In other news, thanks to the puzzle solver Kaye Barton for stream-solving the Dec. 25 meta suite “Santa’s Workshop” on her Twitch channel kaybartplays. She went through the whole thing systematically and it was a blast to watch. You can watch a replay of that stream here (the portion with my puzzle begins at the 30:14 mark and runs for a bit over 90 minutes), but if you haven’t solved the suite yourself, you can find it online here. Her stream also includes a solve of a really neat cryptic puzzle by Kate Chin Park and Joe Pasini called “Kate and Joe’s Finite Playlist” which you can solve at this link.
Today’s puzzle makes wacky rhyming phrases out of units of time. Starting with the shortest unit of time and going to the longest:
- 3D: [Time spent being summoned?] is BECKONED SECOND.
- 15D: [Time spent with “Fallen Out” author Wayne?] is STINNETT MINUTE.
- 6D: [Time spent tending to one’s garden?] is FLOWER HOUR.
- 77A: [Time spent riding around with Santa?] is SLEIGH DAY.
- 12D: [Time spent near a mouse?] is SQUEAK WEEK.
- 106D: [Time spent mudslinging?] is SMEAR YEAR.
But we skipped a unit of time: the month. Month is one of a handful of English words that doesn’t rhyme with any other word, but rather than give up on this theme because of that, I decided to have some fun with the grid-spanning 116A: [What a theme answer from this puzzle would have if it included the word “month”?] which is NEITHER RHYME NOR REASON.
I actually didn’t start this theme with 116A. When I first thought of the idea, I found BECKONED SECOND first, then wrote down SPINET MINUTE. I had to abandon SPINET MINUTE when I realized I couldn’t get another unit of time to match the length of BECKONED SECOND, so the author Wayne Stinnett came to the rescue with STINNETT MINUTE. But then I remembered I was in trouble since I would need “month.” Wikipedia told me that mathematicians sometimes use “oneth” as an ordinal of one, but I wasn’t convinced this was a common usage, nor did I know if it was even pronounced as a one-syllable word and not a two-syllable word like “one-eth.” I even spent a while looking for places and people’s names that could work in a pinch; there’s an actress from Netflix’s “Ragnarok” named Danu Sunth, but I don’t believe her last name rhymes with “month.” Then I found NEITHER RHYME NOR REASON and it struck me like an amusing punchline — any theme answer I would try to force into a rhyme with “month” would be completely nonsensical. It wouldn’t rhyme and it wouldn’t have any reason to exist in the puzzle.
One other feature of this theme that sort of amused me was that each of these phrases roughly approximate how much time the actions in the clues might take. It wouldn’t take more than a second to beckon someone. You might spend a minute with Wayne Stinnett in conversation. You could spend an hour in your garden, or a whole Christmas Eve riding around in Santa’s sleigh, or a week figuring out how to get rid of mice in your home, or a year hearing smears from political candidates. Actually that last one seems to go on much longer than a year, nowadays.
Some other answers and clues:
- 1A: [Actor McGrath who was one of the original human characters on “Sesame Street”] is BOB McGrath. He passed away only a couple of weeks before I first submitted the puzzle. It’s just a little salute to him since he was such a big part of my childhood.
- 8A: [Whirled piece] is TOP. I’ve been waiting to use this clue for a while because it’s a homophone of “world peace.” That it ended up literally at the top of the grid was an unintended coincidence.
- 48A: [Inn experience] is STAY. Here was another homophone clue, but I hadn’t planned this at all. It just fell into my lap.
- 54A: [Pet that may perch on a windowsill] is CAT. Approximately 90 to 95 percent of my cat-related clues come from just looking at my cat or thinking of the weird stuff she does all day.
- 60A: [Charon’s role on the River Styx] is FERRYMAN and 65A: [Charon’s pole on the River Styx] is OAR. This is a puzzle about rhymes, so here was a bonus pair in the clues.
- 80A: [“I ___ reading all that” (meme posted in reaction to a long series of Twitter posts)] is AIN’T. The full meme shows a picture of a direct message from someone who wrote, “I ain’t reading all that. I’m happy for u tho. Or sorry that happened.” It’s become one of my favorite snarky memes in recent memory.
- 127A: [Opposite of ends, ironically found at the end of this puzzle] is STARTS. Again, this wasn’t planned, but it made me laugh that STARTS was the last Across answer in the grid.
- 35D: [2021 folk horror film featuring a half-human, half-sheep hybrid] is “LAMB.” I saw this movie with friends back when it came out. Let’s just say it had an ending that I didn’t expect.
- 92D: [“The White Lotus” actor Murray] is Murray BARTLETT. I haven’t seen the second season yet, but he was excellent in season 1.
- 121D: [“I finally solved this!”] is AHA. Sort of like with STARTS, it seemed like an apt clue for the final Down answer in the puzzle.
