CROSSWORD #1822: Themeless Moinday

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This ad has recently come to my attention, and while it’s kinda sorta cute, it sure does get crosswords entirely wrong. Gotta love it.

Did I ever tell you about the time that I was asked to make a crossword for a Chris Elliott movie? A Christmas movie at that. Chris’s character was a gigantic puzzle nerd, and in the almost final scene, he solves a puzzle which sparks some sort of memory which leads to reconnecting with somebody else, and this part’s all speculation because I never actually read the script. It’s a Christmas movie. You know the plotlines are going to be soppy. But when I was talking with the props department, I made it abundantly clear I absolutely had no interest in falling into those “crosswords in movies/TVs” cliches (unchecked squares, two letter words, etc. See the above commercial). They were into the “attention to detail” I was willing, nay demanding, to adhere to. The ask was that it had to be a Sunday-sized puzzle, one of the answers that had to go in the grid was RIGOLETTO (anywhere), OSIRIS had to cross at the first of the Os, and that WAMPUMP had to the be the last entry across.

The movie never did come out. Christmas + crosswords + Chris Elliott doesn’t really sound like a money printing formula. I’m sure if it does eventually see the light of day, they’ll have fucked up all the puzzle stuff that I so pain-stakingly toiled over. And since I’m insane, I figured why not combine this ask into a themed puzzle I was already going to make? You know I had to, right? One less Sunday puzzle to write, right? This is the puzzle I’m talking about, and it ran in the Globe/Hub Crossword a couple years ago unbeknownst to everybody. And now you know.

Share the puzzle. New one on Thursday.