Gustie Owens, a member of the inaugural class of The New York Times Diverse Crossword Constructor Fellowship, makes her debut.
SUNDAY PUZZLE — Once, in middle school, Gustie Owens’s teacher announced to her from across the room that “12-Across is ALLIGATOR.” Gustie realized that the crossword puzzle she was working on was reflected in the lenses of her glasses.
Gustie, a research assistant at MDRC, a nonprofit education and social policy research organization, became a member of The Times’s first Diverse Crossword Construction Fellowship last spring while she was a senior at Barnard.
I love the intersection in this puzzle of the cool stream of youthful lingo and the broad-humored theme; maybe it’s because of my own vintage, but I always think of old-school comedians like Rodney Dangerfield when I see a string of goofy one-liners like we have today.
Tricky Clues
The fill in this puzzle is tough, and quite cheeky. I love the combination of youthful lingo and imagery — someone in a dorm room, holding a SOLO cup, dropping the L BOMB on their BOO — with — ahem — older slang like YAHOO, IM HIP and NEATO. (Is NEATO back? For some of us, NEATO never left.)
13A. There is also a lot of infectiously jolly wordplay, even outside this puzzle’s theme. “Get in the loop?” could be a request for someone to catch up on relevant details, or just to jump into this LASSO here.
29A. It’s strange that this actor has never appeared in the Times puzzle before, since we so often get clues relating to Tolkien characters. The “Andy who voiced Gollum in ‘The Lord of the Rings’” is Andy SERKIS, and his inspiration came from a cat experiencing an unfortunate incident.
79A. “Draws out” usually refers to an attempt to elicit a response from someone, but it can refer to moving a liquid, the way one does when one SIPHONS.
82A. The “______ Questionnaire, character assessment that might ask ‘What is your idea of perfect happiness?’” refers to PROUST, who did not devise this set of questions but popularized them into a parlor game. They also continue to find use in interviews; David Bowie’s answer to the question in the clue was “reading.”
14D. This “Best-selling Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie novel whose protagonist leaves Nigeria for a U.S. university” is AMERICANAH, which came out in 2013 to great acclaim and makes its puzzle debut here.
31D. This is another debut, short but hard to deduce if you’ve never seen the word. A “Savory rice cake of southern India” is an IDLI. They are popular in Sri Lankan cuisine as well and are often used to sop up spicy vegetable curries.
Today’s Theme
This is a finish-the-sentence theme with six pun clues, each in italic, at 23-, 41-, 59-. 72-, 89- and 114-Across. “Gossip Session,” the title of the puzzle, perfectly encapsulates what we’re chewing on: phrases that describe the relation of a scandalous story. Why are there so many fun examples of this? It could be the universal deliciousness of a taste of inside information.
A few of the examples in this grid are straightforward, made funny by their clues. For example, at 23-Across: “A lover of gossip, the Netflix user …” SHARES AN ACCOUNT. (This particular joke has an expiration date in the near future, so enjoy it while you can.)
There are also some fantastic idioms here. My favorite is the seed entry at 59-Across, an evocative phrase which plays on “tea” as a homophone for the letter “T,” standing for truth. “The Boston Harbor worker …” SPILLS THE TEA.
The idioms include the span theme entries, both of them cleverly presented. I found 89-Across to be a slow burner, as I didn’t make the connection until I had filled most of it out using crossing letters. “The athlete in the locker room …” AIRS THEIR DIRTY LAUNDRY. I wouldn’t have looked to the French for the origin of this phrase, but it’s apparently from a proverb that Napoleon himself used upon his return from exile on Elba.
Constructor Notes
I toyed around with the phrase “spills the tea” for a long while with my mentor Sam Ezersky, thinking of all of the people who might spill tea. I couldn’t get further than the Sons of Liberty, a waiter and a gossip. But I was still fixated on the phrase and slowly came up with a few other short phrases that also had to do with gossiping, like “throws shade,” “spreads dirt” or “talks trash” to put together a 15x15 grid. But in the brainstorming (read: googling “gossip idioms” and asking Sam and my friends), longer, much more fun phrases kept cropping up, and I soon had a list of 10 15-to-20-letter phrases, and it became clear that it was time to attempt putting together a 21x21 grid.
Writing clues for a Sunday puzzle was super fun and allowed for a ton of variety. I’m grateful to the editorial team for keeping some of my snarkier clues and making wonderful additions. (I laughed out loud when I saw 13- and 28-Across.)
Huge shout-out to the whole team, but especially Sam, for their guidance and mentorship!
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