NYT Crossword Answers for March 13, 2024

Jump to: Today’s Theme | Tricky Clues

WEDNESDAY PUZZLE — As my colleagues and I have oft repeated in this column, there are many ways to solve a crossword puzzle. You can go Across, then Down; or Down, then Across. You can fill in only the three-letter entries or zigzag around the grid until you’ve found all of your gimmes. You can use the revealer — the clue that cracks a puzzle’s theme — either to fill in missing pieces of the puzzle or to interpret the meaning of an already completed grid. It’s your game to play.

To decipher Drew Schmenner’s crossword, I had to use my solving techniques like battering rams against challenging parts of the grid. I broke through eventually, but Mr. Schmenner’s original clue phrasing and deceptively simple theme put up a brilliant defense.

Shall we storm the crossword castle together?

Today’s Theme

I don’t watch much basketball, but I found the “March Madness component” at 61A — which served as our “phonetic hint to 18-, 23-, 38- and 50-Across” — easy enough to discern from the themed entries I’d already filled in.

A “Flag-waver’s specialty” (18A) is SEMAPHORE. “When the going gets tough, the early bird gets the worm” (23A) is an example of a MIXED METAPHOR. Already, a phonetic pattern is emerging. These answers, coupled with the spanner CHIWETEL EJIOFOR, the “Best Actor nominee for ‘12 Years a Slave’” (38A), give us a solid sense of it: March Madness’s FINAL FOUR (61A) is playing on a sound common to the end of each of these answers.

The last of Mr. Schmenner’s entries is a New York Times Crossword debut: If something took place “In an unprecedented manner” (50A), it happened AS NEVER BEFORE. I expect this was tricky for several solvers, since a more colloquial — and common — phrasing replaces “as” with “like.”