SATURDAY PUZZLE — There you have it, the fourth part of this series is upon us, if solvers count. David P. Williams creates themeless puzzles of identical topology, all inspired by the Wallace Stevens poem “Thirteen Ways to Look at a Blackbird.” The previous three iterations appeared in August 2023, November 2023, and January 2024. They are all good fluffy challenges. For me personally, the connections between this crossword and Stevens’ poem don’t exactly emerge from the fog, and I welcome observations and theories from other solvers.
Funny enough, I found the same location in each of these puzzles to be the hardest to solve: the southeast corner. I don’t know if this was intentional or not, but the southeast corner of this puzzle has an entry that appears in the exact same place in Mr. Williams’ last puzzle, albeit with a different clue. I didn’t know it then, and I didn’t know it now.
Tricky clues
1A. Don’t miss Mr. Williams’ alternative clues in his builder notes below. They’re all really good, although I agree that none of them would have made this puzzle easier. For example, “Old Massachusetts Mint” could have been “Manhattan Clams?” The answer is WAMPUM, ornamental beads made from clam shells by Native Americans living in the Northeast. These beads were woven into textiles that were originally used in ceremonies and given as gifts. After the arrival of Europeans, they played a role in trade.
24A. I don’t know if young people will understand this one, unless they have co-opted it to mean something else (Ate Skibidi Cap I oop I oop or something like that, who knows). This “text acronym” is “American Standard Code for Information Interchange”, the Internet character encoding format for text data, also called ASCII.
46A. I answered that clue “red sauce” with great confidence and the wrong answer, “marinara.” The correct answer is SRIRACHA, which was also the entry in 46A in this manufacturer’s last puzzle. It was then called “Condiment sometimes mixed with mayonnaise”. I could only think of “ketchup” or “catsup,” both of which appear in New York Times puzzles — but neither of them matched.
48A. This is a great work-related clue! For “bargain hunters,” consider how contracts are resolved at the bargaining table, where worker UNIONS reach a deal with employers.
12D. This clue is a play on words that plays on the name of a newsletter platform; I’m sure he has some charcuterie blogs. In this puzzle, “Substack?” » is an ingredient of the sandwich: SALAMI.
14D. To me, this clue looks a lot like a movie quiz – “Drag through Hollywood” – but I couldn’t match a movie. Instead, drag is a road: the SUNSET STRIP.
21D. And speaking of cinematic trivia: the “setting for the classic movie line ‘I don’t need to show you any stinky badges!’ » is a tense but witty showdown in the SIERRA MADRE.
Manufacturer’s notes
Some more delicate clues from which the solvers were spared:
1A: Manhattan Clams?
15A: A bar can rest on a
18A: Repair a joint?
10D: They scream at home
11D: Really receptive, in a sense
28D: Swingers evening, informal?
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