The Atlantic | January/February 2003

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Contents | January/February 2003

More Puzzlers from The Atlantic Monthly.

The Atlantic Monthly | January/February 2003

The Puzzler

Target Practice

by Emily Cox and Henry Rathvon

.....

Answers to this puzzle's clues are to be entered horizontally and vertically without regard to heavy bars, though if bars were used to show where entries begin and end, their pattern would be the same if the grid were rotated 180 degrees. Some letters are unchecked (used by only one entry). Clues are given in no special order under the number of the innermost Ring occupied by any of their letters; to get you oriented, the answer to the first clue in Ring 1 is an Across. When all answers have been entered, four unclued entries will be seen to occupy the central row and the central column. Two of these will show who shot what; the other two, when made to share the properly filled central square, will indicate the target of the shooting and its outcome. One clue answer is capitalized.

The instructions above are for this month's puzzle only. See a complete introduction to clue-solving.

See the solution to last month's Puzzler.

RING 1

a. Company One's taking fifty pops (5)

b. In two seconds, check shots (5)

c. Transmitted live band on the radio, edited (6)

d. Stole about a pound in Panamanian currency (6)

e. Ego involved in action and thought (6)

f. Plaster burn with bit of mud (5)

g. Assures the security of commandos in the Navy (5)

h. Cipher in sounds of bells and drums (6)

RING 2

a. Head of Oscars wearing awful, semitransparent fabric (5)

b. Spot double agent (4)

c. Gold-framed stamp is so long (5)

d. Former look adopted by caprice (6)

e. Pale-skinned person out on bail (6)

f. Property of food, ordinarily? (4)

g. Second-rate pasta is for dogs (7)

h. Outline in favor of going back into reactor (7)

RING 3

a. Dance band's leader riding in big car (5)

b. Bizarre, meandering route (5)

c. Old fifth of Scotch seen in recent find (6)

d. Showed most of a portion of Deliverance (6)

e. Sound from a horse thief? (6)

f. For auditors, change site for forming a union (5)

g. Mom catches black snake (5)

h. Spam is scattered here and there (6)

RING 4

a. Warn the French in pictures (5)

b. With a disc pinching, the guy was hurting (5)

c. Made even uncle, in time, embarrassed (5)

d. A Latin love returned perfume (5)

RING 5

a. Split stick (6)

b. Dread President's ultimate mistake (6)

c. Oakland ball club breaking Harper's contract (5)

d. Heads of Orion and Universal, along with Disney, backing ban (6)

e. Perform 2001 in bed (6)

f. Independent votes against symbols (5)

g. Brace coastline (5)

h. Oh, for a musical show (5)

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