Solution to Evan Birnholz’s April 17 crossword, “Parting Words”

2) “Parting Words” is an apt puzzle title for today because next weekend’s puzzle will be from The Washington Post’s archives. I needed a break for one week, but I think enough time has passed that you can still solve the old puzzle as though it were new (and I updated a few clues along with a small handful of answers as well). The next new puzzle will appear on May 1.

Six phrases hint at circled words that have been broken up across black squares:

• 22A: [Made sarcastic remarks, and a description of this puzzle’s first parted word] is CRACKED WISE. This hints at the broken SAGE found in 24A (AMOS) and 25A (AGED).
• 33A: [Food that the “best thing” is compared to, and a description of this puzzle’s second parted word] is SLICED BREAD, hinting at the broken PONE in 31A (ASAP) and 32A (ONE).
• 68A: [Homes that don’t share walls with other homes, and a description of this puzzle’s third parted word] is DETACHED HOUSES, hinting at the broken LODGES in 52A (PLOD) and 54A (GESTURE).
• 77A: [Route with lanes of opposing traffic separated by a barrier, and a description of this puzzle’s fourth parted word] is DIVIDED HIGHWAY, hinting at the three-part broken INTERSTATE in 89A (PAINTER), 94A (STAT), and 97A (EAU).
• 110A: [Metaphor for great sadness, and a description of this puzzle’s fifth parted word] is BROKEN HEART, hinting at the broken TICKER in 114A (TIC) and 116A (KERR).
• 129A: [1966 Hitchcock film set in East Germany, and a description of this puzzle’s sixth parted word] is TORN CURTAIN, hinting at the broken SCRIM in 125A (MISC) and 127A (RIMS).

And because I wanted to tie those circled words together in another way, the instructions above the puzzle read: “The first letters of the circled words spell out an apt six-letter word.” Take the first letters of SAGE, PONE, LODGES, INTERSTATE, TICKER, and SCRIM, and you get SPLITS.

I’ve built a few puzzles that riff on phrases related to dividing or separating, but I always forget just how few synonyms lend themselves well to this kind of wordplay, especially when they have to hint at another word elsewhere in the grid (and in a specific order, too). There’s SPLINTER GROUP (which could hint at PARTY or SET), but I couldn’t find easy matches for words like CARVED or SEPARATED. CARVED … IN STONE? SEPARATED … AT BIRTH? I didn’t like those options. I also remember gritting my teeth when I saw that I’d need to split apart INTERSTATE; quite the long word to work with, and the entirety of the theme took up space in 19 different answers, which is a lot.

As I said earlier, next week’s puzzle will be an old one, but I hope you enjoy it.

What did you think?