MGWCC #856

 

hello, and welcome to episode #856 of matt gaffney’s weekly crossword contest, a week 4 puzzle called “It Takes Two”. this week’s instructions ask for the first and last name of a famous literary character. okay, what are the theme answers? i’m not 100% sure yet, but it’s probably the six long across answers in this slightly oversized (17×17) grid:

• {“Sounds like a reasonable argument”} MAKES SENSE.
• {It covers the Amazon Basin} FOREST CANOPY.
• {“You got so lucky there”} WHAT A TOTAL FLUKE. quite surprisingly, this answer crosses {When added up, in Madrid} EN TOTAL, which i gather is spanish for “in total”.
• {Speeding ticket, e.g.} CIVIL INFRACTION.
• {Nose-clearing stuff} SALINE SPRAYS.
• {Facing serious consequences} IN HOT WATER.

before we get too far into the meta—i was unable to complete the crossword because i had no idea what letter went in the crossing of 30d and 42a, two totally unfamiliar song lyrics: {“But there never was ___ to hold on to” (Mel Tillis lyric)} ANU_ and {“I’m a goin’ now and trade my ol’ Ford for ___” (Dolly Parton/Porter Wagoner lyric)} ANOLD_. these are both clearly partials, but i did not know how to parse the down (i was thinking A NU_, rather than AN U_), and in the across, well, several things have already gone wrong—six-letter partials are unusual but not unheard of, but i really didn’t know what to make of the fact that the clue contained ol’ and the answer contained OLD. you don’t see that every day, for good reason.

anyway, i tried T (AN OLD T, like… a model T? and… A NUT? sure). it turns out the correct letter is S, which wasn’t really on my radar because a) the pronoun “us” doesn’t take an article, and b) that four-letter string is already an english word. anyway, all of this is very unlovely and i assume it is at least constrained by the meta, although that doesn’t necessarily mean either of these answers is necessarily itself part of the theme.

okay. so what *is* the theme? the first thing i wanted to do was change CI[VIL INFRAC]TION into CITATION, a shorter answer that also fits the clue and “takes two” new letters in place of part of the existing answer. as much as i liked this idea, i had to let go of it because i couldn’t get anything to work for the other themers.

okay, how about this—you can take two letters out of some of these words to get other words, and those other words can satisfy other clues in the grid. like SENSE can become SEE which fits the clue for 65a {Get a look at} VIEW. C(AN)OPY is 55d {Do the same thing as} IMITATE. yeah, this is definitely something:

• {“Sounds like a reasonable argument”} MAKES SE(NS)E -> SEE -> VIEW.
• {It covers the Amazon Basin} FOREST C(AN)OPY -> COPY -> IMITATE. i’m mildly curious if we can do the same thing with FOREST (FORT? FEST?) but not all of the themers are two words anyway, so i’m putting that idea on hold.
• {“You got so lucky there”} WHAT A TOTAL FLU(KE) -> FLU -> 29d {Wintertime affliction} COLD.
• {Speeding ticket, e.g.} CIVIL IN(FR)ACTION -> INACTION -> 4a {Sluggishness} TORPOR, i think. not an exact synonym, but close.
• {Nose-clearing stuff} SALINE SPRAYS. this one is tricky, because there are lots of ways to do this with SPRAYS, but i think we’re actually supposed to take SAL(IN)E here, which becomes SALE -> 31a {One-word sign on a store} OPEN.
• {Facing serious consequences} IN HOT WA(TE)R -> WAR -> 26a {Occasion with much violence} RIOT.

so the first letters of the alternate answers spell out VICTOR. based on the prompt and the last-week-of-october timing, i’m guessing we want VICTOR FRANKENSTEIN here—yeah, okay, the removed bigrams (NS, AN, KE, FR, IN, TE) can be rearranged to spell FRANKENSTEIN, so that’s definitely the right answer. i don’t think there’s anything in the puzzle to specify the ordering of those bigrams, but that’s fine—this isn’t a situation where we have just a pile of letters to anagram into the final answer. we already have the first name of a very famous character, and furthermore rearranging bigrams is much more constrained than an arbitrary anagram. plus, the idea of pulling bits of different words are haphazardly stitching them together to form a new creation is, you have to say, thematically apt.

so that’s all very well and good. this puzzle still felt far from cleanly executed, though, and the unclean bits definitely detracted from my solving experience. the TOTAL dupe was eyebrow-raising, and whatever was happening with AN OLDS crossing AN US is still ugly as sin. perhaps a pair of cheater squares at the current square 50 and its symmetric spot would have been more prudent.

in the meta mechanism, it felt decidedly inelegant to take two letters from the last word every time except for one (SALINE). i get that the theme is pretty constrained—taking a specific bigram from the interior of a word to leave a substantively different word is not that easy to do. but it definitely stuck out, and i spent quite a while trying to figure out what to do with S(PR)AYS or SP(RA)YS or even (SP)RAYS and SP(R)A(Y)S.

whew—at least i survived. how’d you all like this one?