Someone Who Has It All - The New York Times

Byron Walden has it in for us, it seems.

SATURDAY PUZZLE — This is the second time in two weeks that I found myself a bit buffeted by a difficult Saturday grid. Some of us probably saw its byline and predicted a difficult road ahead; this is Byron Walden’s 65th Saturday puzzle for The Times (and his 102nd overall).

As difficult as this solve is, it’s completely clean, and there are many expert touches throughout — lots of trivia, wry resonances between mirrored pairs of across and down entries, and a bunch of debuts.

Tricky Clues

I noticed a few misdirects today and probably missed a few more — “USDA” instead of OSHA, “grassland” for RANGELAND and “minute” for MOMENT were mine. I think the clues for FINALS and STUDY are both really clever, standouts in an overall smart construction.

20A: Put down the clock app, kiddos, and I will tell you something scary: We used to just watch whatever was on television. We had to — and if we wanted to see a particular show, we had to get there at exactly the right time, like we have to now to catch an Instagram sunrise in Moab, Utah. Except television scheduling had nothing to do with nature’s powers and everything to do with ratings, demographics and money. This is where TENTPOLING comes in, a term that’s a debut yet sounds old-fashioned; it’s the concept of sandwiching a hit show between a couple of lesser-known viewing choices in the hopes of creating a block of “destination television.”

27A: I Googled like crazy and can’t find a whit of evidence that LeBron James has been seen in the same place as a Chrysler LE BARON, although there are a few jokes about it. I can’t see LE BARON without thinking of “Short Skirt, Long Jacket,” because I like Cake more than basketball.

6D: I mentally twinned this entry with 21D, because they’re both unevenly split into two words. For this entry, “Access to a country club” wasn’t hard to associate with MEMBERSHIP, but what kind? Ah, United Nations — a club of almost every country, and UN, “in brief.” For 21D, I had a strong hunch from that “ego ideal” reference but was unsure on the exact title. (After I noticed this relationship I saw one in the common letters between TENTPOLING and MONOPOLIST, but that might be just coincidence.)

9D: There's so much trivia today, and I knew none of it. No complaints, but animal trivia is my favorite, so I investigated this one, which is making its second crossword appearance. Superman’s dog’s name is KRYPTO, a reference to their planet of origin, and he’s a member of both the 30th-century Legion of Super-Pets and the Space Canine Patrol Agents. Oh, and he has a Clark Kentish alter ego, “Skip.”

36D: I wonder if many of us were surprised to see “catapult” fall to the real answer here, BALLISTA, a device that hasn’t been in a crossword since the early 1980s. This could be the first time that one of these unwieldy contraptions has ever taken someone by surprise, although I imagine that they made for fearsome weapons when two warring factions were committed to a battle. (I’ll be running in the other direction if I ever see one, now that I know what it looks like.)

Constructor Notes

Interesting, though not particularly fun, fact about ABADAN: A major oil-refining city in Iran, its population fell from roughly 300,000 to zero during the Iran-Iraq war. The population has since grown past its prewar levels.

Registration is now open for the Boswords 2021 Fall Themeless League. It’s a nine-week online event with weekly themeless puzzles, including one by me. There are three levels of difficulty: approximately Tuesdayish, Fridayish and something beyond Saturdayish, so there’s something for everyone. In addition to the puzzles, there are interviews with the constructors and solvers for each grid, as well as other fun extras. You can find details about registration, constructors, past tournaments and a sample puzzle at boswords.org. Don’t miss it!

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Someone Who Has It All - The New York Times
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