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

Edited by Will Shortz No. 0109

10 Come back

12 _ _ _ Alcindor (Kareem Abduljabbar, 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