MoxVib

I usually start each blog post with a piece of news from the crossword world, or I share some lighthearted observation about puzzles in general, but today is different. It’s very difficult to put into words what this puzzle’s subject means for me, so let’s dive right in to the puzzle itself.

A few weeks ago I had one of those nice little strokes of luck by noticing that the phrase HOME IS WHERE THE HEART IS is exactly 21 letters long. With that, I had my theme revealer at 125A: [Phrase about feeling a strong connection to a particular place, and a hint for substituting letters in this puzzle’s circled squares]. There are three long Across phrases that contain a type of home in circled letters:

• 45A: [Thunder and Lightning, e.g.] is FRANCHISES, featuring a circled RANCH. The franchises in question are the Oklahoma City Thunder and the Tampa Bay Lightning.
• 50A: [Poison Ivy of the Batman universe, e.g.] is VILLAINESS, featuring a circled VILLA.
• 98A: [Obtained another doctor’s diagnosis] is GOT A SECOND OPINION, featuring a circled CONDO.

The puzzle also features a “Schrödinger” theme using the 15 starred clues, each at Down answers crossing those circled letters. Per 125A, the idea is that you can replace those circled home letters with the letters of HEART and the starred Down clues will still work. For the RANCH letters:

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• 31D: [*Sound of laughter] can be HAR or HAH.
• 3D: [*Result of two people with incompatible values exchanging numbers, perhaps] can be BAD DATA or BAD DATE.
• 46D: [*Hoops org.] can be NBA or ABA.
• 47D: [*Angler’s acquisition] can be COD or ROD.
• 48D: [*Something in the end of a shoe] can be HOE or TOE. This is a bizarre one, for sure. It means you can either find a toe at the end of a shoe, as normal ... or, you can find the letters of HOE literally hiding at the end of the word “shoe.” I really like this offbeat clue pairing, but I can’t take credit for it. Super-solver and constructor Erik Agard brought this one to the table.

For the VILLA letters:

• 50D: [*Certain spiritual practice] can be VOODOO or HOODOO.
• 36D: [*Where Marco Polo went] can be ASIA or ASEA.
• 37D: [*Strike] can be BELT or BEAT.
• 29D: [*"No ___" (words of refusal)] can be DEAL or DEAR. Originally this pairing was going to be PEEL and PEER, but I didn’t like my cluing options for this. It involved a difficult-to-understand reference to a British peer in the House of Lords and the 19th-century prime minister Robert Peel, or a grammatically tortured way of hinting at searching through layers, like [___ into (try to see past the layers of)]. Every Schrödinger puzzle requires some looseness of the clue pairs, but I think DEAL and DEAR minimized that.
• 51D: [*Letters associated with watching films] can be AMC or TMC. This refers to either the company AMC Theatres, or the TV station TMC.

And for the CONDO letters:

• 100D: [*Monopoly token] can be CAT or HAT. Another possible clue pair could be [*Word in a Dr. Seuss title].
• 90D: [*Necessity for a stage actor, often] can be PROP or PREP.
• 91D: [*Take ___] can be TEN or TEA.
• 92D: [*It’s built for computers] can be CODE or CORE. A computer’s core is a processor within the central processing unit, or CPU.
• 101D: [*Crew member] can be OAR or TAR.

Now, the HEART letters won’t work in the Across direction for all three of those circled theme answers, although I thought it was pretty remarkable how you could replace the VILLA with HEART to get HEARTINESS, a legitimate word. I wonder if there had been a way to get actual words for all three, but I imagine there was a very, very small pool of choices for this.

Anyhow, as I alluded to in the note above the puzzle, I wrote this as a tribute to my childhood home in Highland Park, Illinois. My parents bought that house about a year before I was born and they have owned it since. They’re still the owners, but they recently moved out while renting it to another family for the next few years. They don’t plan to move back there, so when I wrote this puzzle in early January while visiting that house, that probably marked the final time I will ever set foot in it again.

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When I was younger, I remember I couldn’t wait to leave Highland Park and strike out on my own during college and beyond. It wasn’t because I didn’t like living there; quite the contrary, in fact. Maybe it was, in part, a display of adolescent rebellion, but I wanted to experience something new, to see what it was like to live somewhere else and make my own life beyond my parents' home. It was comforting, though, to know that I could always go back home to that house, celebrate holidays, eat dinners, and spend time with friends and family when I had the chance. There’s nothing like leaving the home you grew up in to remind you of all the memories and the emotional bond with it.

I’ve often said that crosswords aren’t just a collection of random words and trivia, but a reflection of our language and culture and personalities. It’s not uncommon to find clues where the puzzle’s author made references to their favorite movies, TV shows, songs, books, hobbies, sports teams, and everything else that makes that person who they are. On some level, I like to think of crossword constructors as storytellers, even if solving a puzzle requires a different mental process than reading a book. It was in my childhood home where I first tried solving crosswords with my Dad and my brothers, and then later learned how to conquer entire puzzles on my own during my first summer back in Highland Park after graduating college.

I’ll end by noting that although it wasn’t an explicit theme answer, I had some room to bid farewell to my parents' house at the top of the puzzle. 21A: [Affectionate way of saying goodbye] is LOVE YOU.

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