Rajeswari Rajamani calls this meeting to order.
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MONDAY PUZZLE — I have an inexplicable obsession with irreversible binomials. There’s no rhyme or reason to my interest; they have just become near and dear to my heart.
Irreversible binomials, for those unacquainted, are pairs of words whose order can’t be flipped — for no particular reason other than the fact that hearing these word pairs in reverse gives us the linguistic “ick.” Had I said above, for example, that there was no “reason or rhyme” to my interest, you would have shuddered.
Rajeswari Rajamani constructed today’s beginner-friendly crossword around a few such fixed phrases, and the result is thoroughly satisfying. If you get stuck while solving, just remember: Lose or win, it’s how you play the game. (Ick, right?)
Today’s Theme
To do [Personal bidding, in an idiom] (17A) is to be at someone’s BECK AND CALL (“beckon call” is the result of a common mishearing). Note that you wouldn’t phrase it as “call and beck,” because it just wouldn’t sound right.
A similar pattern follows: The pair [Who went “up the hill” in a nursery rhyme] (28A) is billed only as JACK AND JILL. A certain [Two-player offensive sequence in basketball] is a PICK AND ROLL. And if you’re listening to [a hard-to-believe story] (59A), you might describe it as COCK-AND-BULL. How these two animals became stand-ins for skepticism remains unclear, but there are some cock-and-bull theories about it out there.
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Source: Elections - nytimes.com
