[.puz][PDF][Solution] 👅👌🏼😉

Welcome to the first #rossword puzzle of the Biden administration! Perhaps fitting that it’s a mirror symmetry grid? Next week we won’t be quite so centrist.

Speaking of the mainstream, don’t miss today’s New York Times Sunday crossword, which I co-wrote with my good friend Lucy Howard. I say “good friend” despite the fact that Lucy and I have never met in person. We started emailing last summer about crosswords, and before long our Zoom calls–ostensibly “grid making sessions”–were turning into boozy happy hour catch-ups, and then double dates with our partners! My hope for all y’all good quarantining soldiers out there is that perhaps you’ve found similar ways to establish Love in the Time of Covid. Leave a comment–I’d love to hear more such stories. Especially if they’re xword-centric.

Oh, and don’t forget! Jessie and I have co-constructed a crossword for next weekend’s Boswords Winter Wondersolve event! I really mean this: come one, come all. There will be blindingly fast solvers to gawk at, but most competitors are competitors in name only and are just there for the good puzz vibes. And you’ll get to see Jessie and me being interviewed in all our bing bong glory!

Spoilers and thoughts on “Body Language” after the jump.

Another possible theme answer I considered for this puzzle was FLICK OF THE WRIST, which at 15 letters long, would have generated a much more conventionally symmetrical 15/15/13/15/15 theme set.

However, FLICK OF THE WRIST can’t really be clued as an idiomatic expression; you’d have to clue it literally, in relation to, like, orchestrating or spell casting. So that left me with the 15/13/15/15 them set you see, with the viable but less-than-ideal *THE* BLINK OF AN EYE. These are the little things that stick in my craw.

Oh, and cheers to test solver Russell Carey for suggesting the Amanda Gorman reference at 51-Down. May we see that remarkable poet’s name in a print puzzle sometime very soon!

Happy solving, friends!

-Ross