Solution to Evan Birnholzs Feb. 4 crossword, Rise and Fall

For you West Coasters out there, registration is now open for the Westwords Crossword Tournament in June in Berkeley, Calif. And good luck to anyone competing in this weekend’s Boswords Winter Wondersolve.

You may encounter some odd answers that don’t appear to fit their clues fairly early on in today’s puzzle. 24A: [*“Great job, genius!”] is … NIC? How does that work? Whenever I want to sarcastically praise someone by saying something like, “Great job, genius,” I don’t think people would understand that point if I shouted “Nic!” instead.

Fortunately, you don’t have to travel far to find an explanation for that theme answer. Two starred nine-letter entries in the top half of the puzzle have had a central three-letter word raised up by one row, while two other starred nine-letter entries in the bottom half have had their central three-letter word dropped by one row. Each starred answer has its own revealer that’s adjacent to it in the grid.

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• 24A: [*“Great job, genius!”] is NICE GOING. It starts with NIC, then EGO is raised up by one row, then it finishes with ING at 25A: [Dutch banking giant]. The revealer for this answer is EGO BOOST at 26A: [Result of flattery ... or a phrase describing the rising part of 24 Across].
• 47A: [*Guys who fix things] is REPAIRMEN, starting with REP, followed by a raised AIR, then ending with MEN at 48A: [___ Without Hats (“The Safety Dance” band)]. This is revealed by AIRLIFT at 46A: [Emergency transport operation ... or a phrase describing the rising part of 47 Across].
• 81A: [*“Samantha Who?” actress Christina] is APPLEGATE, starting with APP, followed by a dropped LEG, then ending with ATE at 82A: [Finished starters, say?]. This is revealed by LEG DROP at 84D: [Diving wrestling attack ... or a phrase describing the falling part of 81 Across].
• 105A: [*Musical interval between do and re] is WHOLE TONE, starting with WHO, followed by a dropped LET, then ending with ONE at 106A: [Quarter of four]. This is revealed by LET SLIDE at 103A: [Ignore ... or a phrase describing the falling part of 105 Across].

All four pairs of theme answers and their own mini-revealers are then tied together by an overall revealer at 64A: [“There are positives as well as negatives” ... or a description of this puzzle’s theme] which is IT HAS ITS UPS AND DOWNS.

Christina Applegate making an appearance in today’s puzzle amuses me in that just two weeks before I wrote it, I saw she had written this amusing tweet in 2016 about how she had constructed her first crossword for her daughter. Somebody needs to do a celebrity collaboration puzzle with Christina as a co-constructor. Society demands it.

Some other answers and clues:

• 13A: [Any one of the crown prince of Carpania’s many dogs in “The Great Race”] is PUG. I didn’t just pull this reference out of a hat. “The Great Race” has long been one of my favorite movies. Here’s a scene with Jack Lemmon as the crown prince falling asleep next to his many pugs. Here’s another scene with Lemmon’s other character (Professor Fate) saying villainous things to the same pugs — I’m convinced he improvised it and don’t know how the entire cast and crew didn’t burst out laughing on camera. (Incidentally, I had to vaguely refer to the character as the crown prince because it’s not clear how to spell his name. The end credits don’t clear it up and IMDb has different sources listing it as “Prince Hapnick” and “Prince Hoepnick.”)
• 53A: [Quarterly press org.?] is U.S. MINT, an organization that literally presses quarters. It took me a little while to find this wording but I liked it.
• 56A: [Fit-ness?] is IRE, as in a state one would be in while throwing a fit.
• 72A: [Lax stick] is CROSSE. This is something I learned while writing the puzzle: The stick that a lacrosse player uses is called a “crosse,” though I imagine it’s less common in the United States than just calling it a stick. “Lax” is just a shortened form of “lacrosse.”
• 91A: [He’s commemorated by a stone at Poets’ Corner in Westminster Abbey that reads “the communication of the dead is tongued with fire beyond the language of the living”] is T.S. ELIOT. This is one of the longest clues I’ve ever written for The Washington Post, but the fact was neat enough that I went with the whole thing.
• 106A: [Quarter of four] is ONE, which is mathematically true, and right underneath it at 112A: [Quarter of “four,” say?] is LETTER, which is also mathematically true but in a more cryptic way. The word “four” has four letters, so a quarter of “four” would be a single letter.
• 7D: [Craving madly?] is HANGRY. My favorite clue today.
• 15D: [Like many characters in the Netflix series “Heartstopper”] is GAY. My wife and I watched the first two seasons last year — it’s a super cute show. I recommend it.
• 47D: [Pharaoh who inspired the poem “Ozymandias”] is RAMSES. I vaguely recall reading this poem in high school, but did not know it was about Ramses until writing this puzzle.
• 79D: [Like the fact that oreo.com uses cookies to save browser info] is APT. Sometimes, when you write crosswords, Oreo cookies pop up in your head a lot. Can’t imagine why.

Finally, here’s a heads-up that next week’s puzzle is going to be an unusual challenge, with not one but two meta answers to figure out, but I hope you’ll enjoy it.

What did you think?

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