NYT Crossword Answers — June 5, 2023

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By Sam Corbin

Jump to: Today's Theme | Tricky Clues | Solving Tip

MONDAY PUZZLE — Packed away in a storage closet in my apartment (New York brag: having a storage closet) is a box filled with my diaries. My first was a proper secret journal that came with a lock and key — I still remember an early passage about eating "berthday ckack" during a "litning storm," top-secret stuff — but subsequent ones began ad hoc in whatever old lined notebook I had handy.

Why am I holding on to them, I wonder? What does one do with old secrets? I’m sure I keep them around with some vague notion of opening them up to revisit the code-named crushes and fears about the future I felt deserved to be set down in a permanent hideaway; many would seem quaint or absurd to me now.

As you solve today's crossword, constructed by Eric Rollfing, you may find your own hidden histories — those hushed phone conversations and spit-secured handshakes in the treehouse — drifting into view. Take to the comments to let me know what comes up for you, if you’re willing.

Want to know the trick to this crossword? It's a secret — no, really. The revealer at 56-Across tells us that a phrase for "‘Let this be our little secret’" is also "a hint to letter sequences hidden in 16-, 32- and 40-Across."

So in order to solve this puzzle, we have to KEEP IT BETWEEN US — as in keep the word "it" between the word "us." Each themed entry is a phrase in its own right, but if you peer into it, you’ll notice that it makes use of the letter sequence UITS. 16A, for example, is a GRAPEFRUIT SPOON. How clever!

Like Mr. Rollfing's grid, I’m pretty good at keeping secrets — except when it comes to the daily crossword, which I get paid to spoil for you in this column.

15A. Those interested in discovering this "Lucky find for a prospector" somewhere other than in our crossword might enjoy a trip to the American Museum of Natural History, where thousands of mineral LODEs are on shimmering display! (Yes, I was just there and am still thinking about it.)

29A. Did you, too, assume this "Bit of ballet choreography" must be "jeté"? If so, join me as I LEAP offstage to rethink my assumptions.

30A. We often use "The DIE is cast" to indicate our helplessness or to suggest that fate has made a decision for us. But this might be a mistranslation: Some historians argue that the phrase, which was first uttered in Greek or Latin by Julius Caesar before he crossed the Rubicon, could also be translated as "Let the die be cast" — essentially, "Game on."

6D. LOU Ferrigno is the American actor and bodybuilder who regularly ripped through his shirts as the titular beast in the TV series "The Incredible Hulk."

10D. I don't think I will ever understand how a MOON ROOF, this "Car option with tinted glass," differs from a sunroof, but I welcome any compassionate attempts to explain it to me again.

35D. An "Official reprimand" is known as a CENSURE — not to be confused with an official with the power to suppress information, a censor, who is not to be confused with a possibly official detection device, a sensor. (Should I keep going? I shouldn't.)

45D. "SPINAL Tap" is the "mockumentary rock band" you may remember because of its amps, which go to 11.

The prefix RE- is favored in crossword fill because it can be tacked onto the beginning of so many nouns and verbs, and because the letters R and E appear in so many English words that they make for easy crossings. With a little practice, you will start to recognize the patterns in how they’re clued.

In today's puzzle, 25-Down is "Like old jokes, again and again." We should be looking for an adjective that indicates repetition. Jokes are told, which means that old jokes are RETOLD.

The word RERUN, which has appeared 120 times in the New York Times Crossword, is often hinted at with "previously aired," "second showing" or "nothing new." If you see phrases like this in your clue, test out RE- at the top of your fill. (My favorite clue for the word is by Kameron Austin Collins in a Saturday puzzle from 2022: "Deja view?")

Some RE- words are clued more subtly: "Edited" is RECUT; "Did over" is REVAMPED; "Stopwatch button" is RESET. Does your clue word indicate any kind of second attempt? That's a REliable occasion for this prefix.

Caveat: Many words that start with RE- aren't about repetition (at least not in contemporary usage). A word like RETREAT wouldn't be clued with "Treat again," for example. You’re more likely to see it clued with something like "Pull back" or "Spa, for one."

It probably goes against Crossword Construction 101 to place the middle themed entries so close to each other, but I only tried that after the "safer" theme position of one row higher/lower kept leading to fun words like "atonal" and "UNIVAC."My original revealer clue was a bit vague, so I put bubbles around IT and US as a trade-off to make the theme more apparent. The editing team found a nice solution to clue the revealer in a more straightforward way that avoided the bubbles, which you don't see very often on Mondays.Hope you enjoyed the puzzle!

The New York Times Crossword has an open submission system, and you can submit your puzzles online.For tips on how to get started, read our series "How to Make a Crossword Puzzle."

Almost finished solving but need a bit more help? We’ve got you covered.

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Sam Corbin writes about language, wordplay and the daily crossword for The Times. @ahoysamantha

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