THIS... Is Jeopardy!

Happy Friday! We’re back to our regularly scheduled programming this week with an 11×11 puzzle that pays homage to some of the most regularly scheduled programming of all time.

It’s Jeopardy! From the voice of Johnny Gilbert opening every show to the hosts (the late & great Alex Trebek, and the living & thriving Ken Jennings) guiding us through round after round, it’s hard not to love Jeopardy (even when you get all the questions wrong).

Get your buzzers ready! Discussion (and spoilers!) below the break.

Play

Discussion

If you thought I was mean putting SKRRT into a crossword puzzle, it was a real Jeopardy answer - and our boy Micheal!! [sic] nailed it lmao. I consider it part of my civic duty to keep the crossword-solving population up to date with hip hop/meme/internet culture every so often, so you can now add SKRRT to your vernacular.

Today’s Theme

We’re keeping wordplay minimal and trivia high this week (hopefully the crosses helped get anything you didn’t know!). The three themed clues (13-Across, 35-Across, and 5-Down/29-Down) take the form of Jeopardy answers, to which you must reply in the form of a question - WHO IS ARETHA? (Franklin), WHAT IS SKRRT?, and WHAT’S ESSEN? If you don’t answer in the form of a question, Alex/Ken will stare at you until your timer runs out, and that feels bad.

Tricky Clues

28A. [Couple, singularly] is a fun oxymoron-like clue. Two people in a relationship could be referred to collectively as an ITEM.

31A. This is the token sports clue I try to put in each crossword for the sports fans out there, and [Ottawa hockey player, briefly] hopefully isn’t much of a stretch for non-NHL followers. A member of the Ottawa Senators would be a SEN, briefly. (Also, making Toronto play Ottawa in the first round of the playoffs? Mean. How could you, NHL?)

42A. I like the ambiguity of [Switch positions] in that “switch” can be a noun or a verb. This isn’t a Freaky Friday scenario, though, but refers to the positions a switch can be in - ON and OFF, but pluralized.

7D. [Tries to nail a pitch?] is newly on my list of favourite wordplay clues. You don’t need to warm up like Sharpay Evans to nail this pitch - just step up to the plate and swing! BATS is the answer here.

26D. The answer to ["100% agree"] is a phrase I said often, for a time. I think I picked it up watching your streamer’s favourite streamer, Northernlion. It’s more of a tongue-in-cheek thing than honest agreement but SO TRUE works for me nonetheless.

37D. This bottom corner was a little tricky. Anyone else play Monopoly Junior growing up (and like it better than Monopoly Senior)? You’re in an amusement park, way better tbh. They actually took out the railroads, or RRS for short, in 2023, and, in the words of Douglas Adams, “This has made a lot of people very angry and been widely regarded as a bad move.”

I hope you enjoyed this puzzle!

Until next Friday,

Brandon