Solution to Evan Birnholz’s May 1 crossword, “Two-Timing”

Do you remember last weekend’s rerun puzzle was called “Time Trial”? Well, we have another time-based theme on our hands today, which makes the title “Two-Timing” a bit more on-the-nose than I’d originally planned.

Seven theme answers contain the three-letter abbreviations for the days of the week. However, there’s a rebus twist. In the Down direction, you have to enter the day trigrams twice:

• 23A: [Expenditures that cannot be recovered] is SUNK COSTS. Crossing it are BASS at 1D, the Peter Shaffer play EQUUS at 2D, and SUNNI at 3D.
• 25A: [Shares] is HAS IN COMMON. Crossing it are SUMMON at 16D, the actor Peter O’TOOLE at 17D, and PENNED at 18D.
• 41A: [Person who’s still performing?] is LIVING STATUE. Crossing it are MITT at 33D, CONTINUUM at 13D, and EERIER at 45D.
• 56A: [Margarita garnish] is LIME WEDGE. Crossing it are WWI VETS at 57D, I SEE at 42D, and Pearl Jam frontman Eddie VEDDER at 43D.
• 83A: [Hockey Hall of Famer who won the Hart Memorial Trophy in 1991] is BRETT HULL. Crossing it are BOYCOTT at 55D, OH HI at 77D, and MUUMUU at 78D.
• 91A: [Gene Wilder-Harrison Ford western comedy involving a journey to a California city] is “THE FRISCO KID.” Crossing it are GO PFFT at 72D, OVERREACTED at 73D, and TORII at 74D.
• 115A: [Luxurious bed linens] is SATIN SHEETS. Crossing it are AUSSIE at 100D, the former Academy president Cheryl Boone ISAACS at 101D, and MATTES at 102D.

And the revealer is at 118A: [Publishing company whose name serves as a hint to entering several Down answers in this puzzle] which is DOUBLEDAY.

Several times while building this puzzle, I’d assumed that working with longer thematic Across answers (9+ letters) would be impossible. It required 21 crossing Down answers to accommodate the rebus squares, as well as the DOUBLEDAY revealer. Three of the days forced me into using words with two U’s in a row, and there’s only a small handful of words and phrases that allow that combination. I have most of them memorized from experience with building other puzzles with doubled letters in rebus squares. Besides EQUUS, CONTINUUM and MUUMUU in this puzzle, there’s VACUUM, YOU UP, YOU UNDERSTAND (which would be too long), JUUL, the actor Daniel KALUUYA, the poker player STU UNGAR, Greenland’s capital NUUK, and the “Ghostbusters” spirit ZUUL. I took several liberties cramming in a high number of black squares just to get all of these elements to cooperate.

But, somehow, I managed to wrangle a grid out of this. Most of all I’m happy that I got to use LIVING STATUE since I got pretty lucky with its clue. I was originally aiming just to use the phrase, and didn’t have a clue in mind when I picked it. I only happened to think of the “still” pun while I was writing clues, and that gave me a nice rush.

Some other answers and clues:

• 14A: [Ancient animal expert?] isn’t a person who lives in the present day and knows a lot about extinct beasts, but rather AESOP, the ancient Greek storyteller.
• 22A: [Jazz ___ (what Ron Burgundy plays at a nightclub in “Anchorman”] is FLUTE. Here’s that scene if you haven’t seen the movie.
• 31A: [Cardinal numbers?] is RUNS. Sports clue about the St. Louis Cardinals here. The puzzle writer in me liked this. The Cubs fan in me makes me wish I didn’t.
• 54A: [DC Comics character whose transparent flesh gives him a skeletal appearance] is MR. BONES. If you haven’t heard of him then I have good news: He was new to me too. Just reading up on his character bio on a DC Comics fan Wiki page was confusing; apparently he’s not a walking skeleton, he just has a skeletal appearance.
• 81A: [Oxygen consumer’s device?] is REMOTE. The TV network Oxygen, that is.
• 123A: [Semi circle?] is TIRE. I liked this clue, too. Pronounce “semi” with a long I sound instead of an E sound.
• 10D: [Game manual info that adds to the mood but doesn’t affect gameplay] is FLAVOR TEXT. Imagine you’re playing a board game and you have playing cards that have some backstory or quotes about certain characters — here are some examples from Magic: The Gathering. The text that gives you a taste of what the game is like, but isn’t necessary for proceeding through, it is called FLAVOR TEXT. It also has a definition in puzzles; it’s typically used to mean the blurb that you might find in some crosswords below the title, like the text in a crossword tournament puzzle that hints at what to expect. I used some flavor text in the Halloween mega-meta suite last year, like with the first mini-puzzle that began with the message “As you enter the mansion, you become disoriented, gripped by the creeping dread of such a gloomy place.”
• 108D: [Dressed like Ketanji Brown Jackson] is ROBED. She had just been confirmed to the Supreme Court when I wrote that clue.

What did you think?