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Wordplay, The CROSSWORD COLUMN
John Kugelman’s debut puzzle merrily turns and spins.
Jump to: Tricky Clues | Today’s Theme
SUNDAY PUZZLE — John Kugelman is a software engineer and musician from Gainesville, Va. His father, who turns 80 this year, is a sounding board for Mr. Kugelman’s puzzle ideas, and Mr. Kugelman finds that brainstorming with him is a great way to stay connected. “Every time I see him, we throw around all kinds of wordplay, just spitballing and letting our minds roam,” he said. This is Mr. Kugelman’s first crossword for The Times. It grew out of 38-Across.
It has been ages since we’ve had a constructor debut on a Sunday, and it has also been too long since we’ve gotten a visit from the ghost of the Rev. William Archibald Spooner, whose letter-swapping legacy has appeared in past puzzles in triple form, like PALE HAIRY MASS; in double pairs, like BOO BLURRED BLUEBIRD; borrowing from famous names, as in POEHLER SOUR; and in a number of other variations. What gums around, coze around! This puzzle is a worthy addition to the category, and gave me many charty huckles (and that’ll do for me, I promise).
This puzzle’s theme is true to the classic spoonerism, which was often embedded in a phrase. The first example that I always think of is a befuddled usher offering to “sew you to your sheets,” and the reverend’s purported admonishment of inattentive students at New College, where he taught: “You have hissed my mystery lectures; you have tasted a whole worm; you must leave at once by the town drain.”
The theme set is at 23-, 38- 56-, 78-, 94- and 114-Across, with easily recognizable, italicized clues posed as riddles. Depending on how you solved this puzzle, you may have had the treat of discovering the theme at 23-Across, which is a paragon, a poster child of Spooner. “‘Hugh Hefner was quite the media mogul. They called him … ’” solves to MISTER BUNNY MAGS, which plays off both Hef’s fortune and Playboy magazine, its source.
This happened to be one of the last entries in the theme set that I filled in, though. I know I’m not the only one who does this — I nibbled around the edges of the puzzle for an extra long time and tried to guess a few of the entries, with one success (78-Across, “‘That poor lion has a mighty toothache. Boy, … ’,” which is based on a salt slogan).
My first entry was the royal reference at the bottom, at 114-Across: “‘Can you believe I sneaked into Buckingham Palace in a trunk and saw the king? I was a … ’” THRONES STOWAWAY. This is pretty delightful, and actually had me doing some mental flips because of how I read it — I went the homophonic route at first and thought of “thrown” for THRONE, which threw me for a loop.
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