If you’re looking for another crossword tournament — and why wouldn’t you be? — here’s a reminder that Lollapuzzoola will be taking place on Aug. 24 in New York City. I’m signed up to compete solo, and hopefully I’ll redeem myself for hilariously leaving 18 squares blank last year (it wasn’t because I got stumped and didn’t know the answers … it was because I never saw those 18 open squares on the paper to begin with and turned in the puzzle without knowing they existed. A lot of solvers made the same mistake!). Anyway, I’m primed to have a good time there as I always do.
The two words in familiar two-word phrases have switched places, creating strange ones:
The revealer that ties these phrases together is at 110A: [Switching positions, and a phrase spelled by the first letters of 12 words that have switched positions] is FLIP-FLOPPING.
I started brainstorming this theme a few months ago but got stuck trying to find phrases that could be interpreted in a significantly different way when their two words swapped places. Oddly enough I remember getting stuck when all I needed was just a subtle tweak to a few answers. Since I needed two phrases that normally have the initials L.F., one the first ones I wrote down was LOOKING FORWARD … but I didn’t think I could use the altered phrase FORWARD LOOKING because that could be defined essentially the same as LOOKING FORWARD, as in “looking toward the future.” I imagine I could still have used a basketball definition for FORWARD LOOKING, like LeBron James trying to find a teammate to pass the ball. Still, it took me longer than it probably should have to realize that if I just chopped a couple letters off to get LOOKS FORWARD, then the new phrase FORWARD LOOKS could be given a much different definition in its clue.
Some other answers and clues:
ncG1vNJzZmivp6x7uK3SoaCnn6Sku7G70q1lnKedZLmqssSsq7KklWR%2FcX6TaGdwZ2JtfLS7y66roqeeYrK3rc1mmaKqnp28rcbSZqGupKlif3l5wqumrKunpL%2BlecyaoqKml2LAuLXTnJ9o