NYT Crossword Answers for Friday, July 14, 2023

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Jonathan Kaufman makes his New York Times Crossword debut.

By Deb Amlen

Jump to: Tricky Clues

FRIDAY PUZZLE — Even though most solvers are aware of the concept of rotational or diagonal symmetry in crosswords, there are all sorts of ways to design a puzzle grid.

If you’ve been solving for a while, you may have run into puzzles that just look different. Maybe they have mirror or left-right symmetry, where the black squares will match if you fold the puzzle along it’s north-south axis. Or maybe they break the rules completely and are asymmetrical.

Jonathan Kaufman’s debut puzzle in The New York Times is supersymmetrical, which means that his grid is symmetrical around the horizontal, vertical and diagonal axes. This design gives the constructor an opportunity to build a nice middle stack in both the Across and Down entries as well as some longer doubles in each quadrant. All of that increases the likelihood that the constructor will be able to fill those longer entries with fun words and phrases.

In this week’s Easy Mode newsletter, Christina Iverson, the associate puzzle editor responsible for writing the easier Friday crossword clues, took a deeper dive into how themeless puzzles are made.

“Because themeless puzzles don’t have any entries that are locked in place in the grid,” she wrote, “it gives constructors the opportunity to design grids that are more aesthetically pleasing than the typical crossword. While many constructors start themeless puzzles with a ‘seed entry’ that they want to feature in the grid, others design the grid skeleton first.

“In this case,” she continued, “Jonathan told me he made the grid design without any entries in mind. He was drawn to elegant grid designs with the longest entries in the center and shorter entries around the outside. He said this feature allowed him to fill the corners like four small grids, once he had a middle section he liked.”

And that’s exactly what Mr. Kaufman has done. His puzzle is full of good stuff, and while some of his clues were rewritten by the puzzle editors — a normal part of the editing process — the ones he mentions in his notes below show a propensity for great wordplay.

Welcome, Mr. Kaufman.

11A. I always recommend starting a puzzle by trying to solve the fill-in-the-blanks, but sometimes they’re not that easy. I was able to write in PENCILS for “___ down!” because I had the -CILS from the crossings.

21A. “Producer of some wedding rings” made me think of the metal bands that are exchanged at a wedding, but that’s not the kind of ring that this clue refers to. Eventually I heard wedding BELLs ringing, but it took some thinking.

25A. ESSEX Hemphill was a poet and performer with a political edge. He wrote about race, identity, sexuality, AIDS and the family in his work, and was part of a cultural renaissance in the Black gay community.

29A. I probably would not have gotten the clue “They’re full of pop” if I had solved it before going to college. It’s not that I needed a college degree to understand it, I just grew up in a part of the country that called soda “soda,” and not “pop.” When I left home to go to Syracuse University in upstate New York, I learned what “pop” was, as well as “jimmies,” which I called sprinkles. That’s how I knew the answer was SODA FOUNTAINS.

41A. I had not heard of Øyafestivalen, so I looked it up. It is a very popular music festival held annually in OSLO.

45A. The kind of “bug” in the clue “One who might bug you” is a listening device, not a form of annoyance, and the answer is SPY.

1D. I know I am late to the party, but we just finished bingeing “Succession,” and I am a new fangirl of Sarah Snook, the Australian actress who played the HEIRESS Siobhan “Shiv” Roy.

3D. To “Put away for good” is to kill someone, and the answer is the slangy synonym ICE.

6D. We all have “Defense mechanisms?” to help us cope, but that is not what this clue is hinting at. These “Defense mechanisms?” are ORALS, or exams where the student must defend a thesis verbally in front of a panel.

33D. It sounds as if this clue, “Ones unlikely to rule in your favor,” is referring to judges, but it’s really hinting at leaders who rule over the general public. The answer is DESPOTS.

36D. I originally filled in YES LET’S for “Why, I’d love to!” using the Acrosses and didn’t see the actual clue until I finished. When I went back to look at the grid, my first thought was that “yeslets” implied the existence of tiny little yeses (don’t laugh, it could have been clued as “Slight nods”) and decided that I really needed a vacation.

46D. If you “Walk on water?” you are either a certain biblical figure or using a very impressive hovercraft. On the other hand, if you read the word “walk” as a noun, the answer is PIER.

47D. This one was clever. If you have a STYE, it may be harder to “flip one’s (eye) lid.”

Greetings, crossworld! I’m an attorney based in Palo Alto, Calif. I began solving the New York Times Crossword daily in mid-2018 and started constructing soon after in my gap year before law school. Over the last four years, I’ve made and distributed puzzles (all of which were themed) to my family, friends, classmates and co-workers, but this is the first themeless I’ve ever shared publicly! Thanks to everyone who solved those puzzles for their patience as I worked out the kinks of crossword construction.

This puzzle started with the supersymmetrical grid pattern. Elements of the grid were inspired by themeless constructors I admire, but this particular layout felt like something I hadn’t quite seen before and proved to be a good canvas to work from in an iterative fashion: first, finding a set of six juicy entries in the center and then filling each of the four corners as cleanly as possible (minimizing the “dabs of crossword glue,” as Jeff Chen would say).

I’m grateful to the Times puzzle editing team for preserving my cluing angle while improving the clues at 5D, 26D and 42D, and for the new clues at 23A, 1D and 10D. My favorite clues that made the cut are 21A, 6D and 47D.

Hope you enjoy the puzzle!

Christina Iverson, a puzzle editor, will send a weekly Friday puzzle with more accessible crossword clues right to your inbox if you sign up for the Easy Mode Newsletter. This extra bit of goodness is for those who would like to try the Friday puzzles but have heard all about how hard they are.

If you solve the early-week puzzles but feel as if you don’t have the experience to go any further, think of the newsletter as a set of cruciverbal training wheels. Use the easy-mode clues until you don’t need them anymore, and then tell a friend who is struggling like you were about how you prevailed over Fridays. Maybe they can benefit from this newsletter, too.

You can take a look at the difference between the regular and easy-mode clues. The links below are a small sample of the clue numbers from the Friday puzzle. When you click on them, you will see the version that will run in the puzzle and the easier version.

(Warning: Following are spoilers for the Friday puzzle.)

41A.

Friday clue: “Host city for the annual Øyafestivalen”

Easy-mode clue: “Capital of Norway”

3D.

Friday clue: Put away for good

Easy-mode clue: Clinking cubes in a cup

46D.

Friday clue: “Walk on water?”

Easy-mode clue: “Beachside platform”

Not so tough, right? You can definitely solve Friday puzzles. You may just need some practice before you’re conquering them on your own.

To sign up for the Easy Mode newsletter, click the link here.

The New York Times Crossword has an open submission system, and you can submit your puzzles online.For tips on how to get started, read our series “How to Make a Crossword Puzzle.”

Almost finished solving but need a bit more help? We’ve got you covered.

Spoiler alert: Subscribers can take a peek at the answer key.

Trying to get back to the main Gameplay page? You can find it here.

Deb Amlen, the crossword columnist and senior staff editor of Wordplay, believes that everyone can learn to solve the Times crossword. She is the author of the humor book, “It's Not P.M.S., It's You.” More about Deb Amlen