Crosswords & Games
Crosswords & Games|Follower of a Plane
daily crossword column
Follower of a Plane
Mary Lou Guizzo and Jeff Chen urge us to surrender, Dorothy.
A skywriter wrote the word "love" in Celebration, Fla. in 2012.CreditCreditChip Litherland for The New York Times
By Deb Amlen
THURSDAY PUZZLE — What an interesting looking grid. Must be one of those board game arrow spinners, like you use in a game of Twister.
Wrong, Deb. The grid design in this puzzle by Mary Lou Guizzo and Jeff Chen is actually much more complicated, and frankly, I'm amazed they were able to pull this off. There are multiple layers to this theme, which slowed down my solve a bit. But I still kept wanting to spin that arrow.
Tricky Clues
1A: Learning new things is one of my favorite parts of solving crossword puzzles. TIL about CAROM billiards, a game that looks much more difficult than regular billiards.
10A: Hand up if you first entered SAW for "Something with teeth." Me too. It turned out to be JAW.
17A: Has it really been more than 50 years since SKYWRITER has appeared in the New York Times Crossword?
21A: Tricky one, but funny. To "View remotely?" sounds like you are watching something from far away or at least off site, but here it means to actually use the remote so that you can WATCH TV.
34A: The "Realm with an Imperial Diet" was not a kingdom practicing keto, but an empire with a Diet form of government. That would have been the H.R.E., or Holy Roman Empire.
48A: Language can be such a thorny thing. This "Bunch of lovers?" is not a group of swingers, it's a bunch of ROSES, that lovers might give to each other.
59A: Once you get the hang of thinking laterally for the question mark clues, it's just as easy to be led down the wrong path. When I saw the clue "Crafty person?," I automatically started thinking about the different types of crafts I knew: Crafts that you make? Craft beer? A synonym for boats? I overthought it. The answer is ARTISAN.
1D: A new clue for CATAWBA. I knew it as the grape variety, but here it's clued for the first time as the "Carolina tribe that allied with the colonists in the American Revolution."
32D: It has been quite a while since we've seen CONEY ISLAND in a New York Times crossword puzzle, and personally, I'm glad to have it back. I spent a lot of time there as a child. My most vivd memory, other than the amusement park rides, was my introduction to Nathan's French fries, those crinkle-cut morsels which were served in a fragile, oil-drenched cardboard boat, and which functioned primarily as a delivery system for ketchup.
51D: Nicely veiled capital clue. "Hall of fame" sounds on the surface like we are supposed to be thinking of a place of recognition, but the word "Hall" is capitalized for another reason beside being at the beginning of the clue. It's meant to be a surname, and the answer is MONTY Hall of "Let's Make a Deal" game show fame. The long-running game show is still on the air, hosted by Wayne Brady.
58D: Nice to see an alternative clue to ARA Parseghian, not that there is anything wrong with cluing the entry to the coach. TIL that ARA is a small constellation that represents an altar made by Zeus.
Today's Theme
The black square "arrow head" is actually a plane being followed by its CONTRAIL (the revealer at 40D), as demonstrated by the five CON rebuses wedged between the trailing black squares. If you weren't sure about this, the "arrow" points directly at the entry SKYWRITER at 17A.
I tumbled to the rebus at 38A's EMOTI(CON), after realizing that EMOJIS didn't work (That would have left 22D with a terminal J, which was unlikely.). Next, I got (CON)ES, which helped me guess that the CONs would follow each other diagonally. I did get stuck on 46A, because I don't refer to a call-in meeting as a TELE(CON), but I eventually figured it out.
Constructor Notes
Mary Lou Guizzo: Initially, this CONtrail puzzle, with the visual element in the black boxes of the grid, 5 rebus squares and 66 squares devoted to theme answers, seemed like a good idea. However, it became one of the more labor intensive 15x15 grids I've constructed.
Looking back through my email correspondence with Jeff, Will and Sam, I found six chains with numerous exchanges. Needless to say, trying to fill the grid cleanly with all these constraints was a challenge, so I REALLY hope you enjoyed the solve!
Thanks to Jeff for accepting the challenge of working on this puzzle and to Will and Sam on their acceptance and patience in finessing it into its final form.
Jeff Chen: Mary Lou has such great tenacity and perseverance. She comes up with some of the toughest concepts of any collaborator, and she doesn't give up when they prove to require dozens of hours to iterate. Never say die!
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Deb Amlen is the crossword columnist. She has been writing the Wordplay column since 2011 and believes that everyone can learn to solve the Times crossword. Even the Saturdays. @NYTimesWordplay