Tuesday, April 18, 2017

NYT Crossword 04/18/17 (Tuesday)

Cruciverbalist: Bruce Haight
Editor: Will Shortz

Solving time: 9:51

Puzzle uniqueness:

The entire puzzle consisted of  seven letters - A, E, I, L, R, S, T. In  addition, there were four anagrams of the letters within the puzzle. Again, for the trivia minded, I'll let them figure it out.

Words I hadn't known until now:

ASSAI - "Very, in music" (Really?)

Trivia I didn't know:

ARIA - "Mozart's 'Se vuol ballare,' for one" (Though with four letters easily deduced)
ALTAIR - "Brightest 1-Down (STAR) in Aquila" (Knew the star, didn't know it was there!)
STEER - "Animals rounded up in a roundup" (Never knew this was plural! Silly me!)
ELEA - "Zeno's home" (Huh?!?)
REES - "Roger who played a part on 'Cheers'" (This seems a bit too obscure, IMO)

Junk Answers:

LAT - "One of  a pair of map coordinates: Abbr." (Please!)
ELLS - "The black square chunk in front of 55-, 60, and 63-Across, and others" (Whew!)
STER - "Suffix with prank or poll" (Really?)
SSTS - "Concord, for short" (This answer and its singular need to be retired!)
TAS - "See 6-Down," which is "Things graded by 7-Down (TESTS)"
IRAS - "Nest egg for the golden years" (Only because "IRA" was in yesterday's puzzle)

Clever clues:

None that floated my boat...

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