Variety: Chain Link

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SUNDAY VARIETY COLUMN

Alex Eaton-Salners brings us a puzzle full of intricate connections.

By Caitlin Lovinger

CHAIN LINK — This is a formidable-looking grid, but if you can break in just a little bit, it is actually doable — a wordplay paper tiger. It’s a clever adaptation of a rows garden puzzle in that there are two sets of clues, overlapping letters and entries that run in either a clockwise or counterclockwise direction.

The grid is visually quite different, and I think it’s more challenging because most of the puzzle relies on one set of clues. Some of them are tough. If you’re at the point where you don’t know where to start or how to keep going, stick with it and take a few hints. The pace picks up, and it turns out to be gratifying to finish.

Here are the directions: “This puzzle has two types of clues — Links and Edges. Each Link clue has an eight-letter answer, to be entered in the eight squares around the corresponding letter in the grid. It’s up to you to determine the starting square and its direction (clockwise or counterclockwise). Each Edge clue has a four-letter answer, to be entered across or down, starting at the corresponding number.”

(Although it is not detailed, the Edge entries follow the standard rules of direction. They either run left to right or top to bottom, like crossword answers, so when you know one you can fill it in without any confirmation from crossing letters.)

Solvers will notice that the Links clues are lettered, A through X, and that each square “link” that creates the chain effect in the grid surrounds its corresponding letter, clear in the center. This completely confused the puzzle part of my brain, because those letters — A through X — don’t actually appear in any entry.

More than once I tried to mentally insert one in an answer I was trying to deduce. I also tend to have difficulty reading entries running counterclockwise. There should be a term for that ability — ambiliteracy, maybe? I don’t have it and struggle until there are enough letters in place to steer my eyes in one direction or the other.

Solvers may also notice that every entry is either four or eight letters long, and find themselves getting into a rhythm of deducing each entry by pairs of letters. I somehow picked up that cadence and found it helpful; knowing the order of two letters in a word also determines which direction the whole word is to be entered. One letter at a time does not give that much information.

I started my solve in the northwest corner of the puzzle, but I made two early mistakes that slowed me down. Edge 1, “Astounds,” is the first entry on the north side of the grid; I guessed “wows” instead of AWES. For Edge 4, “Blacken on a grill,” the first entry running down the west side of the grid, I had “char” instead of SEAR. These words contribute two letters each to Link A, “Four-legged carpenter’s tool.” The answer here is SAWHORSE; it runs clockwise, starting with the first letter in SEAR, using the first two letters in AWES and then ending in the second letter of SEAR. The other two letters pairs, HO and RS, appear in the answers to Link B and Link G.

From there, I needed several more Edge entries to give me letters to work my way inside. If you were able to make a lot of progress in the middle of the grid early in your solve, I am impressed! Some of the Edge clues were easy — “Sauce brand” solves to RAGU, and “Director Kazan” is ELIA — but a couple were stumpers for me. “Automatic advancements,” which I thought might be some type of loan, is a sports reference to tournament BYES. For “Shuttle setting,” I had the right idea with notions of “warp” or “weft,” but the entry is broader: LOOM.

At the Link entries, I got lucky by knowing that E — “‘I must be crazy to be in a ____ like this’ (line from ‘One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest’)” — is LOONY BIN. I also figured out “Command on a Monopoly board” and “Junk cars” together — GO TO JAIL and JALOPIES share the letters JA, although those two entries run in different directions.

I did not know that the “‘Ratatouille’ chef whose name sounds like a type of pasta” spells his name with a final I instead of an E. Chef Linguini reminds me of how intimidated I felt when I first started this puzzle, but after bumbling around for a while I found the solve to be a lot of fun.

What did you think?

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