Psst: Brad Lively is playing Ping-Pong with parts of the theme entries. Pass it on.
Jump to: Today’s Theme | Tricky Clues
THURSDAY PUZZLE — Brad Lively, an aerospace engineer who lives in Connecticut, makes his New York Times Crossword debut today with a nod to a game some of us played in childhood.
Today’s Theme
The first thing I’d like to say about this theme is that I think it’s very clever. The second thing I’d like to say is that my brain apparently works backward, and this puzzle proves it.
We are passing the word IT back and forth throughout Mr. Lively’s theme, hence the direction at the end of the theme clues: Each one concludes with either “pass it on” or “pass it back.” Our job is to figure out where the IT goes.
There are two reasons not to worry about this. First, the passing is done within the same row, so you don’t have to search the whole puzzle for a place to leave the IT. And second, you will figure out pretty quickly that something needs to be done about the entries that don’t match their clues. Once the theme crystallizes for you, the rest is smooth sailing.
Let’s look at 17A and 19A as an example. The clue at 19A — [Minty Cuban cocktail … Pass it back] — asks us to “pass it back.” When read another way, the instruction is “pass the letters I and T back.” The answers as we need to write them in the grid are CIRCUITS for 17A and MOJO for 19A.
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Source: Elections - nytimes.com
