Cryptic Crosswords and other Mysteries of Life🔍
Sometimes the times and tides of fortune swing in your favor. Sorry, that metaphor was more mixed than Hilaria Baldwin’s accent. When I created the puzzle, and had Baldwin and Geena clued in the bottom left corner, I was thinking of Alec, not Hilaria/Hillary, and the recently deceased Maitlands from Beetlejuice. Then the media firestorm…
The answers, explained: ACROSS 1A – CLOCK – COCK (total jerk) + L (large) 4A – JANE FONDA – NO (denial) + FEN (mire) retracted = NEFON with JA and DA (external agreements) = JA NEF ON DA 9A – NO SERVICE – NOSE (sniff out) + R (moral core) + VICE (wicked behavior etc.)…
The grid:
The song hinted at by the puzzle is The Magic Number, by De La Soul, a HIP HOP (28A) group from Long Island, NYC, part of the Native Tongues Posse that began in the late 1980’s/early 1990’s. De La Soul is my absolute favorite hip hop group, and the source of my twitter name, delajeff,…
The grid: The answers, explained: 1A – Edna Mode – Edna (Dane extravagant, or anagrammed) + Mode (style). Edna Mode was a fashion designer who created the Parr family’s superhero costumes in The Incredibles and The Incredibles 2. She did not believe in capes. 5A – X Files – File (alien, or anagrammed life), with…
