzle’s race] (16D) — the CHAMPS-ÉLYSÉES.
Now that we’ve got these details down, we can address the meaning of the circled letters, hinted at by the revealer clue at 40A: [Hard patterns to break … or a punny description of the climbs up the circled letters]. Using crossings from our regular entries, we can identify those strings of climbs — ALPS and PYRENEES.
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Source: Elections - nytimes.com
