Michael Lieberman brings us a Sunday puzzle with some things different (and some things the same).
Editor's note: If you plan to solve the Sunday Crossword in this week's New York Times Magazine, you will find that the answers will not fit. After the issue had already been printed, we discovered that there was an error with the solvable grid of the Sunday Crossword. A corrected version of the puzzle can be found on Page 25 of Sunday's daily New York Times. We sincerely apologize for the confusion. The grids available to print online are correct.
Today's Theme
SUNDAY PUZZLE -- Will Shortz, in his print introduction to this grid, writes: "Michael Lieberman, of Washington, D.C., is an attorney at Fairmark Partners, an antitrust firm. Before constructing this puzzle, he found a crossword with related wordplay that appeared in The New York Times in 2015. So Mike thought of longer examples and interlocked each one twice. Good puzzlemakers are always pushing boundaries."
Mr. Lieberman is creative and prolific; this is his seventh Sunday puzzle for The Times, and 35th grid since 2021. His puzzles can always be counted on for great "ahas!" -- the kind where you feel as if you've untangled an amazingly intricate challenge that, once you see it, is perfectly fair and clear.
There are six iterations of this puzzle's theme; each one involves two across entries and one down entry that connects them. There's no revealer entry, and there's no punctuation or other indicator that sets the theme entries apart. They appear at 23-, 36-Across and 24-Down; 25-, 39-Across and 26-Down; 49-, 63-Across and 50-Down; 63-, 83-Across and 50-Down; 90-, 107-Across and 92-Down; and 93-, 109-Across and 94-Down.
The first and last letters in each of those down entries intersect across entries, and they're also all rebuses. Each rebus is used in the down entry in an unusual doubling effect that took me a long gawking minute to figure out.
That pause was enough to justify the title of the puzzle, "Nuclear Fusion," because I don't understand that either. It makes sense, though. It's a reference to the doubling effect, in which an internal set of letters in each down entry is ultimately used twice in one term, meaning that those letters are fused together -- if you'll bear with me -- and also that they're at the center of the entry, i.e., nuclear.
Thank goodness, the clues in the theme set are straightforward and not too tough. I found the answers to 90- and 107-Across fairly early in my solve, helped by a sprinkle of letters from down entries. At 90-Across, the [Popular poker variant] in question is TEXAS HOLD EM; at 107-Across, [How a misfit might feel] is OUT OF PLACE. Each of these entries is one letter too long for its allotted space in the grid, and this is where 92-Down comes in. The answer to [Where "The Four Agreements" and "The Five Love Languages" may be shelved] is supposed to fit into a four-letter space, but it's definitely not the "math" section of the bookstore, as those who have wondered about their particular "love language" know. This entry is definitely SELF HELP, and the whole configuration clicks right into place if you allow the S/H in TEXAS HOLDEM, and the F/P in OUT OF PLACE, to share squares, and then use each of those letters once -- and EL twice -- in 92-Down: SELF HELP.
You may have noticed one across entry that itself is doing double duty in this theme, at the grid's dead center: 63-Across, [Masonry unit]. It solves to something stereotypically mundane, a CINDER BLOCK, but it’s kind of amazing how Mr. Lieberman coaxes 50- and 64-Down into and out of it. 49-Across, [They’ve got no complaints], solves to HAPPY CAMPERS; 50-Down, [Mowing, mulching, raking, etc.] is YARD CARE, using the “D” and “E” in CINDER. 83-Across, [Listings on a band T-shirt], solves to CONCERT DATES; 64-Down, [Ton of cargo], starts with the “B” and “L” in BLOCK: It’s BOAT LOAD.
As mentioned in Will Shortz's introduction to this puzzle, there's an earlier Times Sunday puzzle that used this same trick, but only at one end of a down entry or another, not both. It was constructed by Don Gagliardo and Zhouqin Burnikel and ran exactly 11 years ago, oddly enough. It's also a fun solve, even if you know what to expect!
Tricky Clues
- 20A. This entry has been in the Times puzzle 83 times since 1991, but it has never been clued this way: [____ pasta (rhyming fusion dish)] solves to RASTA pasta, which (unsurprisingly) is considered Jamaican fusion cuisine.
- 34A. ["Unbe-frickin-lievable!"] is a great expression that suggests a lot of random utterances like "aarrgh," so I had trouble deducing this entry. It's SO MAD; presumably MAD here means "angry," not "crazy."
- 54A. The [Defensive fortification] here is a PALISADE, French for "fence made of stakes"; the precipices along the Hudson River were so named because of their resemblance to such structures.
- 3D/6D. These showstopper entries, both Times debuts, are good enough to make this whole corner of the grid zingy. 3D is another exclamation, ["Mamma mia!"]: It solves to a reduplicative expression, HOLY CANNOLI, with Italian flavor (Sicilian, more precisely). 6D, [Elaborate invitation from a senior, maybe], is a modern portmanteau: The PROMPOSAL, in which teenagers lay it on the line for the big dance, often on social media.
- 68D. [Congrats from across the room] is an AIR HIGH FIVE, another term that hasn't been in a Times puzzle before. I'd never heard of this one, and it sounds like a hesitant, awkward wave to me but they do it on "The Office."
- 93D. This is a difficult bit of trivia: [Fernet-_____ (Italian digestif brand)] is Fernet-BRANCA, a bitter, black liqueur with over 40 natural flavors. It's usually called "Fernet," which rang the tiniest of bells for me -- it was an entry in a Sunday puzzle last year also by Mr. Lieberman.
Constructor Notes
Adam Wagner, who constructed the Wednesday puzzle this week, mentioned in his notes that I occasionally (read: constantly) urge him not to squeeze too much theme into one puzzle. I had to follow my own advice to make this one work -- I tried and repeatedly failed to include six pairs of theme entries and couldn't make it work until dialing it back a bit and letting CINDER BLOCK pull double-duty in the middle of the grid. That simplified the construction and made the whole thing work and allowed for a lot of really fun bonus entries as well. Of course when I showed Adam the final grid he told me to start over and add another layer to the theme by making the rebus letters spell out a hidden message. No thanks. But credit where credit's due: Adam came up with the title for this puzzle which is really,really good.
Finally,a shout out to everyone I got to meet / see / lose to at A.C.P.T.last weekend -- y'all are the best ,see you next year!