The New York Times Crossword
ACROSS
1 Lawn game played with a ball known as a pallino
6 Thin snack
11 Formal words of commitment
13 Omitted, as a syllable
15 Toyed (with)
17 Neighborhood in lower Manhattan
18 Exhibited heliotropism, as a flower
20 Plus-or-minus one?
21 Joe’s co-host on “Morning Joe”
22 Part of a Tolkien army
23 Big fuss
25 What gives a gin fizz its fizz
26 Novelist Brontë
27 Prepared for an oral exam?
30 Construction beam
32 Abolitionist who wrote
“Twelve Years a Slave”
37 Fantasy sports scoring
standard, informally
38 Bygone phrase for “gone by”
39 “Enough! I get it!”
42 Overly proper
44 Cambridge or Oxford, to a Londoner
45 Big initials in theaters
46 Dip that might be made in a
molcajete, informally
47 Poor review
49 Went uneaten, as some groceries
54 Classic Asimov collection
55 Part of a calendar septet, and a phonetic hint to this puzzle’s theme 56 Florida’s “Sunshine City,” for short
57 Futile
58 Philly basketball player
59 Leafs (through)
DOWN
1 Bully in “Back to the Future”
2 Home for the artist Edvard Munch
3 Spicy ramen condiment 4 Monte ___
5 John who sang “Bennie and the Jets”
6 Exploded
7 Lei man’s term?
8 Rank’s counterpart, on a chessboard
9 New Jersey city named for its most famous former resident
10 Come back
12 ___ Alcindor (Kareem
Abdul-Jabbar, formerly)
14 Ballet or ballroom, e.g.
16 First phase of a home reno
19 Finished off
23 Word after kick or bad
24 “The Way,” in Chinese Pinyin 25 Track-and-field athlete with a strong arm
26 Pretentiously avant-garde 28 Dweeb
29 Te ___ (“I love you,” in Spanish)
31 Yap from a lap?
33 Jazz singer Jones
34 Elvis hit that was the B-side of “Don’t Be Cruel”
35 Caterer’s container
36 Smallest Canadian province,
for short
39 Stop in a desert
40 Once-popular big box stores
41 Ocean creatures with nearly triple the neural wiring of humans
43 Rapper whose name sounds like a beverage
46 Thousand-dollar bill, slangily
47 Before surgery, informally
48 Writer/podcaster Harris
50 Mountain goat
51 A good time
52 Be wide-open
53 Parts of the “Mona Lisa” that seem to follow you around