Hard to Understand – The New York Times

Saturday Mystery – This is a beautiful, lavish grid from John Hawksley, who created three previous mysteries for The Times, and they all have interesting geometry. This wide open, stacks of five 11-word entries both in transit and landing, is quite a central item, and nine of those 10 entries are debuts.

It would be understandable if a solution chose mesh edges like this for a while, right? That was my style, anyway; I needed to fill in all the chunky corners, which are a bit nicer than the center, to get a few crosshairs on which to build another phase of attack.

difficult evidence

31a. Would it help if I told you that the “Roman statesman for whom a city in the Midwest is named” got his name from the Latin for “Chili on spaghetti? Just kidding, the real meaning wouldn’t work for me, at least: CINCINNATUS means “to have curly hair.” Cincinnati was known as Losantiville until 1790, renamed after a community founded for Preserving the ideals of the American Revolution.

32a. This is great wordplay, especially if you get to it after solving 24A, because the clues are almost twins. 24A, “Find a time for,” is pretty straightforward: Get started. This deadpan entry suggested to me that 32A, “finds a time, in a way,” might be a similar workday. Instead, the answer is a high-minded pun on a technology that determines the age of organic matter, CARBON DATES. (Wonder if Scientists still use carbon-14 dating? It was developed in the 1940s but is still mainstream, with improvements.)

41a. “2:1, for example” sounded like a “ratio” to me, so I wrote that in, and then figured out that 43D, “hard to understand”, might be “oily”. This is actually an indication on a scale, as it is on a map; 43D is EELY, which also describes this corner of the puzzle for me as I try to solve it.

48a. Honestly, the southeast corner of this grid moved too slowly for me. This is a slightly awkward start, but acceptable: a “remote approval signal” is an electronic signature.

14 d. This first appearance may be inferred from his clue, “the constellation named for the instrument which depicts him”; Star group involved Father Nicolas Louis de Lacaille named it TELESCOPIUM to honor the telescope’s role in his exploration of the sky.

32 d. Occasionally, the guide conjures up something silly that could never work, or so I think. But thank God there is room for goofy invention in crossword puzzles. “Quoth the crow?” Referring to the first appearance, CAW-CAWED, a voice is ringing in my head as I write this. You might think of Edgar Allan Poe (or Alfred Hitchcock), but crows seem to make great companions, and are not at all gothic or menacing.

36 d. Everyone swooned so badly because “whoever wrote ‘whatever our souls are, he and I are the same.'” The author is Emily Bronte, and Heathcliff is spoken of by Katherine in the “Wuthering Heights” quote.

Creator Notes

For this type of mesh you start by using software (i.e. brute force) to fill only the center area. But with 10 slots connected, this is a real test of wordlist quality. You need a very large, very accurate wordlist (ideally >95 percent usable, otherwise the probability of 10 random entries everyone Usable quickly disappear).

I spent a month optimizing my word list for precisely 11-letter entries, after which the exhaustive search took several months. This resulted in four usable cores and two final languages ​​- this riddle and puzzle was published in AVCX Last month.

The telescope is probably the main weak point of the center stack. I have a vague memory that I considered removing from my list of scrolling through the 11-character entries, but decided to keep it because it’s basically obtainable (even if it’s not really interesting). It’s funny how that works!

CAW-CAWED is the case for finding something that works in the CAW pattern????? Being shockingly restricted. I’m grateful for the editors’ tips on this, who took something innovative and made it so cute!

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