The “X” in oxen is one of our “rebus” spots, sharing with the “I” in SANDIEGAN this entry has a couple of partners, though, which don’t have those special squares.
I’d never heard of it (or septentriones, the Latin origin other than a winery that goes by the name, it seems fairly obscure these days). At 9-Down is a “celestial figure depicted in this puzzle’s grid, in Roman folklore,” or the SEVEN OXEN, for the seven steps in the wandering path that we see.
(I put “rebus” in quotes because it looks like you can get away with just an “I” or an “X” in these squares.)Īs you make your way through this set, the universe of this puzzle’s theme starts to expand. So, for example, NO EXCUSE is correct at 83-Down, and so is INCOGNITO at 103-Across: The “X” shares a box with the first “I.” If you are struggling with these boxes, I’m told that the following combinations work - X/I, I/X, XI, IX, X and I - as well as a particular symbol whose relevance will snap into focus at some point. It might take a few swings through to feel certain on the letters used I got a lot of halves - IN FAVOR, ANNEXES, NIXON ERA, IFFIER - before the wholes made a pattern: Each of those squares contains an “X” for its down entry, and an “I” for its across entry. There are 14 examples of this, each circled on the grid, all sharing the same two letters. There is a “rebus,” or at least a set of squares that contain more than one letter, so we can start with that. Depending on your astronomical acumen, you might have seen the big picture the moment you dropped your eyes from the sky to this grid for a lot of solvers, myself included, that part of the solve became clear only at the end.
#Crossword light brews series#
This “theme” is a series of little “aha” light bulbs that will probably illuminate (and ultimately make sense, as a whole) in different sequences for different solvers. In this clue, the “crystal” is glassware - to “clear” it after eating is to BUS the table (which is short for “ omnibus,” because whoever’s carrying the dishes around is usually doing all kinds of things). I thought of “obit,” but we’re driving here you need to keep an eye on your LANE when passing other cars.ĩ4D: My crystal ball says this little entry will mystify, but it’s been wrong before. FUJI, but the “Goya” referred to is the brand behind un millón de FRIJOLES.Ĩ4A: There are some very nice puns slipped into this grid. Joes,” clicked with me only after the reveal maybe this will save a gold star for someone else.Ī few new ones on me include ELM (it feels like there may soon be more programming languages than actual trees) and a couple of old favorites - ELLICE and ENATIC, which were popular in puzzles until the 1980s but have dropped off a word cliff.ģ3A: Who here did not think “ Francisco” and then “portrait,” maybe, or “great art” (with a shrug)? It’s fiendish that this entry crosses some actual great art, Hokusai’s views of MT. I had to give up and check my grid because of one silly mistake that I probably wouldn’t have noticed on paper: I had “kiran” instead of KIRIN, and read right over the clue about “Joe and co, e.g.” - “gas” makes no sense, does it? GIS, for “G.I. I’ll be brief because the theme explanation is so verbose, but there’s a lot of flair in the clue set today, interesting trivia in every corner. Your host is the associate editor of Wordplay, Isaac Aronow, and the hint grid is made by Doug Mennella, a longtime Wordplay reader who is known to us as “Doug from Tokyo.” Eastern, when the new Spelling Bee puzzle publishes. On Monday, July 26, Spelling Bee players will be given a daily forum of their own, right here on Wordplay. After all, the title of this puzzle is “Star Search!” We are counting down to the Spelling Bee Discussion. Deitmer’s debut was with The Inkubator try it here, if you’re enamored with today’s solve. (Those were fun puzzles and there’s very little digital evidence of them, unfortunately.) She started constructing only a couple of years ago, mainly for independent puzzle publications, which are great venues for constructors and solvers alike - a chance to catch new talent coming up, or solve a puzzle by a constructor you know and like that doesn’t go into the Times’s rotation.
#Crossword light brews free#
SUNDAY PUZZLE - Today’s complex creation is a debut from Chandi Deitmer, a social worker in the fields of psychiatry and geriatrics, who got into solving via The Onion, back when you could get a free copy from a box on the corner.
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