“Preparing to put earrings in an ogre?” solves to PIERCING SHREK, which made for a silly image.
Then I was fortunate enough to land 23-Across, whose clue is positively loopy. “Origin stories” is such a common expression that I found myself looking for a place to put the “I” for a minute, before correctly chalking its absence up to a theme requirement (without understanding why). The first entry I completed, at 31-Across, took a minute: “The Macy’s in New York’s Herald Square, and others?” solves to ORIGIN STORES. (Did that make for a spoiler? I don’t really think so, but it did change the arc of my solve.) I also happened to read the introduction to the puzzle (paraphrased in the first paragraph of this post) this meant that I guessed the revealer after getting a couple of theme entries, and was able to put the trick together earlier because I had music on my mind. A few took a minute to grow on me, but most are broad enough to click instantly. Each entry is a common term, with one little thing removed that makes it a punny answer to the question posed in its clue. There are six theme entries at 23-, 31-, 52-, 68-, 87- and 104-Across, as well as the already-mentioned theme revealer at 119-Across. “‘Do’-to-‘do’ delivery” made me think first of parties, and then hairstyles, before realizing that- the “do” in question rhymes with a deer, a female deer, and the answer is a musical SCALE. I also love this clue, and I’d bet $3 that it’s related to the theme in this puzzle. The first, “Walk in the park,” sneaked up on me because I usually think of the idiom in negative terms, as in, “solving the left side of this puzzle was no picnic, let me tell ya.”Ħ2D. I love this clue: “Walk in the park … or sit in a park, maybe.” It’s a perfect cryptic “ double definition,” where both parts mean PICNIC. The “Gen Zer who might be into faux freckles and anime” is an EGIRL.ĥD. Here’s a debut to the puzzle, a 21st-century term that uses a truncation of “electronic,” reportedly, although it also describes someone who is extremely online. This entry has been in the puzzle only twice before, in 20, but it is actually an older expression than GSPOT: It’s the name of an album by Johnnie Taylor that came out in 1976.ĩ2A. 13A, “Feeling of auditory bliss, in a modern coinage,” refers to an EARGASM. 8A, “Subject in sexology,” is the GSPOT, which has appeared frequently in the Times puzzle since 1996 (although the term itself dates to the early 1980s). No, the proximity of this pair, the second and third clues in the puzzle, was not lost on me. Fortunately, the wordplay that grew from this seed is witty and wacky enough to more than carry a Sunday grid. Maybe you’re all fans, but I know not a thing about this band beyond its name - which certainly helped me figure out the theme - and that catchy run of seven notes from the band’s most popular song, which (I’m pretty sure) is behind the puzzle’s title. In this puzzle, the band’s name is the seed for the theme’s wordplay, which is much more fun, and you don’t need to know a thing about the band to get it. The first attempt, in a themeless grid, didn’t work out because the fill wasn’t flashy enough. This is his third puzzle for The New York Times, and his Sunday debut it also represents his second attempt at building a puzzle around the answer to 119-Across, which is the name of his favorite band. SUNDAY PUZZLE - David Karp, of Victoria, British Columbia, is a civil servant who works on economic policy for the provincial government.
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