Christina Iverson and Andrea Carla Michaels bring a lovely puzzle into the world.
MONDAY PUZZLE — Happy Monday, folks! Today we have a collaboration between Christina Iverson (making her ninth New York Times Crossword appearance) and Andrea Carla Michaels (making her 76th!). I enjoyed solving this team effort quite a bit, and as so often happens when a song plays a major role in a puzzle (not a spoiler, it’s in the clue for 56A!), I ended up with an earworm that I still have not managed to shake loose.
To stray from the topic for a moment, getting this song stuck in my head led me to think about solving while listening to music — does anyone do it successfully? I have tried listening to music while solving, but I find that if the song has any lyrics at all, it completely trips up my “flow” through a grid. My solving music needs to be ambient electronic music or classical music unless I want the solve to take significantly longer than average.
If you do happen to enjoy listening to music while you solve, you may want to check out the curated “Music to Play NYT Games By” playlist on Spotify, which has songs that relate not just to the crossword, but also to the other assorted New York Times games, including the Spelling Bee.
Now, back to the topic at hand!
Tricky Clues
63A. “Setting for a couples cruise?” is a punny clue for ARK because the story of Noah’s ARK features a boat ride for pairs of animals.
67A. I always thought Deism was just belief in the existence of a god, in the most general sense, but apparently it is more specific than that! A DEIST is a “Believer in a nonintervening God.”
1D. “Handy way of communicating, brief?” is the clue for ASL (short for American Sign Language). I personally try to avoid cutesy clues for A.S.L. because they feel a bit like they minimize the fact that A.S.L. is a language, not just a way of communicating. Of course, crossword orthodoxy dictates that you cannot have the word a letter represents in the clue for an abbreviation, and under that restriction, constructors often struggle to write clues that convey that A.S.L. is a language.
7D. I was unfamiliar with the novel “ORYX and Crake” by Margaret Atwood, but I was able to get it entirely from the crossings. GASX being a brand name may have made this crossing hard for some.
13D. I love the clue “Places for flowers and oysters” for BEDS — flowers are found in flower BEDS and oysters are found in oyster BEDS, although of course they are quite different-looking beds.
48D. The abbr. you are looking for in “Like the first through fifth grades: Abbr.” is ELEM, short for ELEMentary.
Today’s Theme
The theme today is revealed at 56A: “1967 hit by the Tremeloes suggested by the starts of 17-, 27- and 46-Across,” which is “HERE COMES MY BABY.” The phrases at 17A, 27A and 46A all begin with words associated with childbirth, starting with LABOR DAY WEEKEND at 17A (“Traditional end of summer”). The next theme entry at 27A is PUSH THE ENVELOPE (“Dare to exceed normal limits”), and the final theme entry is DELIVERY SERVICE at 46A (“FedEx or DHL”).
All together, these theme entries tell the story of the arrival of a baby, from going into LABOR, to PUSHing, to the actual DELIVERY. The person going through this process may, indeed, cry HERE COMES MY BABY by the end, although I doubt that’s the scenario The Tremeloes had in mind! There’s also a nice bonus in the middle Down entry of the puzzle, where EARLY is clued as “Before the due date, say,” which could apply to a birth as well.
I’m not sure if the mini-theme of piggy-related entries was intended, but it was a cute additional pattern I was happy to notice.
Construction Geek-Out
It’s not every Monday (or Tuesday or Wednesday or Thursday …) that you see four 15-letter entries in a puzzle! With all four theme entries, including the revealer, spanning the grid, two of which are debuts (46A and 56A), this is a pretty impressive feat of construction. There are one or two places where the fill groans a little from the strain of supporting four 15s, but for the most part, the fill is neat and tidy. Nice work, team!
Constructor Notes
Christina Iverson: I reached out to Andrea a little over a year ago to see if she’d be interested in a collaboration. I love the collaborative process and have learned so much from each constructor I’ve worked with, so it was really fun working with a pro like Andrea!
The idea I originally pitched was a lot more convoluted, with some wacky phrases relating to labor. She suggested doing a simpler Monday puzzle, and we came up with this. My daughter was a newborn at the time, so I clearly had birthing on my mind! I also had “Here Comes My Baby” stuck in my head for a long time while this puzzle was in the works!
Andrea Carla Michaels: As Prissy said in GWTW, “I don’t know nothin’ about birthin’ babies!” But I do know this collaboration was a labor of love! Though virtual strangers (no more!), Christina and I discovered we share Minnesota roots, and we had so much fun and laughter putting this together. And I love the idea of two women making a baby with no men in sight … how 2020 is that?!
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