11/4/2022 0 Comments Backtrack crossword clueWashington Post, August 815 2021, Evan Birnholz, “Backtrack” solution grid THEME: Songs can be found backwards in common phrases. Had another good feeling that there would be a Birnholzian layer to put a cherry on top. Had a good feeling I had the theme figured out by the title before jumping into this one. Hey! I think I learned this one from crosswords.Įvan Birnholz’s Washington Post crossword, “Backtrack” – Jim Q’s Write-up Please, I beg you: Keep your Comic Sans away from me! As in the Addams Family character, Wednesday Addams. Is there some other angle I’m missing here, some other ZAGAT with stars? Did some iteration of the Zagat Guide use star ratings? Their longtime approach (from several owners ago, anyway) was to rate the food, service, and decor on a scale where 30 was the very best. You know what? The Zagat Guide uses (used?) numeric ratings, not star ratings. I really wanted SAGAN here off the -AGA. Lots of flavor, lots of Aimee and Ella’s voices. Highlights in my book: LOLZ, LOUDMOUTH, NIBLET (paging Sam Ezersky: add this to the Spelling Bee word list!), K-POP, STONE SOUP, POP A WHEELIE (the verb pop is distinct from popular in K-pop, I’m OK with the overlap here), SNEEZE, DRINK IN the beauty, WRITE-OFFS, “DON’T ASK,” and TUMMIES. Overall, the fill is super-smooth and modern. I also love the idiomatic nature of the theme phrases, and that the contemporary “just … wow” is included. You could do EIGHT and TEN for phrases with SIXTEEN and TWENTY in them, but I do like the elegance of the 1-2-3-4 sequence. You might think, “Well, this theme really needs to have five or six of these, because four feels a little light.” But ONE, THREE, and FOUR all contain a letter from TWO, so FIVE, SIX, and SEVEN won’t work. , FOUR BALL crossing “ JUST … WOW” for the EIGHT BALL. , THREE FEET UNDER crossing “ IT WORKS!” for SIX FEET UNDER. [#$%& and TWO-LETTER WORDS crossing AT WORST, yielding FOUR-LETTER WORDS. , ONE-FACED crossing a TWO in Margaret ATWOOD. The other themers have TWO in a Down answer crossing a phrase with ONE, TWO, THREE, or FOUR in it, and you need to multiply those numbers to get a legit phrase: The theme revealer for this “Think Twice” puzzle is 69a. NY Times crossword solution, 8 15 21, “Think Twice”
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