Kareem Ayas waxes poetic.
Jump to: Today’s Theme | Tricky Clues
WEDNESDAY PUZZLE — The rebus is the uninvited dinner guest of the New York Times Crossword: You never expect it to show up, and when it does, you have no choice but to accommodate it. I can tell you that everyone’s going to have to squeeze in for today’s puzzle, constructed by Kareem Ayas, because he has brought us a rebus — on a Wednesday, no less. The gall!
As the host of this column, I insist that you not let this surprise spoil your appetite. Even the most timid early-week solvers are capable of tackling Mr. Ayas’s theme; we’ll just take it one course at a time.
Today’s Theme
Before we continue, let’s review what the heck I’m talking about. A rebus, in the parlance of the Times Crossword, is a visual trick within the puzzle that often requires the solver to enter more than one letter in a single square. (We go over the ways to do that in our rebus tipsheet.) The trick is revealed, usually through some kind of wordplay, in one of the grid’s entries. You’ll see what I mean as we go over Mr. Ayas’s theme.
Today, we get a nice hint: The circled squares look to be our focal points for the rebus. 17-Across, for instance, can’t be solved without some kind of adjustment to its entry for [It will change the way you see yourself]. I wanted the entry to be “fun house mirror,” but crossings gave me only FUNHOU_RROR. And isn’t that [Red-haired toon who is always seeing red] at 39-Down supposed to be Yosemite Sam, instead of YO_TESAM?
In a rebus puzzle, the revealer tends to hint at how to interpret its words in order to fill in any missing letters. All we get at 63-Across is that [First- and third-quarter moons] are examples of something that “hint to the puzzle’s theme.” At the first quarter and third quarter of its cycle, the moon looks like a half-circle. Oh, hang on — they’re SEMICIRCLES.
We are having trouble retrieving the article content.
Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.
Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.
Thank you for your patience while we verify access.
Already a subscriber? Log in.
Want all of The Times? Subscribe.
Source: Elections - nytimes.com
