The Mountains That Make Up the Backbone of Clues

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 26-Across in Sunday's puzzle was clued [The Bachelor network] for the answer ABC. There are a number of choices for cluing this entry; in addition to the TV network, you could go with [Jackson 5 hit of 1970] or [Start of a children's song].    Crossword writers often fall back on [Letters before]-type clues for answers that, like ABC, consist of three consecutive letters of the alphabet. For instance, you might see EFG clued as [Letters after D] or [Letters between D and H].    That's a little inelegant, since a random string of the alphabet isn't usually considered a very exciting puzzle entry. But if it can be clued in another way, then that's much better; so you'll usually see KLM in reference to the Dutch airline, DEF referring to Def Jam Records, and STU will often be a reference to poker legend Stu Ungar or The Simpsons character Disco Stu. XYZ, naturally, would refer to notifying someone that they should check their zipper.    Sometimes constructors try to rescue a random alphabet string with a clever clue, like [RV hookup] for STU. You think at first that they're asking for someplace to park their recreational vehicle, but it's meant literally as "The letters that 'hook up' (i.e., connect) the letters R and V in the alphabet."  Or you could see [The A train?] for BCD, as in "The 'train' of letters that follows 'A'." Ya gotta admire the effort!   Got any good clues for a three-letter slice of the alphabet? Tweet them to #beastxword and we'll most DEF enjoy reading about it.  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.