The New York Times Crossword

By Byron Walden

ACROSS

1 People for whom a state is named

6 Dolts 15 Clear one’s head? 16 Abruptly resign 17 Confounded

18 Person with a 99801 ZIP code

19 School co-founded by Albert Einstein in 1918, informally

21 ___ Babbitt, inventor of the circular saw

22 With 12-Down, unfit

23

25 Judge

26 Overly sentimental fare

28 Round bits

30 Like the county where Jack Daniel’s is manufactured

31 U.S. motto starter

33 Role for Robin Williams in Kenneth Branagh’s “Hamlet,” 1996

35 They have everyone buzzing

41 Shape of the heart’s electromagnetic field

42

Salty and spicy

Nativity scene decoration 43 Click that is often doubled

46 A piece of cake 49 “Blah” alternative

50 Word with belly or barrel

52 Fine parchment material

54 Male name hidden in this clue

55 How a storm might be tracked

57 “How lousy of me” 59 Private

61 Dead letter, in a mail sorter’s vernacular

62 63 Buzzy group

64 Common name for potassium nitrate

65 Piazza, for one 1 “Perhaps I have what you’re looking for?”

2 “Abso-freakinlutely not!”

3 Battle sites? 4

5 “The sea is the universal ___”: Jacques Cousteau

6 Fruit-flavored gumdrop

7 Toon husband Manjula

8

Surreal

DOWN

Contend

Surefire 9

Ones working with 38 bread

10 Not much, as of gel

11 Ika, in a sushi restaurant

12 See 22-Across

13 Disjunctive conjunction

14 R-rated, as a love scene

20 24

Edited by Will Shortz No. 0422

Crackerjack

Excitement 27 Put on the board

29 Tends to a minor issue?

32 Music’s Outkast and Erasure, e.g.

34 It has its limits

36 Like the strongest cases

37 Genre for “Fun Home” and “Stone Butch Blues”

39

40 Most chic 43 30-yr. securities 44 Overseas title 45 47 Deli machine

48 Positive restaurant review?

51

Thesis defense, e.g.

One with an “If You Choose the Lesser of Two Evils — You Are Still Choosing Evil” bumper sticker, perhaps

Ear lobe?

Knock on 53 Canine affliction 56 Hovel

58 Spoil, superstitiously

60 Barinholtz of “The Mindy Project”