NYT Crossword Answers for June 17, 2024

Jump to: Today’s Theme | Tricky Clues

MONDAY PUZZLE — Can you remember the first time you answered a riddle? I have a memory from summer camp. A counselor asked the group, “What’s brown and sticky?” — and I answered, “a tree.” An early adopter of wordplay among my age group (who needs popularity when you have puns, right?), I had heard “stick-y” and come up with the right answer.

Riddles don’t tend to thrill adults the way they do children, but a cleverly crafted crossword theme comes close to capturing that feeling. The theme of today’s puzzle, by Kiran Pandey, offers such a sensation. If you haven’t already solved it yourself, read on for an explanation. There’s more to it than meets the, ahem, eyes.

Today’s Theme

Thanks to the use of circled letters, a pattern quickly emerges among the themed entries at 20-, 31- and 41-Across. THIS IS AMERICA is the “2018 Childish Gambino hit that won the Grammy for Song of the Year” (20A); the “Pixar film that takes place mostly underwater” (31A) is FINDING NEMO; and a certain “Holder of bait” (41A) is a FISHING HOOK. These entries feature two circled I’s — and, thus, are a partial phonetic rendering of an “Affirmative at sea”: AYE-AYE, CAPTAIN (55A).

This seemed like a decent enough reveal, albeit a simple one. But on a second pass I noticed the qualifier in the revealer clue — “sequentially” — and realized that I’d appreciated only half of Mr. Pandey’s theme set.

THIS IS AMERICA contains an AYE and an AYE, and then a CAPTAIN; in this case, AMERICA. The same pattern applies to reveal 31A’s captain, NEMO, and at 41A, with HOOK. To (nearly) quote Walt Whitman: “O Captains! My Captains!”