South Florida Sun-Sentinel (Sunday)
NEW YORK TIMES CROSSWORD PUZZLE
Byron Walden, a math and computer-science professor at Santa Clara University, is a regular crossword contributor to The Times. He says the idea for this puzzle started with the title. ‘‘I learned the phrase ‘soft option’ from the 1980s Pet Shop Boys hit ‘West End Girls,’’’ and everything sprang from there. Byron packs his grids with fresh vocabulary, like 20A, 35A, 53A, 70A, 86A, 105A, 51D and 61D, none of which have ever appeared in a Times crossword before. — W.S.
ACROSS
1 Hearten
7 ‘‘. . . and it flopped’’
11 Attack with snowballs, say
15 Graceful bird
19 Crossword header
20 Clearer in hindsight?
22 ____ Winans, 12-time Grammy-winning gospel singer
23 Apollo 11 landing spot
25 Eligible receiver?
26 Quickly maturing security, for short
27 Helps
28 Flying terrors of myth
29 With 42-Down, Oscars category from 1963 to 2019
30 Misfortunes
31 Semicircular recess
32 Items used by barkeepers, barbecuers and blacksmiths
34 Wackadoodle
35 Enhanced tape format released in 1987
37 Beat poet Cassady
38 Spewed forcefully
40 Take off the board
43 À la ____ (spitroasted)
47 Spree
48 Black-____ albatross
Online subscriptions: Today’s puzzle and more than 4,000 past puzzles, nytimes.com/crosswords ($39.95 a year).
49 Knee-jerk response
50 Remove cargo from
53 Describing the
32-Down’s image
55 Milk source
56 Impends
57 Inscribed with some ancient characters
58 Whirling toon, familiarly
59 Order, in a way
60 Nonfiction films, informally
61 Metaphor from an hourglass
64 ‘‘Come ____!’’
65 This: Sp.
66 Sitcom planet of the
’70s and ’80s
67 Animal life
68 Pondered
69 It’s probably over your head
70 One star, typically
73 Relentless go-getters
74 Carl XVI ____ (king of Sweden beginning in 1973)
76 Little bump
77 Eve’s third son
78 Soccer chant
79 ____ 3000, half of the hip-hop duo Outkast
80 Persuade with patter
84 A majority
86 Offensive football positions
88 Ruby of ‘‘The Jackie Robinson Story’’
89 Edgar Rice Burroughs novel, with ‘‘The’’
94 Talk Like a Pirate Day outbursts
95 Dormer section
96 Turn aside
97 Actress Amanda
98 Taking a bow at the symphony?
99 Waif
100 ‘‘A warehouse of facts, with poet and ____ in joint ownership’’ (‘‘The Devil’s Dictionary’’ definition for
‘‘imagination’’)
101 Its motto is ‘‘Agriculture and Commerce’’
104 Opposite of exo
105 Woe for a speeder
106 ____ Blinken, Biden’s secretary of state
107 Bit of ‘‘kit chat’’
108 1974 spoof with the tagline ‘‘Would you buy a used secret from these men?’’
109 Bits of machinery
110 Latin phrase meaning ‘‘based on forecasts’’
DOWN
1 Having legs
2 Cool shade
3 Weakness
4 Sledge, wedge, etc.
5 Sports org. with the Pittsburgh Maulers and Philadelphia Stars
6 SFO setting: Abbr.
7 Sang hosannas to
8 Car part the Brits call a ‘‘wing’’
9 Heading for commonly sought info
10 Capote nickname
11 ____ light
12 Sweeping works
13 Reveals
14 Don’t give up
15 Intellectual movement
16 Tyke
17 Performing well on
18 Candy with two flavors in one box
21 Flexible cutters
24 Kid Cudi or Lil Baby, e.g.
29 Fixed look
31 Enveloping atmospheres
32 Pope Pius XII called it ‘‘a holy thing perhaps like nothing else’’
33 Odor-fighting spray brand
35 Parts of some brackets
36 ‘‘Yankee Doodle’’ has
16 of them
39 Entertainers with bright futures
41 Partner of poivre
42 See 29-Across
44 Juice regimen
45 Like épées vis-à-vis foils
46 Stretches out
48 Curve
50 Experience
51 Music genre for Erykah Badu and D’Angelo
52 Many people find it intolerable
53 About 98% of the human genome
54 Word meaning ‘‘desire’’ in a classic Sanskrit text
57 ____ avis
61 Big tear-jerker
62 Went under
63 Word with fine or signature
68 Hands, in slang
71 1980s White House nickname
72 Dilute something, in a way
73 Battery parts?
75 Up in the air
77 Maker of the Ring in ‘‘The Lord of the Rings’’
80 Surgical instrument with thumbholes
81 Joy who wrote ‘‘Born
Free’’
82 Forgiving
83 Talent for discernment
85 Mic-check noise
87 Cattle-ranch identifier
89 ‘‘The Crucible’’ setting 102 Not prescription, in
90 Sheepish? brief
91 ‘‘Swell!’’ Scottish negative 92 ‘‘I can do this. Hit me.’’
93 Some 10-pointers in Greek Scrabble
95 Dish made from durum, say
98 Prefix with futurism 99 Kids of boomers 101 Grads-to-be: Abbr. 103