Orcas!
Tune in to Ben Bass’s Twitch channel Monday night at 8:00 Central for the Orcas award presentation! So many incredible crosswords were published last year, and we want to honor the best of them.
Daniel Grinberg and Rafael Musa’s New York Times crossword, “In the Rearview”—Dave’s recap
NY Times Crossword solution – Sunday, February 23, 2025
I really enjoyed this collaboration–phrases which have a synonym of “backwards” are reinterpreted with the other word in that phrase cluing a word appearing in another phrase literally backwards. Perhaps easier to see with the examples from the grid:
- 23A: [What a tight deadline might require] – QUICK TURNAROUND leading to 30A: [Question leaving a grocery store, perhaps] with RAPID appearing backwards in WHERE DID I PARK ?
- 46a: [Tolerate misbehavior] – LOOK THE OTHER WAY leading to 56A: [Source of some public funding] with GLARE appearing backwards in FEDERAL GRANT – let’s hope there are still some of these left in the current administration!
- 67A: [Totally the wrong way] – ASS BACKWARDS leading to 79A: [It’d be my pleasure] with BOOTY appearing backwards in I’M HAPPY TO OBLIGE
- 91A: [Completely change one’s position] – REVERSE COURSE leading to 104A: [Gift-wrapping supplies] with PATH appearing backwards in SCOTCH TAPE ROLLS – I have a vague recollection from my French classes that the French word for tape (as a verb) is “scotcher” based on this
Nice tight theme set, my only quibble is that LOOK/GLARE and COURSE/PATH aren’t as synonymous as the others, but certainly close enough and perhaps needed to be able to appear in phrases backwards. Having the backwards word towards the end of these phrases was another nice touch.
I thought the fill was also very smooth–QUEER BAIT (I guess based on “click bait”) was inferable but new to me (and I’m in their target audience); I learned that Scarlett Johansson, Rami Malek and Vin Diesel are all TWINs and that ELEVENTY (clued as [110, facetiously]) is a thing! Hope you all have a nice ME DAY today and see you next week!
Evan Birnholz’ Washington Post crossword, “Backup Plan”—Matt’s recap
Evan Birnholz’ Washington Post solution “Backup Plans,” 2/23/2025
Evan follows up last week’s unconventional grid and subtle (to me, at least) theme with something a bit more arresting today: Most of the top-row squares are unnumbered and don’t have down clues. So what’s going on? It’s not as daunting as it seems at first glance.
The grid looks normal, and other than the first row, numbering looks normal, so I pressed on and found some typical-enough looking theme entries, including a revealer-ish:
- 46a [Pulitzer Prize-winning musical by Michael R. Jackson, and an alternate title for this puzzle] A STRANGE LOOP
- 60a [How a team making a dramatic turnaround can go … and a hint for how you must enter 15 answers in this puzzle] FROM THE BOTTOM TO THE TOP
- 81a [Changing to a lower gear, and an alternate title for this puzzle] DOWNSHIFTING
Making our way to the bottom, most of the last down clues don’t fit: [Made level] is seemingly only EVE. They are cut off such that they’re all valid entries which is neat, but the clues only work if they’re continued off the bottom and down from the top, as 60a tells us. All the second halves of these entries are valid-looking entries on their own up top, as well.
I’m a big fan of themes and puzzles that play with topography in the grid. They can sometimes be frustrating until the breakthrough, but this was well-done, in that things were relatively normal for most of the grid, giving solvers a chance to make progress rather than stall.