Good teachers are translators, of a kind. They have the ability to take dense subject matter, like economics, chemistry or Russian literature, and make it feel as familiar to us as folklore. I had a biology teacher in high school who liked to do a little reverse psychology, presenting us with scientific terminology only to reveal that it represented something we recognized. “Is anyone thirsty for some dihydrogen monoxide?” she’d ask, and then, seeing our alarmed expressions, take a big swig from her bottle of water. “Ah, that’s better!” How dare she make it so easy to memorize H2O. Crossword constructors take things in the opposite direction. They cloak simple, familiar ideas in vague, shadowy language, making us question how much we really know. A constructor might use an obscure word to conceal a plain one, as in last Thursday’s crossword puzzle, where Joe Marquez used [Turpitude] as the clue for PURE EVIL. Brilliant wordplay is always on the table, too: In Friday’s crossword, [Top guns?] solved to T-SHIRT CANNONS (some refer to this kind of wordplay as “unparalleled misalignment”). And in a pinch, constructors can cast doubt with the flourish of a qualifier, like “say,” “perhaps,” “for short” and “in a way.” Another tale of translation: In 2022, the data journalist Mona Chalabi presented readers with nine ways to visualize the sheer scale of Jeff Bezos’ wealth across space and time. “In order to accumulate as much money as Bezos ($172 billion),” Ms. Chalabi wrote, a factory worker on Amazon’s standard salary “would have had to start working in the Pliocene Epoch,” 4.5 million years ago. She put things in conceivable perspectives: If the median wealth is a flake in a snow globe, Bezos’ wealth is the Statue of Liberty. If the median wealth is the height of a piece of Toblerone, Bezos’ is five stacked climbs of Mount Everest. And so on. Quaint as the comparisons seem, they do something profound: They allow us to fathom the unfathomable. They give us language for something we never could have put into words ourselves. (A more objective endorsement: Ms. Chalabi won a Pulitzer Prize for the article.) And we like this! It’s in our nature to learn by analogy and draw on ideas we’re already familiar with in order to understand novel ones. Improv games rely on our natural instincts to make inferences based on the information we have: “If this is true, what else is true?” This is why, when we impart Crossword tips to newer solvers, we tell you to start with your “gimmes,” i.e., the answers that feel obvious to you. Trust me, there’s at least one for everyone in every puzzle. Solve what you know first, and once you do, the rest of the answers, even if you don’t know them, will feel knowable. Editor’s Choice
One of my all-time favorite Mondays is this 2013 gem by Kevin Der. It has a brilliantly simple theme concept that still manages to be surprising and funny as you uncover the examples. 45-Across makes me laugh every time I see it. — Joel Fagliano
Column of the WeekThis week, Amy Virshup, the Travel editor for The New York Times, writes about Jamey Smith’s Monday puzzle. Amy wrote, “Ever since The New York Times’s puzzles went online, I’ve been a seven-days-a-week solver. One of the things I love about doing the puzzles is that they force me to accept when I am wrong, correct my errors and move on.”
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