Today’s Theme

It wouldn’t have fit, but I would have loved it if OH BEHAVE, Austin Powers’s catchphrase, had been one of the theme entries. So much more fun than OH BE QUIET at 62A.

Anyway, as Mr. Wechsler mentions in his notes below, the OBI — the Japanese kimono sash — was the inspiration for this theme. All five of the theme entries start with different ways to make the sound “obi.” For example, at 17A, the answer to the clue “Theatrical honor” is OBIE AWARD. Similarly — and this was my favorite theme entry just for the clever clue alone — the answer to “Delivery people?” is OB GYN DOCTORS. Most people who see an OB GYN don’t use the word “doctors” after it; we would just refer to them as our OB, or our OB GYN. Still, “Delivery people?” is a brilliant clue in my opinion, so I’m willing to give it a pass.

For me, the hardest part of this puzzle was keeping the different OBI sounds straight. I solved from top to bottom and after getting OBIE AWARD and OBI WAN KENOBI, I thought all the theme entries would be phrases that started with OBI-. Not so. We also have OBEDIENCE SCHOOL and OH BE QUIET.

Constructor Notes

The idea for this puzzle came from a common bit of crosswordese — the Japanese kimono sash called the OBI. Once in a while, I try to take an aspect of crossword construction that is frowned upon and direct it toward something that might be interesting or amusing. Although using theme phrases that begin with the letters in OBI might have been sufficient, I realized that finding phrases that begin with the sound of OBI might be much more fun. I’m glad that I managed to discover five of them, and I’m particularly happy with the entry that begins with OB-GYN, since the accepted pronunciation requires saying the name of each letter individually. Thus, this puzzle starts from what is seen as a negative in the crossword world — crosswordese — and, I think, turns it into something positive. I hope solvers agree.

The Tipping Point

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Your thoughts?