This is where seven down entries come into play, at 8-, 12-, 37-, 60-, 68-, 69- and 107-Down. Each of those entries uses both of the letters in the crossing theme entry. Depending on where you got rolling in this solve, this part of the trick either helps things click into place or slows things down. I had three artworks filled in before I got my first complete entry and its requisite rebus box.
This happened at the top, at 22-Across: “Spaceship battle?/An iconic van Gogh.” I had crossing letters galore, enough to know that THE STARRY NIGHT was my only choice for the art clue. However, I still didn’t have a handle on the interplay between the two clue components, and their common interstellar references got me confused. I needed several more letters in 8-Down, “Subject of the biography ‘Mr. Playboy’,” to realize that a rebus is afoot.
8-Down, of course, is Hugh HEFNER, whose last name is a letter too long for the entry. If you fit FN in the third box in 8-Down, however, something emerges from 22-Across: You can now see THE STARRY FIGHT, for “Spaceship battle?” as well as THE STARRY NIGHT.
Huh! Now that I knew the steps to take, I attacked the other entries I’d left half-finished. 88-Across, “Post-dinosaur period?/An iconic Magritte” is not a pipe (the first Magritte painting I imagine when I see his name); the painting is another surreal knockout, THE SON OF MAN. The “Post-dinosaur period?” is THE EON OF MAN, which means that 68-Down, “Tree climbers, perhaps,” is VINES. ES makes the rebus square where these two entries intersect. 48-Across, “Slangy reply when Bart’s sister asks ‘What’s Covid?’/An iconic Leonardo” turns out to be darkly amusing: The painting in question is THE MONA LISA, and the line from Bart is THE RONA LISA. 37D, “Relaxing soak,” is then a WARM BATH. (I had MR in my rebus box here, by the way, and had to reverse the letters for the puzzle to recognize that I had finished the grid. The order of the letters must allow the down entry to read correctly.)
The artworks in the remaining theme entries are all world famous — a goddess in a scallop, a fresco on the ceiling of the Sistine Chapel, a realist midcentury masterpiece and a geometric abstraction. A couple of the down entries are rather tough — I said one aloud when I got it! — but they’re rewarding and clever.
Finally, 124-Across, the puzzle’s revealer, exposes an intricacy to this puzzle’s theme that would have been lost on me without it. The “Apt word spelled by the new letters that alter this puzzle’s seven words” is, from top to bottom, F-O-R-G-E-R-Y.
Constructor Notes
Jeremy and Tracy: This theme started with visually representing famous painting titles in the grid. After a few brainstorms, the concept of altering art into wacky knockoffs took over. One early version had us changing the letters F-O-R-G-E-R-Y across seven paintings into random letters to form silly phrases. For example, the “G” from FORGERY would map to the “G” a solver replaces in Leonardo’s “THE ADORATION OF THE MAGI” to become “THE ADORATION OF THE MANI.” This was fun, but the incorrect letters were oddly arbitrary — and having the solver mentally replace the wrong letters with F-O-R-G-E-R-Y to reveal the original titles was potentially unsatisfying.
What we decided felt most fun and impactful was including well-known original painting titles in the grid as guides, with F-O-R-G-E-R-Y squeezed into key squares alongside original letters — giving the sense that the solver is actually comparing the original to a fake, much like an art dealer. Our original Times submission included slashes in the rebus squares. The puzzle editors removed them in the final version, and we both agreed that the puzzle was better for it, since telegraphing all seven of the either/or squares from the start would make a less tricky and satisfying solve.
Creatively Stifled?
Subscribers can take a peek at the answer key.
Trying to get back to the puzzle page? Right here.
What did you think?
