Reflections

I like this theme a lot better! It went through a lot of iterations, but I think my first idea came from seeing the classic “chai tea” in a coffeeshop. I will say that going through all those Wikipedia pages on the idiosyncrasies of the English language was absolutely fascinating. (Examples include comparative illusions, garden path sentences, and donkey sentences)

I eventually landed on this page, containing tons of examples of how we repeat ourselves in English. I considered going down the geographical route, where place names contain repetition. Surprisingly, this is actually a really common phenomenon with rivers, mountains, lakes, etc. For example, did you know that Mississippi/Ohio contain river in their definitions? Same for Baikal, Chad, Michigan, Tahoe, and Ontario! (If this interests you and you want to go down a rabbithole I encourage you to check out all these Wikipedia links) However, I did realize that these places might be too obscure for the average American solver, and it would be too difficult to pick out a tightly-defined and interesting set.

So I opted for the more common tautology! Examples include COVID-19 disease, OPEC countries, HIV virus, SAT test, and “Please RSVP.” These are all examples that restate something that in the phrase that was abbreviated into an acronym. (the V in “HIV” stands for virus, the P in “RSVP” stands for plaît = “please” in French) Even after narrowing it down to phrases where the last letter of the acronym stood for the first letter of the subsequent word, it still wasn’t too hard to find a theme set of suitable lengths. I managed to fit 5 themers in the puzzle! There were really so many good options though, so I had quite some flexibility with it; I ended up just picking the five I thought were most common/interesting:

1. MLSSOCCER (wasn’t too sure about this one but it’s literally the name of their website)
2. ATMMACHINE (I hear this one a lot)
3. PDFFORMAT
4. LCDDISPLAY (I don’t hear this one too often but definitely have)
5. PINNUMBER (probably the one I’ve heard the most)

From there, constructing the grid took a lot of work! My first attempt led to a somewhat constricted/forced fill, so one of my friends graciously lended a hand in helping me construct the grid - which made it a lot easier to fill! I think I ended up with a pretty decent fill, but there is definitely some crossword-ese in there that I myself didn’t know… But oh well, onto my favorite part, the clues:

Favorite Clues

My friend suggested that I clue the themers with a repeated word somewhere in the clue. For example, [LA Galaxy and Inter Miami’s organization organization, for short] is MLSSOCCER. This was just one of the great ideas/contributions this friend offered, and I really think it helps bring the theme together!

31A. [Grow more pronounced, as smile lines] solves to DEEPEN. I just think this is a great usage of the word :D

33A. Contributed by my friend: [Lab coat feature?] is FLEA. Amazing wordplay if you ask me!

36A. Edited by my friend: [Number equal to its own factorial] is TWO. (or one, as a solver noted!) I don’t know if this misdirection was intentional, but looks like it worked! Originally, I had it as [Number equal to its double and square] or something, but this clue is much cleaner.

9D. [Evil driver] isn’t a wicked chaffeur, it’s MALICE, the motivation behind evil.

11D. Contributed by my friend: [Slip on some new clothes?] is RECEIPT! More wonderful wordplay :)

30D. [Over the hill] is a way of saying OLD.

65D. EXE is a [File extension that’s risky to download] - tech clues are awesome!