♫ Some day we'll find it... ♫

Happy Friday, everyone! I’m excited to share a new guest puzzle with you this week, by friend of YEGwords Chris Parsonage. Chris constructed a puzzle I published back in February, and when he reached out about doing a second one, I was excited to have him back in the constructor’s seat. With summer coming up, I know there will be weeks when I’m pressed to meet my usual publishing schedule - so if you have an idea for a clever little theme, my DMs are always open to discuss a guest puzzle/collab!

This week’s puzzle has the clever wordplay you know and love, plus theme-related entries across the entirety of the grid - a fun, cohesive touch by Chris! You’ll see what I mean.

Discussion (and spoilers!) below the break.

Play

♫ Some day we'll find it... ♫ by Chris Parsonage (edited by Brandon Cathcart)

Discussion

Chris, whose puzzles usually only have an audience of one (his partner), did a great job crafting a puzzle that a much wider audience can enjoy. It sounds counterintuitive, but it’s more difficult to make an easier puzzle than a harder one! After passing through my hands, we made a few changes to the grid that made for an overall very achievable, yet very personality-heavy puzzle.

And to the critics, yes! There are four unchecked squares in this puzzle. While typically quite the taboo, they were necessary in order to create the theme and fill Chris was aiming for. So, we decided to put our faith in solvers and let the “fun” factor of the puzzle outweigh the technicalities.

There’s only one option for which song to put here - the one and only, Rainbow Connection. It gives me chills every time I listen to it!

Today’s Theme

Buried within Chris’ multitude of Muppets-related clues is the crux of the puzzle, 15-Down: [With 23-Across, a literal interpretation of Kermit's famous banjo tune from "The Muppet Movie"]. 23-Across and 15-Down intersect in the middle of the grid.

You’ll find RAINBOW is the answer for both entries, and they cross each other in the middle - creating a RAINBOW CONNECTION, you might say 😉

Behind the Clues

6A. I love Chris’ little self-reference here - [Muppet who said "Never eat more than you can lift" (words I personally live by), with "Miss"]. This is a gimme clue, as of course the Muppet is Miss PIGGY. Chris informed me that his drag persona has been described as "the unholy lovechild of Ginger Spice and Miss Piggy," which sounds like an absolutely chaotic good time.

19A. [They say a window opens when it closes (terrible room design IMO)] is a phrase I was only kind of aware of - I’m familiar with “when one door closes another opens,” but this variation was new to me. Chris’ great clue made it both hilarious and intuitive to guess it’s probably DOOR, and of course, my brain started scheming up how one might rig that up. You can take the engineer out of engineering, but you can’t take the engineering out of an engineer!

36A. I love a double clue, and [The Barefoot Contessa, ___ Garten (or where you might find her, if you replace the 't' with a 'd')] fits that bill nicely. INA Garten might be found IN A garden! I love it. Playing Wavelength with friends recently, I gave the double clue “Wild horses… or where they can be found” for UNSTABLE, which was cheeky and did not get us many points lol

1D. [:(] is a bit of a tricky clue that was added later to make the NW corner a bit tougher. The solver should ask themselves, “What phrase would someone write/use in place of this emoticon face?” to which the answer is I’M SAD.

3D. Chris hits us with the rare triple clue! [A ritzy New York hotel, a salad, or a heckling Muppet with his buddy Statler] are describing three very different things with the same name. That name (that I got from the salad part and a few letters) is WALDORF, as in the Waldorf Astoria hotel in New York, the Waldorf salad, and Waldorf and Statler, the quick-witted heckling humanoid Muppets.

28D. I need to highlight ["Dancing with the ___," a TV competition show with Russian royals (that doesn't exist, but now I want it to)]. Not only is it clever, but it does something I enjoy - catches out speed solvers who don’t read the whole clue. Most will auto-fill in STARS after reading the first few words of the clue - but it should be TSARS, which you realize if you read the rest. Hilarious and sneaky!

I hope you enjoyed Chris’ puzzle!

Until next week,

Brandon