What’s Hanging?

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Wordplay, The CROSSWORD COLUMN

Have a seat at the puzzle; Lisa Senzel and Jeff Chen made room.

By Caitlin Lovinger

Jump to: Tricky Clues | Today’s Theme

SUNDAY PUZZLE — Lisa Senzel is a pathologist at Stony Brook Medicine on Long Island. She’s been solving the New York Times Crossword in print since 1994; this is her second puzzle and her Sunday debut. Jeff Chen is a writer in Seattle and a veteran constructor and puzzle collaborator, and he runs xwordinfo.com. The idea for this theme was Dr. Senzel’s; Mr. Chen wrote a program to generate possible entries and then designed the grid and guided Dr. Senzel through the fill.

This is one of those visual themes that take me forever to recognize. The trick is cleverly presented to draw out its discovery, with the clues to the theme set placed in the Down entries. I will forever be wowed by how many examples Mr. Chen can come up with for a mechanism like this one, even when he writes a script to do so. Without one, a puzzle like this might be impossible to construct.

There are seven examples of the theme set today, but each one requires three entries — two Downs connected by an Across answer. Those Across entries are indiscernible from regular fill until you figure out what to do with the two Down entries, one of which bears the theme clue. There is a revealer entry at 105-Across that might be helpful. There is also a visual element that rises from the revealer entry that didn’t hit me until I read Mr. Chen’s notes, although I did notice the puzzle’s unusual mirror symmetry.

Each of the seven items in the theme set begins with an italicized clue that corresponds to a three- or four-letter Down entry and makes absolutely no sense on its face. Because these entries are so short, you will undoubtedly finish one or two by solving crossing entries. For example, “Person on the high C’s?” at 33-Down is EPO, and 66-Down, “Part of E.P.A.,” solves to IVNE. IVNE? Shouldn’t this be either “Environmental,” “Protection” or “Agency”?

Hm. This is where I got the all-important first glimmer of the theme: IVNE and “Environmental.” If you look at 66-Across, there’s another bread crumb: “Certain endurance athletes” are IRONMEN, which sits perfectly in the center of “EnvIRONMENtal,” something I had certainly never noticed before. Then, at 69-Down, which starts with the final N in IRONMEN … there is no clue, just a hyphen. Crossing letters to the rescue, once again! 69-Down reads NTAL, and if you start at the end of 66-Down, the E in IVNE, and read up, over and down, you get your complete answer: ENVIRONMENTAL.

It’s hard to say what the most important component to this three-part trick is, but I relied heavily on the longer Across entry when I knew what I was looking for. Here’s another example that confused me greatly before I’d sussed out the theme. 117-Across, “Lasagna cheese,” is RICOTTA; 117-Down, which is the overarching theme clue, is “Orange-colored fruit pastry.” Both are food items; later, though, I recognized APRICOT TART.

Each of these long terms forms a particular shape in the grid, a three-sided rectangle (missing a bottom). The puzzle’s title is helpful in recognizing this, although I did not immediately make the connection: “What’s Hanging?” refers to the two Down entries that begin and end the term; they dangle from either end of the longer Across entry. Then, the revealer at 105-Across makes that connection even clearer: Those shapes represent something. A “Piece of furniture with parts that fold down, as depicted seven times in this puzzle” is a DROP LEAF TABLE.

On top of that, literally, is an endearing work of grid art. It took me a minute to see it: The upside-down T whose crossbar is right above the letters L-E-A-F-T in DROP LEAF TABLE resembles the base of a table; then, nine rows above that is a five-square-long table top, with a three-square-long leaf hanging vertically on either side of it. It doesn’t run up and hit you on the head, but it’s a fine touch.

20A. I had trouble parsing “Lets handle” at first (since “Let” and “handle” can each be a verb or a noun). In retrospect, only one interpretation makes sense: “Lets handle” is the same as LEAVES TO. (I wonder if there are some Easter eggs in the fill, like this use of “leaves.”)

126A. This “Relative of a bookcase” is an ÉTAGÈRE, from the French.

74D. I was sure I knew this one: “‘___ Vibration’ (Bob Marley album)” is “Jamaican,” right? Nope, it’s RASTAMAN.

107D. “Word with bird or retirement” had me thinking of a “party,” although what on earth is a “bird party”? I never think of the words in a clue like this as coming second in a phrase, but in this case the answer, EARLY, precedes “bird” and “retirement.”

Lisa Senzel: I am a clinical pathologist at Stony Brook Medicine on Long Island. I have solved the New York Times Crossword in my print newspaper since 1994. Inspired by the bio of an 82-year-old constructor and his mentor Will Nediger, I reached out and got my start. I was mentored by Will N., Jeff Chen, Christina Iverson, Jake Halpern, Andrea Carla Michaels and, recently, the AVCX editor Ben Tausig. Crossword people are generous, funny, great people.

My husband took over some of our special-needs son’s care during the pandemic, which lightened my “mental load” so I could begin this pursuit. Based on an idea I had, Jeff wrote a program, designed the grid and guided me through the fill. The idea came out of another idea that I’m still trying to pitch to Jeff.

I would like to offer solvers an alternate clue for 33-Down: “Break-dancing model Jakub Jozef Orlinski, for one.”

Jeff Chen: Super fun to brainstorm with Lisa, who solidly understands that landing on the seed of an interesting idea is often a matter of quantity. This DROP LEAF TABLE concept is far, far away from Lisa’s original thought, and the path we took to get here reminds me of “Not all those who wander are lost.”

Hopefully solvers make the connection to the grid art in the middle more directly than that. And it looks more like a DROP LEAF TABLE than Sauron or Mount Doom.

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