daily crossword column

Ornately Decorated Money

Brendan Emmett Quigley makes us groan, but in a good way.

CreditCreditDjamila Grossman for The New York Times

THURSDAY PUZZLE — I really liked this one. I’m a sucker for this theme type, even if it seems to me like this puzzle should have run earlier in the week.

Brendan Emmett Quigley is back, and he offers us a relatively gentle Thursday, perhaps to soothe our souls from the Tuesday crossword.

6A: “‘A woman's perfume tells more about her than her handwriting’" is a lovely quote that suggests to me that the person being quoted has to be a fashion designer or perfumer. There are a few four-letter named designers, and first I put in COCO for Coco Chanel, but that was not correct. DIOR was my next — and correct — guess.

13A: TIL about YAHOO View, a website for streaming television shows and movies.

22A: Isn’t “Perfervid” a great word? I love words that sound like what they mean, and to me, “perfervid” sounds absolutely ARDENT.

30A: Nice wordplay! A “handle” is another word for a name — like a screen name — and the clue, “Oven handle?,” is not looking for a literal handle you might grasp to open an oven door. It’s looking for the brand name of an oven, and in this case, the answer is AMANA.

37A: I still have nightmares about having to learn a modicum of HTML to work at The New York Times, but this clue cheered me up. “Building site code?” sounds like the clue is asking about construction codes, but it’s not. If you read the clue as something like “code for building a (web)site,” you might get the real answer.

1D: More great wordplay. “A word before you go” is something one might say to another person before they leave, but in this case, the clue is asking for the actual word said at that time. The answer is “BYE.”

21D: I always think it’s funny when a loud noise is referred to as a BLAT. Why? I couldn’t tell you. But today, it’s clued as a “Sheep’s cry.”

27D: “Guy in a restaurant” could be just about anyone: a patron, a manager, a server, a bartender. In this case, the clue is suggesting a proper name: the “guy” is chef “Guy FIERI.” He may still be in a restaurant somewhere, but his Flavor Town in N.Y.C. closed in 2017. It was most famous, I believe, for the blistering review our own Pete Wells gave it.

37D: I don’t believe I’ve heard of a HORSECAR. A horse-drawn cart, yes. The clue, “It was once drawn on the street,” is fun, but I had trouble getting this one. And now I know it’s a thing.

43D: You know this isn’t going to be a person because the clue is “What might have a crush on you?,” not “Who.” That frees us up to think about things that might crush. The answer is BOA, as in a BOA constructor.

Mr. Quigley offers us a set of phrases (and one name) and sort of adds the sound “uh” to the first part to change its meaning.

For example, at 19A, the answer to the clue “Ornately decorated money?” is BAROQUE BREAD, a pun on the phrase “broke bread.” Because it took me forever to understand this one, I’ll also tell you that the answer to 41A’s clue, “Bumper version of a cart?” is COLLIDE BARROW, which is a pun on the criminal Clyde Barrow of Bonnie and Clyde fame. Now you figure out the other two theme entries.

Mr. Quigley’s theme is consistent in the sense that the “uh” additions are all in the same place, but I was a bit distracted by the fact that the theme set consisted of two past tense verb phrases, a present tense verb phrase and a proper name. It would have been incredibly elegant and tight had they all adhered to the same part of speech.



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