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Puzzler The December Puzzler

Windup

Windup
Previous Puzzlers:
  • "Downsizing"
    November, 1999
  • "Cycles"
    October, 1999
  • "Shakedown"
    September, 1999
  • "At the Movies"
    August, 1999
  • "Family Reunion"
    July, 1999
  • "Mismatches"
    June, 1999
  • "Lawbreakers"
    May, 1999
  • "Mystery Box"
    April, 1999
  • "Hide and Seek"
    March, 1999
  • "Central Square"
    February, 1999
  • "Cross-Training"
    January, 1999
  • "Criss-Crossing"
    December, 1998
  • "Back in the Labyrinth"
    November, 1998
  • "Rite of Passage"
    October, 1998
  • "Service With a Smile"
    September, 1998
  • "In Common"
    August, 1998
  • "Nine-Hole Course"
    July, 1998
  • "Guidelines"
    June, 1998
  • "Picnic"
    May, 1998
  • "Three-Ring Circus"
    April, 1998
  • "Marching Orders"
    March, 1998
  • "Step by Step"
    February, 1998
  • "Celebrating the First"
    January, 1998
  • "Cryptacrostic"
    December, 1997
  • "Chessboard"
    November, 1997
  • "Haunted House"
    October, 1997
  • "Double-Crossers"
    September, 1997
  • "Scoreboard"
    August, 1997
  • "Celebrating the Fourth"
    July, 1997
  • "Fortune Cookies"
    June, 1997
  • "Slide Show"
    May, 1997
    		• We wind up the year with this puzzle, in which twenty clue answers are strung together on a spiral path that starts at the center and winds outward. This sequence of words is interrupted in thirteen places (always before and/or after a whole answer) by extra letters that, when read in order from the center outward, identify a possibly wound-up set. Solvers may locate the extra letters by entering answers to the Radial clues, which go inward from the border, stopping at the heavy bars or the center. Eight answers are capitalized.

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

    See thesolutionto last month's Puzzler.

    Clues

    Spiral

    a. Keep an eye on time with Windup (4)

    b. Meeting judge at the side of street (5)

    c. A New York tribe's high-rise dwellings (6)

    d. Train marsh bird (4)

    e. Winding down, prepared Big Ben (6)

    f. Grade of metal wrapped in cloth (6)

    g. Bringing in 2000, Seiji arranged opening bars? (7)

    h. Our time's changing, fluid (8)

    i. Take a draft of one New Hampshire brew (6)

    j. Going through with a car, see Greek island (6)

    k. Inches, when turned south, equal centimeters (6)

    l. Defense Department's holding German team in California (7)

    m. Arrive by car, in tow or in reverse (4,2)

    n. Popular getting into Los Angeles, to Hispanic man (6)

    o. Nervous about team's leader not taking sides (7)

    p. Presides over Coach's first and last broadcasts (6)

    q. Restricts the use of second-rate jams (6)

    r. Delved around piece of cake cut fine (6)

    s. This guy is stuck in bank machine, in disbelief (7)

    t. Wrong dose given in prescription for baseball team (3,3)

    Radial

    1. Exemplar of silence or noise (6)

    2. Fuss about a step (5)

    3. Silly timer in ceremonial hat (5)

    4. Country with no means of passage around river (6)

    5. Lab worker's revolutionary spray (7)

    6. Represent for 500 grand at start of trial (6)

    7. Charge mostly fixed for winter apple (6)

    8. Bother butler, agitated about nothing (7)

    9. Nomadic raid contained by Chinese dynasty's emperor (7)

    10. Pen holding elephant's opening after one long, cold spell (3,3)

    11. Hikers disturbed bird (6)

    12. Blacken in free man's name (7)

    13. Drifting deserter taken in by old explorer (7)

    14. Around lake, observed eastern moon goddess (6)

    15. Spinning globe, I do a favor (6)

    16. Faulty reasoner's true point about what he owns (7)

    Copyright © 2000 by The Atlantic Monthly Company. All rights reserved.
    The Atlantic Monthly; December 1999; The Puzzler - 99.12; Volume 284, No. 6; page 131.