Spoiler Sunday: Potboiler Fun-Day

Giving half the answer in the form of the question.

Here are a few more clues that don’t show up in Ubercross Abecedaria R, but could have:

Wry*—DRY

Boomer ____: old jokes?*—HUMOR

Movie in which people discuss whether a bomb’s detonation will destroy the world while doing nothing to stop its timer*—OPPENHEIMER

Of the 4,771 clues for the R section, 3,694 of them…about 77.4%…contain words that rhyme with their answers. Those clues are marked with an asterisk.

I had the idea that I might add this extra layer to the puzzle when I designed it in 2021, but sometimes you get scooped. Andy Kravis published a crossword with 100% rhyming clues and answers in The New Yorker last year—standard size, naturally, so I don’t feel too bad about it. There were no hints to the theme but the title and subtitle: “Sounds About Right: A themed crossword that’s a little absurd.” I won’t spoil it any more than that: if you want to try it for yourself, you can do so here.

Okay, one more spoiler: unlike me, Kravis made sure that the end word in the clue was always the word to rhyme with the answer. I did that with most of my rhymes…at least 80%, probably 90. But because I hadn’t committed to the rhyming clues when designing the grid, I ended up with some answer words that were unrhymable, and others I could only rhyme internally.

And I knew I couldn’t rhyme the theme entries, the ones that read SLO-MO LOW-FLOW and so on. That would just give a little too much away, to say nothing of the difficulties of finding a fifth rhyme to describe the other four.

But if I had it all to do over again…I love the elegance Kravis gets into his 15x15, and I loved the incentive to compose fresher clues around words that I was pretty used to cluing by then. I think I’d see if I get 100% theme content with this one. What’s the worst that could happen? That I start talking like a freestyle Dr. Seuss for the rest of my life? Hey, everybody needs a gimmick to stand out at parties.