magazine week

Does anyone understand the theme to this week’s New York Times magazine crossword?

I can’t figure out the theme. Any puzzlers out there?

Talking about the 10/1 puzzle? Perhaps as you did, I solved the complete puzzle but am not sure I know exactly what the theme is trying to say. I know this much (which helped with the solution): each theme answer has a word in it that normally ends in the “th” sound, but in this puzzle the h’s are dropped and the word ends in a “t” sound, and is respelled to fit the clue definition. In 23 Across, death becomes debt, which the peddler owes, and the answer is “DEBTOFASALESMAN”. There is either a speech habit or defect that causes some people to speak this way. I can’t recall where I’ve heard it, somewhere in New Jersey maybe, but I have heard it. Now the theme says “MAKING THA T SOUND.” Is there an extra space between the A and the T, or is that the normal spacing for the font? I don’t know, but I took it to mean that an unexpected T sound was going to appear in each theme answer, and it does. In my view, this is probably one of Will Shortz’s less wonderful theme statements or possibly even a typo, though the puzzle itself is quite good. If it is a mistake, this editor will not own up to it, as Eugene Maleska or his other predecessors would have. I complete every Sunday Times puzzle on Sunday morning and find there is quite a range of goodness in them and some mistakes. The themes are usually more precise than I believe this one to be and sometimes even witty. But there are occasional instances of obtuseness in quite a few of them.

Clips of the week in talkSPORT magazine 18/11/09

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