During a recent Twitch broadcast of the Boswords Themeless League, Will Shortz dropped the news that in 2027, the American Crossword Puzzle Tournament would be moving to Philadelphia. It's long been based in Stamford, Connecticut, but the event has gotten especially crowded in recent years and it needed a bigger home. So next year's tournament in 2026 will be the last one in Stamford, and then it's coming to my neck of the woods. I can't wait.
Earlier this year, when I gave a talk at Crossword Con, I mentioned that one of the reasons I enjoy Sunday-size themeless puzzles is that sometimes there are long words and phrases that you can't shoehorn into a themed crossword, but you can with a themeless puzzle. The overall principles of construction between themed and themeless crosswords remain the same -- fill the grid with as many interesting and lively answers as you can, limit the number of subpar entries, write a good variety of clues. If themeless 15-by-15 crosswords can be fun to solve, why can't the same be true of themeless 21-by-21 crosswords? There are 126 answers in this puzzle, and here are some highlights:
- The northwest stack is made of GRANOLA BARS at 1A: [Quaker Chewy snacks], RECOVERY ROOM at 19A: [Postoperative care site], and ENTRANCE MUSIC at 22A: [Fight song?]. When I started building themelesses many years ago, my method was to start with phrases that, as far as I could tell, had never appeared before in any crossword. Nowadays, I start with entries that lend themselves well to tough but fun clues, or more accurately, clues that I've written down on my notepad and have waited to use until the opportunity came along. ENTRANCE MUSIC and its clue were the seeds of this puzzle, and I built everything else from that.
- 26A: [Journalist assigned to cover a sports team, say] is BEAT REPORTER. I've been enjoying listening to beat reporters cover the Chicago Bears this season. With all the caveats about how I hope this doesn't jinx anything, it's always more fun following team updates when your favorite team is winning; although to be fair, getting the latest news from beat reporters can be pretty interesting during losing seasons too (and I've been through a lot of them with this team).
- 28A: [Opportunity to be a hero] is COMIC CON. I spent a while on this clue, so I hope it came out of the oven right.
- 42A: [Emulate Ernie when he sings "Rubber Duckie"] is BATHE. I spent literally no time at all thinking of this clue because all I had to do was draw on the fact that I play the YouTube video for my son quite a lot.
- 50A: [Subject of a late 1950s FBI inquiry when a railway worker (William Foos) claimed he could read through walls] is ESP. It's true. You can even find the FBI's records of that investigation here.
- 54A: [ID, e.g.] is U.S. STATE. The "ID" in the clue is referring to the postal abbreviation for Idaho.
- 57A: [One tending to Daisies] is GIRL SCOUT LEADER. I think I normally default to thinking of wordplay on "Brownies" when coming up with Girl Scout-related clues, but I wanted to go in a slightly different direction, even though the capital letter on "Daisies" probably gives away that it's not referring to a flower garden.
- 61A: [2016 Oscar-nominated film featuring aliens nicknamed Abbott and Costello] is "ARRIVAL" and 64A: [2012 Oscar-nominated film set during the Civil War] is "LINCOLN." These didn't have to be clued as movies, of course, but I did so just because they appeared in the same row and their clues could begin in a similar way.
- 65A: [Symphony heard in "Immortal Beloved"] is BEETHOVEN'S NINTH. If you figured out the beginning of this answer first, there may have been some ambiguity with the end of it; is it the THIRD, the FIFTH, the SIXTH, or the NINTH?
- 92A: [Sci-fi villain's beams] is DEATH RAYS. It may be that a small part of my personality is supervillain-coded, but I just think this is a fun word.
- 97A: [Team whose mascot is Wally the Green Monster] is BOSTON RED SOX. The name Wally, as you might guess, is based on the fact that the Green Monster is the name of the historic wall at Fenway Park. Meanwhile, on the same row is CELT at 100A: [NBA pro based in the same city as the 97 Across, for short]. I didn't plan that pairing beforehand.
- The southeast stack is made of SECRET ADMIRER at 104A: [One who prefers their comments and likes to be anonymous?], DANCE ROUTINE at 110A: [Series of steps], and RESTING EASY at 112A: [Having nothing to worry about]. This corner took me a much longer time to figure out than the opposite corner, which makes sense since I had much more of the grid filled out by the time I got to the southeast.
- 6D: ["Faith," "Hope" and "Charity" author Deighton] is LEN Deighton. These novels make up the final trilogy of Bernard Samson books.
- 31D: [Île de la ___ (Notre-Dame de Paris locale)] is CITÉ. If you're wondering why I clued it this way instead of the English word CITE, it's because RECITE is at 93D: [Speak from memory].
- 35D: ["We Wish You a ___ Christmas"] is MERRY and 75D: [(Ho)liday works(ho)p aut(ho)rity] is SANTA. The latter clue is a little silly, but consider it a little merriment for the holiday season.
- 59D:[[I'm rooting for myself!]] is OINK. By far the most experimental clue in the puzzle. My first idea was to do [[I'm really enjoying this mud bath!]] but, alas, I had BATHE at 42A. If it still didn't make sense after you got it, imagine a pig rooting around to find food for itself. I'll consider that a bit of merriment for the holiday season too, even if it's not specifically about Christmas.
- 108D: [Prize for a random winner of the Wall Street Journal's crossword contest] is MUG. That's just a nod to a series of meta crosswords that I enjoy solving. Miraculously, I was actually the random winner of a WSJ contest mug many back in 2017.