SATURDAY PUZZLE – Ryan Judge has built two earlier puzzles for the New York Times, both they are – one walked on a Friday and the other on a Saturday. For all soles who like to guess on which day a puzzle should fall based on his difficulty, started today as a Friday, but was upgraded to a Saturday. I think it’s a good example of what a fine line is between two days. The truth is told, I often wonder what would happen as a sealless puzzle that was perceptibly easier, regularly walked on Tuesday or Wednesday instead of later in the week and then on Friday puzzles with difficult themes came.
This is a nice grid that separates itself in five barely connected patches, which ensures his own challenge, because it is easy to be stranded. Each area comprises at least a bit of difficult trivia and a few instructions that have been designed to throw us off. I think it is done well and rises to the difficulty of a Saturday.
Difficult instructions
13a. You know this or not you, I think; I had to put it together with the letter from the entrances to the submissions. The [Incan emperor captured by Pizarro’s forces] was the last leader, Emperor Atahualpa, who ruled only a year before Spanish surpassed the entire region.
16a. The pun in this instruction – [In-tents dining experience?] – Thinking of all the open -air eateries that were a fixed value in New York City during the Coronavirus Pandemie. However, the answer is not specific to a place or time: it is a street fair.
30a. I have absolutely no idea who this is, nor have I heard of the game in the designation, and it is also a Debutting times crossword. [_____ Aran, protagonist in Nintendo’s Metroid] Solve to Samus. After a moment of investigation (how do you even speak Samus?), I have learned that Metroid and the character in question have existed since 1986, so I don’t know if this is really mysterious trivia or that it is canon that I should not know.
33a. With a few intersecting letters, most solutions get this joke: [Snack items that can go to your head] His Pot Brownies. They have been to the crossword a few times earlier, with wider instructions in the same way ([Delectable made with grass]For example).
49a. This indication confused me to no end, probably because it is a golf reference: [Performed exactly as expected, in a way] Solve to PARred, which is a different way to say “made par.” Par is a difficulty determined by distance and some strange things such as wind, height or that you play the links on a Friday or a Saturday (joke).
26d. This is an interesting term and another crossword debut. [Familiar injury in football and soccer] Is Turf Teen, a sprain of the big toe that takes place while running, jumping and cutting back and forth on a playing field. The “turf” is a reference to artificial grass, which apparently was blamed for an epidemic of this problem in the 1970s.
34d. [Big sucker?] Is a somewhat unexpected way to prove a hot tub, but that is indeed what one is. I think the average person rarely sees one of these outside their own sanitary luminaires (although there was a Brooklyn in 2023), but the greatest examples in the oceans of the earth are being studied as a kind of analogue of black holes in space, which is interesting.
36d/37d. These submissions are good neighbors because 36D, the [Wailer of folklore]is a perfect illustration of 37d, [Strong and lively, as language]. What is more suggestive than a Banshee, whose name of the Irish comes for a ‘woman of the fairies’, and whose loud, nocturnal lamentations are said to predict the fall of a listener? What a robust, spicy term.
Constructor Notes
I made this puzzle in the summer of 2023 and I am happy to finally see it in the world.
This was originally closed for a Friday, so I was pleasantly surprised to see that it was moved to a Saturday – because that of course means that it is more difficult! Thanks to the editors for strengthening some of the instructions (I especially enjoyed their 35-down approach). I was happy that my clue for 1-down survived, but unfortunately, my “Latte Larry’s” reference for 3-down did not make the cut.
I hope you enjoyed the puzzle!
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Werker on the Moors?
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