Popular newspaper puzzle / THU 7-26-18 / "It wasn't me" / Cirque du Soleil performers / Mystery novelist Cross / Singers Nina and Lisa / R&B singer Khan

Constructor: Nate Cardin

Relative difficulty: 7:36 (Thursday average: 13:39; Thursday best: 5:14)



THEME: #— What kids today call a [70A: With 71-Across, symbol used four times in this puzzle with four different meanings; 71A: See 71-Across]: HASH TAG

Word of the Day: OCTOTHORPE (54A: Numerical prefix ... or, with 62-Across, another name for this puzzle's key symbol; 62A: Olympian Jim or Ian) —

Most scholars believe the word was invented by workers at the Bell Telephone Laboratories by 1968,who needed a word for the symbol on the telephone keypad. Don MacPherson is said to have created the word by combining octo and the last name of Jim Thorpe, an Olympic medalist. Howard Eby and Lauren Asplund claim to have invented the word as a joke in 1964, combining octo with the syllable therp which, because of the "th" digraph, was hard to pronounce in different languages.The Merriam-Webster New Book of Word Histories, 1991, has a long article that is consistent with Doug Kerr's essay,which says "octotherp" was the original spelling, and that the word arose in the 1960s among telephone engineers as a joke. Other hypotheses for the origin of the word include the last name of James Oglethorpe, or using the Old English word for village, thorp, because the symbol looks like a village surrounded by eight fields. The word was popularized within and outside Bell Labs. The first appearance of "octothorp" in a US patent is in a 1973 filing. This patent also refers to the six-pointed asterisk (✻) used on telephone buttons as a "sextile." (Wikipedia)

I am so happy to blog the New York Times crossword debut of my dear friend Nate Cardin! Nate has had puzzles in the Chronicle of Higher Education, the AV Club (with Paolo Pasco), and as a guest constructor for Matt Gaffney's Weekly Crossword Contest. He is also the editor of Queer Qrosswords -- which, if you don't have yet, follow the link to make a donation of $10 or more and get 22 puzzles by awesome constructors, many of whom debuted in the collection. Full disclosure: Nate had shared this theme idea with me some time ago. It's very common for constructors to share ideas and early drafts of puzzles with friends (and I have found the crossword community to be enormously generous with time and support). Though I hadn't seen this puzzle since it was submitted (and edited), with that advance knowledge my time is likely faster than a Thursday average.

Theme answers:

• [1D: A.T.M. necessity]/[20A: Accountant]: PIN #/# CRUNCHER (# = number)
• [26D: Place to get a rescue animal]/[41A: Dessert made primarily of flour, butter, eggs and sugar]: DOG #/# CAKE (# = pound)
• [27D: Far parts of the universe]/[48A: Astronauts' workplace]: DEEP #/# STATION (# = space)
• [36D: Finely honed]/[57A: Deadeyes]: RAZOR #/# SHOOTERS (# = sharp)

This is a very Thursday theme, in that is has a gimmick: solvers are expected to intuit that they should enter a symbol rather than rebus the letters (i.e. cram more than one into a square) for the shared words in the themers. I suppose I knew, but hadn't really reflected upon the potential of, the fact that # can stand for four different words in different contexts. It has only come to be referred to as a hashtag since its widespread use on Twitter starting about a decade ago (for a library-science lecture about the hashtag as metadata in social networking folksonomies, slide into my DMs). As we expect on a Thursday, the fill has strengths and weaknesses to accommodate some trickery; I'm not entirely sure that [66A: Plow and plant again]: REFARM is a thing, and ESTE EMIT ETON ETATS EATER. AMGEN? I don't know that I would've been able to make this grid any cleaner, but the theme concept is so strong that frankly, dear readers, I don't give A DAMN [31D: What Rhett Butler didn't give].


Bullets:

• [5D: Stone-capturing board game]: MANCALA — I remember playing this at my open-classroom hippie/alternative elementary school. Apparently it has been played for millennia, across dozens of cultures.
• [46D: Mother-and-daughter singers Nina and Lisa]: SIMONES— Lisa has sung on Broadway, originating the title role in the crossword-friendly musical Aida, as well as roles in Rent and Jesus Christ Superstar.
• [53D: R&B singer Khan]: CHAKA— Chaka Khan sang for a decade with Rufus, had a number of hits, broke into disco with "I'm Every Woman," then scored a crossover pop hit in 1984 with "I Feel for You," a cover of a 1979 song by the artist formerly and futurely known as Prince.  
• [61D: Make out, in Manchester]: SNOG— This may be utter shite, but some Brit once told me in a pub that in the UK they had to change the name of the second Austin Powers film to The Spy Who Snogged Me because shag is a far dirtier word over there than it is here.
• [8A: Popular newspaper puzzle]: JUMBLE— What, you thought it would be CROSSWORD? Crossword puzzles are not popular. I mean, this post will probably get barely 10,000 hits.

Signed, Laura, Sorceress of CrossWorld

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