Evan Birnholzs guide to the June 18 Post Magazine crossword, Its a Mystery
Before we get to today’s puzzle, here’s an announcement about two crossword tournaments on the horizon:
I mentioned last week that today’s puzzle would be a little odd though not necessarily harder than usual. Let’s see how it worked.
There are few disparate theme elements to today’s TV-based puzzle. We’ll do this in reverse order and start with the revealer at 119A: [Mystery series revived in 2017, and a hint to the circled squares]. That’s TWIN PEAKS, the cult favorite mystery series whose long-awaited third season was just released on Showtime. If you work out the circled squares, you’ll see that they spell out in peak formation a type of twin: FRATERNAL, CONJOINED, and IDENTICAL. Perhaps it’s a bit odd that there are three twin terms and not two, but consider that an homage to the third season.
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There are also four Down answers which refer specifically to TWIN PEAKS and, again, we’ll do this a bit out of order:
- 3D: [Type of show that 119 Across is] is CRIME DRAMA.
- 17D: [Where 119 Across takes place] is WASHINGTON. That’s Washington state, by the way, not D.C.
- 83D: [Intrepid special agent in 119 Across] is DALE COOPER. Something I learned just the other day: Dale Cooper is said to be an alum of Haverford College, my alma mater.
- 77D: [Artistic co-creator of 119 Across and, in honor of season 3, the speaker of the quote spelled out in the third letters of the Down clues] is DAVID LYNCH.
So, take the third letter of all Down clues, and you’ll get the following from David Lynch himself: “Happy accidents are real gifts and they can open the door to a future that didn’t even exist.”
This quote put some real constraints on the clues. For instance, ALTA at 50D has the clue [Olympic snowboarders are prohibited from training at this Utah ski resort] — that’s a ton of verbiage just to make the third letter a Y. But finding the quote in the first place was, for me, a real-life happy accident. After I’d built the grid, my plan for the theme was just what you see in the puzzle itself: the four Down answers, the TWIN PEAKS revealer, and the circled squares. Once I saw that the quote had exactly 74 letters (the same number of Down answers), I decided to just go for it. Like the three “twin” words in the grid, maybe it was odd to hide the quotation in the third letters of the clues instead of the first letters, but we’ll call that a nod to Season 3 as well. In any case, I don’t think there was a good way to start the clue for LIED at 116D: [Mixed up one’s facts, to put it lightly] with an X.
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Like I said, this puzzle is a bit strange. But “Twin Peaks” is strange, so I think it’s apt. Even if you’ve never seen the show, my hope is that the clues were still easy enough to crack and that you could enjoy the puzzle for what it is.
Other notable answers and clues:
Share this articleShareWait, you didn’t think that was the end of the “Twin Peaks” madness, did you? I’m gonna skip the other answers and clues for now because there’s another part of this theme that I hid in the puzzle as an Easter egg. I left you a message of my own, and this time, it’s hidden in the third letters of the Across clues. It reads:
“To hear a special message, enter with all caps this address: tiny url dot com slash logtp.”
So, go to your browser and type in TINYURL.COM/LOGTP, and you’ll find yourself at this YouTube video. It’s the Log Lady, an incredibly strange “Twin Peaks” character — even by “Twin Peaks” standards — and here’s what she says:
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“Letters are symbols. They are building blocks of words which form our languages. Languages help us communicate. Even with complicated languages used by intelligent people, misunderstanding is a common occurrence. We write things down sometimes — letters, words — hoping they will serve us and those with whom we wish to communicate. Letters and words calling out for understanding.”
In the original series, the Log Lady delivered cryptic messages like this as an introduction to each episode. I’ve been watching the first two seasons on Netflix with some friends since I did not see the show during its original run, but these Log Lady intros weren’t included in the Netflix version. So I didn’t even know they existed until I started cluing this puzzle. After doing some research, I thought this intro was fitting for crosswords in general. There was no way to hide the whole quotation or even an excerpt of it in the clues — it just wasn’t the right number of letters. But I figured I could give you a doorway to listen to it yourself. I hope you found it!
See you next week and — fair warning — it’s going to be a challenging puzzle.
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