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Puzzled? No more cross words! Read Kosman and Picciotto on “Solving The Nation’s Cryptic Puzzles.” Or watch this video.
ACROSS
1 Novel written by Venus de Milo? (1,8,2,4)
9 Charges a duty for the speaker (7)
10 Nation is the first to be captivated by fish (7)
11 Criticize the musical sense of a piece of software, and vanish (9)
12 Hyper dude I chased originally (5)
13 Finished 501? (4)
14 Be patient when discussing heaviness and expanse of water (4,3,3)
18 Friend on independent capital: “It’s like this puzzle’s number” (10)
19 Damages a planet (4)
Even before February 28, the reasons for Donald Trump’s imploding approval rating were abundantly clear: untrammeled corruption and personal enrichment to the tune of billions of dollars during an affordability crisis, a foreign policy guided only by his own derelict sense of morality, and the deployment of a murderous campaign of occupation, detention, and deportation on American streets.
Now an undeclared, unauthorized, unpopular, and unconstitutional war of aggression against Iran has spread like wildfire through the region and into Europe. A new “forever war”—with an ever-increasing likelihood of American troops on the ground—may very well be upon us.
As we’ve seen over and over, this administration uses lies, misdirection, and attempts to flood the zone to justify its abuses of power at home and abroad. Just as Trump, Marco Rubio, and Pete Hegseth offer erratic and contradictory rationales for the attacks on Iran, the administration is also spreading the lie that the upcoming midterm elections are under threat from noncitizens on voter rolls. When these lies go unchecked, they become the basis for further authoritarian encroachment and war.
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21 One of señorita’s requirements is equality about land’s boundaries (5)
23 Beast, large and green, coming back to swallow funny hat (9)
26 Acknowledge chaotic merger of town and university post office (3,2,2)
27 Al Ritter’s 20 (4-3)
28 It involves much counting and relocating components, up to four times each (7,8)
DOWN
1 Conflict interrupts commercial grant (5)
2 Handcrafted sitar, retuned by orderly to excess (9)
3 Premier of England has garment for getaway (6)
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4 Follow tennis rule where every second counts (5)
5 Using the same characters, ignited an epoch and an unfinished epoch (9)
6 Embellish or label New Testament (8)
7 A substance used by fiddlers is made of frog’s innards and Kissinger’s gut (5)
8 Kidnappers sent crash out of control (9)
13 Baba ghanoush, perhaps, and a bit of hummus on underpants—“like, ew!” (9)
15 Butt of a practical joke with food, mostly eaten by a quiet stream (5,4)
16 Revolting sight: pâté and pasta (9)
17 Prude ran, maneuvering like an eagle (5,3)
20 Cool “naked brick” material (6)
22 Red Lobster’s leader raised a baseball team (5)
24 Watch Republican abandoning classical poet (5)
25 Veto the rise of no crooked politician (5)
SOLUTION TO PUZZLE NO. 3442
ACROSS 1 GAP + E 3 “goal: de-lox” 10 anag. 11 C + HIM + E 12 T + OOLONG 13 I + NV-ITE 14 hidden 16 anag. (&lit.) 19 S-AND-P APER 21 B(LEE)P 22 TOOSH (anag.) + OR + T 24 anag. 26 MO + VIE 27 anag. 28 anag. 29 SLUR[p]
DOWN 1 GRE(ET + IN)G’S 2 P(HOT)O 4 OWNERS (anag.) + HIP 5 DO + LL 6 LICE + N[o]SE 7 phonetic hidden 8 S + WED + E 9 2 defs. 15 VAN + CO(U)VER 17 SORE (anag.) + L + OSER (anag.) 18 SU + PER + STAR (rev.) 20 PHONE ME 21 anag. 22 TEMP + T 23 GIJ (rev.) + O + E 25 HE + GEL
Joshua Kosman and Henri PicciottoJoshua Kosman and Henri Picciotto are The Nation’s puzzlers. To read more about Kosman, click here. To read more about Picciotto, click here. Kosman and Picciotto explain what they’re up to in “Solving The Nation’s Cryptic Crosswords” (also available as a PDF).