Samantha Podos Nowak makes her New York Times debut.
Jump to: Today’s Theme | Tricky Clues
MONDAY PUZZLE — A long crossword entry is not necessarily a complex one. Some of them may, in fact, come to the average solver quite naturally while shorter answers remain just out of reach. Today’s crossword is just so: Samantha Podos Nowak, in her New York Times debut, has crafted a grid in which the longest answers happen to be some of the easiest to deduce.
Christina Iverson, a puzzle editor for The Times, emphasized this fact in describing the strength of Ms. Nowak’s puzzle. “We thought she did a nice job of making the longer answers fun,” Ms. Iverson said, explaining that Ms. Nowak’s theme required a number of shorter answers because of the constraints of the grid.
Ms. Iverson also hinted at a feature in today’s puzzle that is a rare occurrence on a Monday: the debut of a three-letter entry — this one regarding a certain cinematic universe. “Superhero fans will be excited,” she said.
Don your capes, solvers, and let’s get cracking.
Today’s Theme
Ms. Nowak has offered us a delicious theme and no shortage of places to discover it. The clues at 35- and 37-Across share the revealer: “some ice cream confections … or a hint to the second, fifth, eleventh and fourteenth rows of this puzzle.”
There’s nothing obviously connected about any of the entries in these rows. Looking at the second row — SCUBA, NANAS, YER — for example, it seems as if the revealer must hold the key. (I mean, unless YER NANAS SCUBA, in which case, more power to them.)
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Source: Elections - nytimes.com
