Celebrating the Fourth

Previous Puzzlers:

"Fortune Cookies"
June, 1997
"Slide Show"
May, 1997

Diversions Index

Overcome by patriotic fervor, we've decided to mark the Fourth of July in a celebration with our solvers. We hope you'll 25 Across! In the clues, answer lengths have been withheld because proceedings such as these, we believe, are best kept in the dark. Nine answers are capitalized.

Clues

Across
1. Inflamed over floor layer set the wrong way
6. Someone delivering socks for Mister Hurt
12. Light source frames center of optical instrument
13. Relative's name set in marble
14. Small fry around back of beer joints
15. Lay on one's back for exercise (hyphenated)
16. Peg maintains routine part of a diet
18. In one show's debut, get solid
financial backers
19. Strikeout boy recalled when standing around Little League mounds
22. Part of the Middle East turns a kid off
25. See instructions
29. American city with almost too many of the French next to it
31. Phony's regret: bribe returned
33. Skip around front of lobby, wearing suit
36. Detective is in front of your compact
37. Measure copper part of a key
38. Barge carrying one-time movie actor
39. West of town, caliph settled down
40. Hands back Saint Timothy
41. Pound tries new volumes
42. Hill dweller by border's creating songs

Down
1. Pay for feature of a kitchen stove sent back
2. Understatement in fictional stories about youngster
3. Start off well-educated and get redundant?
4. A record number turned on a country
5. A man's name your newspaper printed up
7. Guy having small fuss with big beast
8. Con gets inside a boat's aft
9. Prevent the speech of a loony
10. Island tribe of Native Americans uprising, in case
11. Meal leftover includes pop
12. Affirmative: in Cordoba, Koppel is placed
17. Organ note captivates half of us in a Hal Roach comedy (two words)
20. Churning tool hit bonelike particle
21. Attack contained by former French pirate
23. Joiner of a French and Roman road
24. Knuckleheads initially notice some navels
26. Rumor of beast heard
27. Wearing clothes, Glen almost bolts
28. Heroical type aboard train
30. Plastic I found in factory
32. Abraham's upset about the origin of his kingdom
34. Buddy has large, rounded protuberance
35. Pop group's rhyme scheme for a quatrain

Copyright © 1997 by The Atlantic Monthly Company. All rights reserved.
The Atlantic Monthly; July 1997; The Puzzler; Volume 280, No. 1; page 115.