MGWCC #719

 

hello and welcome to episode #719 of matt gaffney’s weekly crossword contest, “Something’s Brewing”. this was a week 2, but since the email said it was aimed at more of a week 1 difficulty, i solved it without the instructions, and it was readily solvable as such. what are the theme answers? there’s only one overt themer in the grid: {Convenient beer purchase; you’ll need several of them today} SIX-PACK. and indeed, there are seven SIX-PACKS in the grid, consisting of 2×3 blocks of the same letter six times. those letters, read off in grid order, spell out FOSTER’S, a beer brand and the answer to the meta.

each SIX-PACK necessarily entails two stacked answers containing the same letter three times in a row. that’s not something you see every day. (there are also three stacked answers containing merely a doubled letter reading in the other direction, but that’s much less noteworthy.) in order, those triple-letter answers are:

• {Former Arizona congressman who’s currently serving as U.S. ambassador to Turkey} JEFF FLAKE and {Playing poorly, to Brits} OFF-FORM.
• {Like a kid who’s 13 and wants to play Little League} TOO OLD and {Encourage to leave the house, as a fly} SHOO OUT.
• {Guilty party, one-sixth of the time} MISS SCARLET (the guilty suspect in clue) and {Instrument for Colin Stetson} BASS SAX. not familiar with colin stetson, but nevertheless this went into the grid with no crossings because what else could it be?
• {Subject of the February 2022 Hulu documentary “Let the World See”} EMMETT TILL and {Former Rolling Stone journalist who now has the 4th-highest number of paid subscribers on Substack} MATT TAIBBI.
• {“Got a visual on those guys?”} SEE ‘EM? and {Thai noodle dish} PAD SEE EW. that’s a creative way to clue SEE ‘EM, which is usually a partial, and there’s a bit of fancy stepping involved in writing a fill-in-the-blank clue from “i call ’em like i see ’em” without duplicating the ‘EM. the noodle dish, on the other hand, is both an elegant find and quite tasty.
• {Publication that imperiled the Clinton White House} STARR REPORT and {Utterance rarely heard in summer} BRRR. unless you’re somewhere indoors and over-air-conditioned… which is a lot of places, in my experience.
• {Body of water off Antarctica that is not named for a “Friends” character} ROSS SEA and {Couturier’s concern} DRESS SIZE. i looked it up, and it turns out the ROSS SEA is actually named after susan ross, george’s fiancée from seinfeld.

so that’s a very constrained theme, both in terms of sheer amount of material and the requirement that they be in those 2×3 stacks. hence the 21×21 grid size this week. overall, the puzzle was definitely easy enough for a week 1 and pleasant enough to solve, but after the initial aha, there was just a whole lot of crossword left and not much in the way of surprise theme-wise. it’s a nice touch that matt got SIX-PACK in there, although the puzzle would not have been much harder without it—those triple-letter combos are pretty eye-catching. but its inclusion tied the whole beer theme together neatly.

a couple of things that caught my eye from the fill:

• {Hook used to catch fish (also a nickname of mine as a kid)} GAFF. you sure they weren’t calling you GAFFE? kids can be so cruel.
• {Spanish soccer great} XAVI. now here’s a name i don’t remember seeing in crosswords before. but XAVI was an amazing player for both spain and barcelona, and although he just retired as a player quite recently, he’s back in barcelona as the manager (“coach”) and having quite some success.
• {All-consonant spelling that’s a counterpart to “boi”} GRL. i don’t think i’ve seen this in the wild. GRRL, yes. maybe even GRRRL (although i would’ve looked askance at that if matt had used in for the R six-pack in the theme).

that’s all i’ve got this week. how’d you all like this one?