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 Come back

___ Alcindor (Kareem Abduljabbar, formerly) Ballet or ballroom, e.g.

First phase of a home reno 10 12

14 16 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