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wordplay, the crossword column
Kate Hawkins opens our solving weekend.
By Deb Amlen
Jump to: Tricky Clues
FRIDAY PUZZLE — This is Kate Hawkins’s lucky 13th puzzle in The New York Times, and it’s a fun one. It’s enjoyable for all the usual reasons — lively fill and amusing cluing — but it also has something else.
Accessibility is an important part of crossword construction and editing, and it’s a consideration no matter what day of the week a puzzle is slated to run. The Times Crossword becomes progressively more difficult as the week goes on, and solvers need ways to make headway.
Puzzles that run early in the week must be evenly edited so that the entries and clues are suitable for beginner solvers. Slowly opening the tap midweek to allow more difficult entries and more challenging clues is an art form. But it’s the Friday and Saturday puzzles that tend to freak out newer solvers, and for good reason: The reputations of those grids precede them. Paul Sorvino, the actor, once used a term I can’t repeat here to describe — with admiration — how difficult the Saturday puzzle can be.
So I’m happy when I solve a Friday crossword that is fairly accessible, as the one by Ms. Hawkins is, because it means that I can encourage solvers who don’t think they’re ready for one of the toughest puzzles of the week. That doesn’t mean that getting through it was easy, but, in this case, the pleasure of the solve far outweighed the struggle. And that, to me, makes Ms. Hawkins’s puzzle a perfect opportunity for those who would like to try their hands at a Friday crossword.
Tricky Clues
5A. The “Things attached to spines: Abbr.” are not nerves or muscles, but PGS, which is short for “pages,” because this clue refers to the spines of books.
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