Do You Ever Get The Feeling...

…your hands are made out of sand? Me neither, but apparently lots of people do.

Today’s puzzle is about a different feeling, but I won’t spoil it here. It’s also a shining example of me breaking several standard crossword puzzle rules, but rules were meant to be broken, and I’m a bit of a bad boy 😎.

Today’s tip for interpreting clues: In today’s puzzle, you’ll encounter a few clues with parentheses, like 26A. Burden (with). When used this way, it means the answer also uses the word in parentheses in its typical phrasing.

For example, imagine the answer to the clue “Pay (up)” is PONY - but you would always use the full phrase PONY UP to mean pay up, never PONY on its own. “Pay up” = “PONY up” but “Pay up” =/= “PONY”, so we need the “up” in parentheses here to complete the phrase. Hopefully that makes sense! If it confused you more, I’m sorry and good luck lol

Discussion (and spoilers!) below the break.

Play

Discussion

If you don’t own a pair of fish slides, why don’t you?

The feeling of getting home from work, taking off those stuffy shoes and sliding your feet into a bass, maybe a carp, toes poking out its mouth… indescribable.

Anyway, PAREIDOLIA is “the tendency for perception to impose a meaningful interpretation on a nebulous stimulus, usually visual, so that one detects an object, pattern, or meaning where there is none.” Maybe you’ve visited /r/pareidolia before, or maybe you’re about to spend the next 3 hours scrolling through it. It’s also a card in Balatro, and the theme of today’s puzzle.

Today’s Theme

20 Across and 22 Across together spell PAREIDOLIA, the phenomenon of seeing familiar shapes, like a unicorn in the clouds… or a face in your crossword grid! If you don’t see it, look at the crossword again and squint your eyes.

Tricky Clues

4A. A [Key that doesn’t open, only closes] sounds paradoxical, but makes more sense when you realize it’s not a lock’s key but the top left key on your keyboard - the ESC key.

16A. This is a contender for the dumbest clue I’ve written (yet). If you went into an aircraft and it flew underwater, I would say you HYDRO-PLANED. Sorry if this one flew over your head, it’s pretty deep. I’m done.

38A. It happens in sports and politics - the heavy favourite [Loses to the underdog]. The favourite to win GETS UPSET in more ways than one.

6D. CERN in Switzerland is home of the LHC - the Large Hadron Collider. The scientists there take great pleasure in throwing particles at each other, causing them to COLLIDE, then seeing what happens.

18D. This is a good bit of crossword trivia to stow away somewhere - shout out Chris Linden of Brandon & Chris’ Crossword Extravaganza, YEGword’s spiritual predecessor, for teaching me this one many years ago. Shakespeare was born (allegedly) in Stratford-upon-AVON.

35D. If you didn’t get this one, don’t worry - my faithful test solver didn’t but I left it in anyway. [Starting to fall, shortly?] asks for the start of the season of fall, which happens in September, or SEP for short.

I hope you enjoyed this puzzle!

Until next Friday,

Brandon