Sunday New York Times Diagramless by Fred Piscop

I messed up this puzzle by not paying attention to the instruction saying to look on the answer page for last Sunday’s crossword, to find the starting square in the top row for the answer to 1 Across. So I made my own 17 X 17 grid and tried again, succeeding this time.

The trickiest part for me was figuring out which column clam started in, but after that, it went pretty straightforwardly. I somehow hallucinated that the last Down clue, 69, would end in the last letter of the last Across answer, but the other letters successfully disillusioned me.

Here’s a hint from the official New York Times crossword blog: “Eddie Foy and his family vaudeville act were popular during the early years of the 20th century. Use the search engine of your choice to learn about him when you finish the puzzle.” It was news to me. A movie was made out of Eddie Foy’s story in 1955, with Bob Hope playing Eddie Foy, and Jimmy Cagney playing George M. Cohan.

The one sour note in this otherwise delightful puzzle is the presence of terrorist organization Hamas, clued as “Gaza group.” If Fred Piscop clued it as “terrorist organization,” or “group at war with Israel,” that would have been ok.