Note the phrasing of these two entries: They\u2019re in first person. This is where I took note of the puzzle\u2019s title, and it dawned on me that the puzzle\u2019s entries were interpreting the clues and affably solving itself.<\/p>\n
I don\u2019t know if this actually helped me solve the rest of the set, but I fell for the anthropomorphic quality that emerged and found the interplay very endearing, especially in contrast to the taciturnity of the clue set.<\/p>\n
Several of the examples are quite challenging. Who had a guess for 32-Across, [\u201cWhat\u201d]? I certainly did not, but its answer is apt: I TELL YOU WHAT. (This is a slangy way to emphasize a statement, like \u201cI tell you what, that\u2019s the best cake I ever had.\u201d It has a Southern origin, and I mainly recognize it from pop culture<\/a>.) At 114-Across, [Taib? Tbia?], I parsed both parts as words with missing letters (what does \u201cTalib\u201d have to do with \u201ctibia\u201d?) before realizing that they were nonsense anagrams of each other: The entry is I\u2019M A BIT CONFUSED. That\u2019s \u201cA-B-I-T,\u201d which are the same letters mixed up as \u201cTaib\u201d and \u201cTbia.\u201d<\/p>\n 86-Across, [See 88-Across], and 88-Across, [Here], make an interesting couple. 88-Across solves to ON EARTH, which works for all of us who aren\u2019t solving this puzzle from a space station; 86-Across is I\u2019M OVER HERE. Over where? Well, the clue at 86-Across is right above, or \u201cover,\u201d the clue for 88-Across, which is literally [Here]. In addition, these entries are on different rows of the puzzle, so I\u2019M OVER HERE is \u201cover\u201d ON EARTH. (This combination of entries breaks the symmetry of the theme set in the grid. I\u2019M OVER HERE mirrors I MISSED YOU, but ON EARTH mirrors 44-Across, [View spoiler] or EYESORE. The fact that EYESORE starts with a homophone for \u201cI\u201d is intriguing.)<\/p>\n Tricky Clues<\/p>\n 25A\/31A. Neither of these name trivia clues rang a bell for me. At 25A, [Journalist Michele with two Peabody Awards] refers to Michele NORRIS, whose voice you might recognize, as she was an NPR host for over a decade<\/a>. 31A, [Bob ___, alter ego of Mr. Incredible], solves to Bob PARR, who is a character in a cartoon franchise called \u201cThe Incredibles,\u201d<\/a> which is about two light-years away from my realm of knowledge, anyway.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Note the phrasing of these two entries: They\u2019re in first person. This is where I took note of…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":376130,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[6],"tags":[44226,9,11,10],"class_list":["post-376129","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-new-york","tag-crossword-puzzles","tag-new-york","tag-new-york-headlines","tag-new-york-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/376129","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=376129"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/376129\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/376130"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=376129"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=376129"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=376129"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}