Evan Birnholzs guide to the March 20 Post Magazine puzzle, Im Positive

August 20, 2024

Update, March 21 @ 1:15 pm ET: Sorry about the strange delay on the blog post, folks. Some technical glitch prevented it from going up at 9 am on Sunday as originally scheduled, but it’s here now. There’s another review of the puzzle at Diary of a Crossword Fiend.

The American Crossword Puzzle Tournament is happening in two weeks, and yes, I will be there. It will likely be a pretty emotional gathering for many solvers because it will be the first ACPT without Merl Reagle. While I’m of course very fortunate to have succeeded him in this position, it remains my greatest regret as a puzzle writer that I didn’t get to know Merl better on a personal level while I still had the chance. So if you’re attending, come say hi to me.

Anyhow, I’m feeling positive today. Hopefully you all are too, because that was the theme of the puzzle.

I turned nine familiar phrases into positive-sounding responses to famous real people or fictional characters whose names appear at the ends of those phrases. You have to imagine that I inserted a comma into the phrases, like so:

23A: [Positive response to “Charles in Charge" star Baio for his expression of shock?] is “GREAT, SCOTT!”
25A: [Positive response to Robinson Crusoe’s companion for his piety before Easter?] is “GOOD, FRIDAY!” The first of two one-named fictional characters.
39A: [Positive response to “High Society" star Kelly for her hymnal performance?] is “AMAZING, GRACE!”
53A: [Positive response to singer Furtado for her prudishness?] is “NICE, NELLY!”
69A: [Positive response to JFK’s daughter for her cover of a Neil Diamond tune?] is “SWEET, CAROLINE!”
83A: [Positive response to composer Ellington for becoming the leader of Luxembourg?] is “GRAND, DUKE!”
100A: [Positive response to a weather-controlling “X-Men" character for conjuring a rare and powerful tempest?] is “PERFECT, STORM!” The other one-named fictional character.
116A: [Positive response to author Puzo for his skill at Nintendo games?] is “SUPER, MARIO!”
118A: [Positive response to singer Coolidge for her rendition of a Beatles hit?] is “LOVELY, RITA!”

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I thought it would have been a tad boring if the clues all shared a simple [Positive response to {insert person}?] pattern, so to make them a little more interesting, I tried to get the compliments to reflect the original phrases in some way. So now you’re complimenting Grace Kelly for a specific reason: she did an amazing hymnal performance in singing “Amazing Grace.” Plus, if you didn’t know the famous figure in question, the extra information in the clue could give you another hint for figuring out the answer. After all, I was feeling positive. I like to help.

Some answers that I left on the cutting room floor were “FANTASTIC, MR. FOX!” and “SWEET, JESUS!” For the former, I thought it’d be a little strange to have an implied last name (for, say, actor Michael J. Fox or former Mexican president Vicente Fox) where everyone else would receive a compliment using a first name. True, I had two one-named fictional characters, but I didn’t worry about that discrepancy that much. For the latter — well, there’s a chance it might have taken some solvers aback, but even if it didn’t, I had trouble giving it a non-tortured clue. [Positive response to “He Got Game" star Shuttlesworth for his mildly blasphemous outburst?], maybe?

I should also mention that Lynn Lempel used some similar name-based wordplay earlier this week in the New York Times, although her theme wasn’t specifically about paying compliments to celebrities, and we didn’t share any theme answers in common. I wrote this one a few weeks ago before it went to publication, so I had no idea about Lynn’s puzzle until after I wrote mine.