A Look in the Mirror

Get introspective with this week’s puzzle!

SUNDAY PUZZLE —Howdy! I wrote most of these clues from the newly-minted Games desk in The Michigan Daily’s newsroom (wahoo!). If you have any corrections, comments or feedback for this specific puzzle, reach out to me at albonwu@umich.edu. For general questions, reach out to crosswords@umich.edu. Happy solving!

Tricky Clues

19A. “Officials who WFH?” are umpires, or UMPS for short: WFH meaning “work from home” and “home” meaning home base on a baseball field. Umpires stay near home base where the batter swings, and they call strikes, balls, foul balls, etc. It must be nice having a career where working from home is intrinsically part of your job description.

43A. “Pivotal ballet skill?” is PIROUETTE, a type of dance turn where the dancer spins rapidly on one leg. It’s pivotal — that is, important — as a fundamental technique in dance and gymnastics (where it can even be performed in handstand), but it also involves revolving across a fixed point, or pivot.

18D. “Tesla, but not Edison” throws you for a curveball: Though they’re both the names of inventors, only Tesla is the namesake of a metric UNIT. The tesla (normally uncapitalized like a common noun) measures magnetic flux density, which is analogous to magnetic strength. This clue exploits the rule that all crossword clues must start with a capital letter, which allows “tesla” to be written like a proper noun.

59D. “Locks that come with picks?” uses one of my longtime favorite types of wordplay: the so-called locks are locks of hair in an AFRO. In February, I made a crossword for The Daily where I clued AGES as “Collects silver locks?” using the same type of pun. But today’s clue is even more apt, since it also plays on the two meanings of “pick” in “lock pick” and “afro pick” — the type of comb often used on afros, and which is sometimes left inside the hair as an accessory.

Today’s Theme

At the center of this puzzle is 40-Across: SELFREFLECTED. The highlighted squares of the revealers (17-Across KERFUFFLES, 25-Across FLESHOUT, 62-Across SELFLESSLY) indicate that they each contain the substring FLES, which is of course SELF backward, or “reflected.” Fun bit of wordplay for you this week.

Answer Key:

The post A Look in the Mirror appeared first on The Michigan Daily.