Don’t throw away this chance to solve Jem Burch’s puzzle.
Jump to: Today’s Theme | Tricky Clues
THURSDAY PUZZLE — This is Jem Burch’s seventh crossword in The New York Times, and I am quickly becoming a fan (or 53D) of his work. Most of his past puzzles have been on Thursdays and Fridays, the days when I write the Wordplay column, so I’ve gotten to know his work pretty well.
Mr. Burch has a knack for including rich nonthematic fill, and is good at writing entertaining clues for even the most ubiquitous entries. Have a look at the clue/answer pair at 48D, for example. It got a laugh out of me.
Well done, Mr. Burch. I’m looking forward to your next puzzle.
Today’s Theme
Brass yourself for impact: We are looking for metals hidden in the entries that we’ll need to remove in order to discover the real answer to the theme clues. Mr. Burch’s theme is not difficult, but you should alloy yourself to zinc outside the box.
Please don’t let me steel the show, though. Join in the fun and leave your metal puns in the comments. Rust me, there are a lot of them.
Now that I’ve gotten that out of my system:
I knew something was up when I figured out that the answer to [Emerge, as teeth] at 17A was GROWING OLD. That made no sense, so I used my award-winning*, patented** “stare at the grid until the answer makes sense” process to figure it out. If you remove GOLD, what’s left of the answer is GROW IN, which matches the clue.
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Source: Elections - nytimes.com