Monday evening I was the featured solver on the Boswords Fall Themeless League stream on Twitch. I’d gotten a chance to solve the sixth puzzle of the themeless league by Ryan Mathiason on camera a day earlier. I was nervous during the solve since I really didn’t want to finish it with a mistake and then have everyone tuning in to the Boswords broadcast, but thankfully, I came out of it with a perfect grid and a time that wasn’t too shabby. Afterward, I got to chat about it with Ryan and the Boswords co-organizer Andrew Kingsley for about 20 minutes. You can watch that conversation here, though fair warning that there will be spoilers to that Boswords puzzle! If you didn’t sign up to solve the puzzles earlier, you may want to purchase them here and then wait until after the league is over to click on that link.
It’s a busy day at Puzzle Headquarters, so the rest of this blog post will be fairly short. Eight familiar phrases have been reparsed as though they’re referring to a body part and given wacky clues:
- 22A: [Historical period when pictures of a lower body part are altered?] is DOCTORED FOOT AGE, based on doctored footage.
- 33A: [Auditory organ found on anyone who isn’t architect Maya?] is NON-LIN EAR, based on nonlinear.
- 49A: [Winner’s swiveling joint?] is CHAMPION’S HIP, based on championship.
- 62A: [“That limb doing okay?”?] is “LEG ALRIGHT?” based on legal right.
- 67A: [One of the limbs on actor Pacino’s doppelgänger?] is FALSE AL ARM, based on false alarm.
- 84A: [Wield a stone that one was chewing on?] is PLY MOUTH ROCK, based on Plymouth Rock.
- 95A: [Part of the face emerged?] is CHIN AROSE, based on China rose.
- 110A: [Sexy bottom gracing the covers of magazines?] is HOT BUTT ON ISSUES, based on hot-button issues.
I’ll give you three guesses which of these theme answers was the seed entry (the answer that inspired the whole puzzle) and the first two guesses don’t count. Give up? Yes, one day last month I noticed that “hot-button issues” could be reparsed as HOT BUTT ON ISSUES, and that gave me an instant “well that has to go in a crossword now” reaction.
What did you think?
The post Solution to Evan Birnholz’s Nov. 16 crossword, ‘Body Modification’
appeared first on Washington Post.
