Double-digit numbers – The New York Times

Nothing really worked until I got to 92-Across (lab mice in a 1990s cartoon). It had to be “Pinky and the Brain,” a buddy cartoon that was very popular at the time, and I was sure it was the only possible answer. There were too many squares in this grid for that title, but I could see a pattern in the letters of the completed entries, and this time a pair of duplicate letters helped me out. The entry is PPIINNKKYY AND THE BRAIN; each letter of “Pinky” appears twice.

Ah, I thought, this must have something to do with the puzzle title, “Double Digits,” which at first struck me as a hint at the numbers in the theme. Revisiting 22-Across, it turns out that the entry solves EATT HHUUMMBBTHE MAGPIE.

So now we have a PPIINNKKYY down, and a TO WAIT FOR at the top of the puzzle. The “numbers” are fingers, and the thematic entries are all illustrations of the phenomenon named by the 107-Across revealer, (apologies for the typos, jokingly… or a clue to the theme of this puzzle): FAT FINGER SYNDROME. This affliction has become more common as technology speeds up and keyboards shrink; the result can range from a texting miscommunication to a billion-dollar trading mistake. It gives me perspective when I’m frustrated trying to find the wrong letter in a crossword puzzle on the New York Times Games app.

I love how the fingers appear in this puzzle in the same order as on your hand, and I find it quite funny that the double letter in the answer to 48-Across, (Royal whose wedding had 1,900 guests), gave Mr. Karp a hard time (as he explains in his notes). I myself made a mistake trying to fill in the correct entry, but that was due to a miscalculation, not my fat fingers.

Delicate clues

27A. A puzzle like this, whose theme manipulates word length, makes me paranoid about any entry I can’t immediately analyze. An example is this clue, (It’s clear to see, perhaps?), which is solved in HD. I searched everywhere for a pun before realizing that “HD” simply meant high definition, like a modern television where you can count the freckles on someone’s face.