Rachel's Puzzle
FRIDAY PUZZLE — In our 15th celebrity puzzle celebrating the 75th birthday of The New York Times Crossword, we get to see an excellent example of the ways in which one’s brain can be stretched and kneaded in order to solve. And, man, was this a good massage or what?
Rachel Maddow, who is host of MSNBC’s “The Rachel Maddow Show,” teamed up with the veteran constructor Joe DiPietro to deliver a Friday workout using a broad range of subject matter. This is Mr. DiPietro’s 129th crossword puzzle for The New York Times, so Ms. Maddow was in good hands for her debut.
I found the puzzle challenging but highly entertaining, and a little bird tells me that editor Will Shortz had to ease up some of the clues that were submitted to make this a Friday-level puzzle.
First, this is a really clean grid. Mr. DiPietro says in his notes below that Ms. Maddow took a crack at filling the grid, so kudos to both of them on a nice fill. I’ll talk about the clues in the next section, but holy moley, I liked so much here: ROCK FANS, IPCRESS FILE, COUGH BUTTON, ST. MORITZ, BE HONEST, BITE ME, SAZERAC, TV HOSTS, IF YOU CAN, MARAUD, CONTESSA, TIDIED UP, SVETLANA, FOIA REQUEST and FRONT-RUNNER. Gorgeous stuff, and enough that involved politics and television that Ms. Maddow’s voice came through clearly.
But it was the cluing that I enjoyed the most, and I was impressed with how many different areas of knowledge this puzzle covered.'>>>
https://www.nytimes.com/2018/03/01/crosswords/daily-puzzle-2018-03-02.html
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that she had this opportunity. She's a smart one!