SUNDAY NEW YORK TIMES CROSSWORD

SOFT OPTIONS

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 ____ (spit-roasted)

47 Spree

48 Black-____ albatross 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 exo105 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 90 Sheepish?

91 ‘‘Swell!’’

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. 102 Not prescription, in

brief

103 Scottish negative