Word Play + News = A Crossword Writer’s Inspiration

Have you done this week's crosswords?

Subscribe The Daily Beast Crossword is where power, pop culture, and politics intersect—quite literally.   Designed to be more challenging throughout the week, you can test your knowledge with five puzzles each week: Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday and Sunday. Play This Week's Puzzles Get in the Game With Matt Gaffney Not gonna lie, I was very pleased with myself about last Thursday's puzzle. Mandy Moore had just had a baby boy named Gus, whose arrival she announced on Instagram with the sentence "Gus is here." A crossword writer's brain is always on low-level watch for themes, and this sparked a red alert from my synapses. Wouldn't it be funnier if she'd used the hashtag  #ThisIsGus, since the name of her show is This Is Us? And they're both nine letters long, which is perfect. So that's what happened, with the two theme entries GUS IS HERE and THIS IS GUS, the second one clued as [Sentence that would've been funny if she'd posted instead, since it plays on the name of her hit show].  After the puzzle went up, I wondered: how many other people had thought of this? I found three fans of the show who'd tweeted about it with the #ThisisGus hashtag, such as this one: That's "Mandy Moore became a mom and I'm literally crying," in case your Spanish is rusty.  Just three people posted it, meaning it was probably a pleasant surprise to anyone who solved it —except the author of this book (argh!) — although they're probably not punning on This Is Us with that title (I think). The things your crossword writer worries about to ensure that you have a good solving experience... See some clever wordplay that should be in a puzzle? My DMs are open @metabymatt. Don't tweet it at #beastxword because that'd be a spoiler, and crossword solvers do not like spoilers.  Play This Week's Puzzles © Copyright 2021 The Daily Beast Company LLC  555 W. 18th Street, New York NY 10011  Privacy Policy If you are on a mobile device or cannot view the images in this message, click here to view this email in your browser. To ensure delivery of these emails, please add emails@thedailybeast.com to your address book. If you no longer wish to receive these emails, or think you have received this message in error, you can safely unsubscribe.