by Ross Trudeau
[.puz][PDF][Solution] Difficulty: 3.75/5
Happy Sunday, cherished nerds! I’m keeping it short this morning to accommodate stretching with Jessie. We’re on a streak of 14 straight days of doing yoga together as a couple, and the resulting mobility and equanimity are … intoxicating. Highly recommend. Couple links:
Reminder that Lollapuzzoola 2022 is next weekend in NYC. See you there?
Meanwhile, this New Republic article is a couple weeks old now, but it’s relevant and drops a whole slew of names you’ll recognize: “Inside the Elite, Underpaid, and Weird World of Crossword Writers“
And finally, as we’ve been breathlessly awaiting the release of the Knives Out sequel, Rian Johnson has apparently been killing time like this:
My deep appreciation to Sai, Brian, and fellow special Brownie Russell for test solving this week’s puzzle. A couple thoughts and spoilers for “Passive? Aggressive!” below.
My themestorming brain always lights up when I hear pithy/evocative phrases like THE BEST DEFENSE / IS A GOOD OFFENSE. And while it might suit this puzzle just as well as a title, I’m forever compelled when these saws can be rendered symmetrically in a grid, especially along satisfying syntactical line breaks.
Speaking of satisfying symmetry, I noted that rendering the theme answers in the past tense produces four 15-letter answers. Moving to a 16×15 grid allowed me to use them as spanners (the way god intended!) while retaining the revealer phrase as a marquee mid-grid pairing.
Happy solving, friends!
-Ross