Zachary David Levy saves the day.
MONDAY PUZZLE — I’m delighted to see Zachary David Levy back in the New York Times Crossword puzzle! This is Mr. Levy’s second puzzle, after his stellar tribute puzzle to the Notorious R.B.G. that ran last June.
The theme of today’s puzzle takes on a different subject matter, but with the same deft construction that Mr. Levy exhibited in his first puzzle, including another grid-spanning central entry. (His first puzzle had three 15-letter entries!) I enjoyed the mix of straightforward clues with some trickier ones that might have stumped newer solvers — let’s have a look.
Tricky Clues
9A. I enjoyed seeing the clue “Tsk!” for SHAME because we so often see “tsk” as an entry. This almost feels as if a way for crossword constructors to retroactively justify all of the times that “tsk” was clued as “for shame!” (According to our friends at XWord Info, this has happened a whopping 23 times.)
34A. Did you know that LeBron James tried to trademark the phrase TACO Tuesday? I learned this recently, and I hope you were as tickled by the idea as I was. Apparently, the denial of his trademark hinged on the fact that TACO Tuesday was “a commonplace term, message, or expression,” so perhaps this clue did not require an explanation.
57A. I think the clue “‘I’-strain?” is a strain, but I take it to be a play on “eye strain” suggesting that a person with a big EGO (some who is very “I”-focused) is a strain. Please comment if you have another, better read on this clue!
1D. The delightful clue “Quick time outs?” is a wordplay clue for NAPS because a nap is a short amount of time to be “out,” or asleep.
2D. Ah, the good old ellipsis clue, sure to befuddle new solvers who see the “…” and think “… what?!”. Ellipses in clues typically means the constructor is about to do something terribly clever, often by giving two different clues for the entry. In this case, “Each … as in the price of balloons?” give the regular clue “each” along with a clever wordplay on the entry itself. “Each” should lead you to “A POP” — a reference to balloons, which also pop. As in, “These balloons cost $5 A POP!”.
28D. I love having the paper confirm that my own repeated use of the word “punny” in this column is acceptable despite the red underline indicating a spelling error the word gets every time I write it and the one or two times I’ve had to convince an editor to let me keep it. The clue “I ___ Pi (punny fraternity name)” is a clue for ETA because reading it out loud might lead one to say “I ate a pie.” (Although I think the “I” would be pronounced “Iota”?)
33D. This explanation is for those among us who never had to take the old version of the SAT that involved analogies. The colon in these analogy clues is read as “is to,” and the double colon is read as “as.” Making these substitutions would change the clue to “Longhorns is to Texas as ___ is to Texas A&M.” Since the relationship between “Longhorns” and “Texas” is that Longhorns is the nickname for students at the University of Texas, you need to fill in the blank with the Texas A&M student nickname, which is AGGIES.
Today’s Theme
I admit that I did not notice the theme while I was solving, possibly because I was trying to see how quickly I could solve it! This puzzle’s theme, which is revealed at 61A, is phrases that end with things one might find “IN THE BANK.” The first of these, POLE VAULT (“Olympic event for which the world record stands at a little over 20 feet”), has the word VAULT at the end, such as one might find in a bank heist movie (or, presumably, in an actual bank, but I have never personally seen such a thing!).
The second theme entry, which Mr. Levy indicates in his Constructor Notes was the impetus for the theme, is PENN AND TELLER. This “Magic duo with a 20+ year act in Las Vegas” features the word TELLER, as in a bank TELLER, at the end of the phrase. The other two theme entries also end with bank-related words, and the theme concludes with the revealer “Guaranteed … or where you can find the ends of 17-, 23-, 37- and 50-Across.”
Mr. Levy notes his concern that the expression is more frequently “money in the bank,” but I think this revealer is perfect — it would not be weird to say, for instance, that Mr. Levy has future constructing gigs “IN THE BANK,” which is to say that he is guaranteed to have more puzzles accepted, on the basis of his evident constructing skill!
Constructor Notes
A few months ago, The Times ran a Mario Brothers themed crossword, and it was pretty clear that the impetus for the puzzle was Muriel BOWSER. Here the credit goes to Ray TELLER, with POLE VAULT running a close second. In the interest of pre-empting criticism, DAYLIGHT SAVINGS and BOTTLE DEPOSIT don’t quite change the meaning of the last word to the same extent, though they’re colorful enough and were necessary to make the symmetry work. Another nit to pick would be that the more idiomatic phrase is “money in the bank,” though that obviously wouldn’t land as a revealer.
I’d love to take the credit for premiering PENN AND TELLER, but both Byron Walden and Frank Longo beat me to it with “X and Y” themed puzzles in the past — though I’ll say that this is officially the first time that Teller is the main event. As an aside, Teller wrote and narrated an off-Broadway horror-themed magic show titled “Play Dead,” which happened to be one of the first dates for me and my (then future) wife back in 2010. Things took a turn when she was pulled onto the stage by Todd Robbins and briefly disappeared, but we got her back in one piece at the end of the night.
Speaking of Broadway, it’s back! So go get vaccinated and show the theater crowd some love.
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