Globe and Mail Weekender Breaks Down 'Looking in All Directions' Compass-Grid Theme and a Cryptic Letter-Bank Clue

The Globe and Mail's Oct. 10 Weekender crossword is called Looking in All Directions, and the first thing to know about it is that the theme only shows itself once the grid is finished. Nothing is missing, no letters need adding, and there are no tricks along the way. The compass work sits quietly around the edges of the puzzle, and the weekly Puzzle Pieces column set out to point it out.

The constructor is Michèle Govier, who works on international trade matters for the federal government and lives in Ottawa with her husband and two sons. This is her second Weekender since the feature launched in February. Her first, Starter Sets, ran on Mar. 7, and a third is already in the works.

The column's author singles out several of her clues. At 47A, [Engaged in some seedy activity?] has nothing to do with shady deals in an alley; it means activities involving seeds. The word "engaged" can read as an adjective or a past-tense verb, and it is the verb sense that yields SOWED. At 72A, [It might protrude from an old sock] is a plain, vivid image rather than a pun, and the answer is TOE. At 41D, BREASTS is often clued as chicken pieces, but the author and Govier agreed there was no reason to avoid the human body and went with [Nursing providers?]. And at 58D, [Question after missing the game] gives WHO WON, which the columnist, a longtime baseball mom, says made her feel very seen.

The theme itself has four sub-themes, each with a revealer: NORTH BAY at 38A, SOUTH PARK at 101A, EAST RIVER at 46D and WEST WOOD at 48D. Each describes the entries running along the matching edge of the grid. The north edge holds the bays HUDSON, JAMES and GANDER. The south holds the parks GLACIER and STANLEY. The east holds the rivers NELSON, FRASER and BOW. The west holds the woods SPRUCE, CHERRY and ASH. Govier made sure each could double as something else; NELSON at 21D is the Simpsons bully with the distinctive laugh, and STANLEY at 129A is a faddish tumbler brand.

The constraints were heavy. She wanted the grid to stay as symmetrical as possible left to right, so the east and west entries had to match in length. The south edge was tighter still: Algonquin and Sasquatch were out, because few good words end in Q for the crossing Down slots. The list of options was short before construction even began.

Constructors usually shift theme entries around to find better fill, but here each sub-theme was bound to a particular edge and each corner had two entries essentially locked in. The revealers all touch entries that touch edge entries, except SOUTH PARK, which Govier isolated with black squares. The columnist's view is that an ambitious theme is pointless if the rest of the grid is junk. Here, she says, the grid is full of real words and lively clues, with very little glue or crosswordese.

Govier's own note says the theme was fun to develop, partly because it let her reference places and things from different regions of Canada, but the execution was tricky. She lost count of the iterations and is pleased to see it in print.

The column closes with a cryptic clue of the week, from 9A of the Oct. 10 Weekender Cryptic: [Troupes repeatedly reorganized huge retail outlet (10)]. "Reorganized" looks like an anagram indicator, but "huge retail" is ten letters and would leave stray words, while "repeatedly" is ten letters but too small a piece of the clue. The key is that "repeatedly reorganized" signals a letter bank: reuse some letters of "troupes" and rearrange them to get SUPERSTORE. Other possible indicators include "mixed up again and again" and "with some duplicated components." It is a clue type the columnist says she had not yet covered, and now solvers can watch for it.