NYT Crossword Answers: Actress Smith of “Why Did I Get Married?” - The New York Times

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FRIDAY PUZZLE — Happy Friday, solvers! Today we person a puzzle from Scott Earl, who is making his 4th quality successful the New York Times Crossword. All 4 of Mr. Earl’s puzzles person been themeless, with 3 appearing connected Fridays.

Constructors who excel astatine creating themeless puzzles clasp themselves, and the capable they choose, to an exceptionally precocious standard. Themes enactment a strain connected the grid, requiring constructors to marque sacrifices to acceptable successful the taxable entries, truthful excuses tin beryllium made for less-than-ideal bits of capable that marque it into a puzzle.

Not truthful with themeless grids, successful which nary of the agelong entries have to beryllium there. If a constructor finds that forcing a grid to see a peculiar agelong introduction leads to capable that is obscure oregon different undesirable, that agelong introduction tin beryllium replaced with a antithetic one. The iteration of this process tin get a small tedious, sure, but sparkling cleanable grids similar the 1 we person contiguous exemplifies however the rigorous pursuit of themeless excellence pays off.

Tricky Clues

15A. The hint “First idiosyncratic plural?” refers to the EDITORIAL WE, the plural dependable with which writers sometimes generalize. We present astatine Wordplay would ne'er bash specified a thing.

16A. The “Friend of Lumpy the Heffalump” is ROO, the babe kangaROO successful the “Winnie-the-Pooh” stories. Heffalumps are elephant-like creatures that stock Pooh’s stuffed carnal appearance. In the stories by A. A. Milne, heffalumps look lone successful imagination sequences, but successful assorted Disney adaptations of the stories, ROO befriends a babe heffalump named Lumpy.

17A. Unlike the precocious standards for themeless puzzles described above, the hint “Highest bar?” refers to a LIFETIME BAN — the highest barroom from a work (like Twitter) oregon a spot (like Disney World) that a idiosyncratic could receive. Nowadays it seems that LIFETIME BANs aren’t what they utilized to be!

25A. “They whitethorn beryllium mild oregon minced” sounds similar a hint for peppers, but successful information the reply present is OATHS, which tin beryllium mild (like “egads!”) oregon minced, which means changed to thing that resembles a curse connection but isn’t (like “son of a bichon frisé!”).

39A. “What whitethorn travel arsenic a relief?” is simply a MAP, which whitethorn show topographic item done contour lines.

1D. The hint “Toast opening?” sounds arsenic if it should notation to the opening words of a toast. In fact, my archetypal effort astatine this introduction was “Here’s,” arsenic successful “Here’s to you!” I was mode disconnected the people — the “Toast opening?” successful question is MELBA, arsenic successful MELBA toast.

9D. “Something that’s dropped aft it’s finished” is an ALBUM, which an creator mightiness “drop” by releasing it to the public.

32D. “Ones agelong successful the tooth?” are AFRO PICKS, which are long-toothed combs.

51D. Clues successful brackets typically awesome that the introduction is nonverbal. Here, the hint “[We’re broadcasting! Don’t interrupt!]” is the hint ON AIR, which is not spoken but alternatively displayed connected a motion extracurricular a signaling workplace due to the fact that saying the operation retired large would decision the purpose.

Constructor Notes

This puzzle is the effect of playing astir with antithetic puzzle layouts portion besides having a clump of 11-word entries that I truly liked. I anticipation you each enjoy!

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