Solution to Evan Birnholzs June 5 crossword, Color Separation
When you first look at this puzzle’s blank grid, you’ll notice it breaks a cardinal rule of most crosswords: The grid has been separated in half by an entire row of black squares. There are also a handful of Down answers that don’t seem to mesh with their clues. 44D: [Neighbor of Ghana] is four letters long, and if you’re not completely sure about African geography, you might cycle through CHAD or MALI or TOGO before seeing that none of them fit the crossing answers. What’s going on?
There are two key hints, one at 23A: [1979 Top 40 hit sung by Kermit the Frog … and what you’ll need to join both halves of this puzzle] which is RAINBOW CONNECTION, and the other is at 115A: [Spanning an entire range … and a hint to this puzzle’s seven hidden letters] which is ACROSS THE SPECTRUM. Seven thematic Down phrases that feature a color break through the central row of black squares, with secret letters that spell out the rainbow spectrum acronym ROYGBIV from left-to-right:
- 32D: [Washington state resort area with a colorful name] is POINT BROWN. It starts with POINT B, contains a hidden letter R in the row of black squares, and then ends at 66D: [BYOB or MYOB part] which is OWN.
- 39D: [Reef organism that doesn’t have a hard skeleton] is SOFT CORAL. It starts with SOFT C, contains a hidden letter O, and ends with RAL at 69D: [N.C. capital].
- 44D: [Neighbor of Ghana] is IVORY COAST. It starts with IVOR, contains a hidden letter Y, and ends with COAST at 71D: [Proceed without much effort].
- 50D: [Earned the top medal at an Olympic event] is WON GOLD. It starts with WON, contains a hidden letter G, and ends with OLD at 74D: [Navy or guard preceder]. This one might be a little more difficult to spot than the others because the clue for 50D could plausibly describe WON by itself without GOLD.
- 41D: [Like an unlit cave] is PITCH BLACK. It starts with PITCH, contains a hidden letter B, and ends with LACK at 76D: [Dearth]. It’s apt that BLACK ended up being a color breaking through the long row of black squares.
- 52D: [Grayscale alternative, in vintage photos] is SEPIA TONE. It starts with SEP, contains a hidden letter I, and ends with ATONE at 79D: [Demonstrate penitence].
- 55D: [Comstock Lode excavation] is SILVER MINE. It starts with SIL, contains a hidden letter V, and ends with ERMINE at 81D: [White-furred creature held by Cecilia Gallerani in a Leonardo da Vinci painting].
When I first started storyboarding this idea, I figured it’d be easy enough to find phrases with different colors and specific letters that spell out ROYGBIV. What really made things much more difficult, though, was that I wanted every apparent answer in the puzzle on both sides of the central row of black squares to be a legitimate crossword entry. That’s why I went with POINT BROWN at 32D, even if that area of Washington state isn’t on the tip of every solver’s tongue, because POINT B and OWN are answers you might see in an otherwise normal puzzle. Other short entries like SEP and SIL and RAL aren’t necessarily scintillating answers on their own, but they’re holding down what was a pretty constrained theme set and they’ve each made plenty of appearances in puzzles before.
If you solved this online, you had the opportunity to enter those secret ROYGBIV letters at the correct places. You could do that in print, too, but it’s easier to visualize the full solution electronically. Credit to AmuseLabs for making that possible.
What did you think?
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