In the Shadows

Since 2012, the ORCA Awards have celebrated great crosswords, and this year they've gotten serious about expanding their ambit to include cryptics — notably variety cryptics, and, especially notably to us, nominating High Definition and Fantastic Fours for Best Variety Cryptic Crossword. We're chuffed to be in a category with many friends and favorite setters; you can see them all here. The 84 nominated puzzles, including 17 cryptics, are available by donating to The Trevor Project. Thanks to the ORCA team for thinking of us, and we're commemorating it with a free puzzle.

Our favorite free puzzles are our gnarly collaborations, but when we offer a solo free puzzle nowadays, it's often a lighter undertaking relative to a more ambitious subscription puzzle. Today's free offering, however, has more clues than any puzzle we've published since mid-2023.

Historically, cryptics had a tendency to tread lightly with pop culture clues and theming. We conceived Word▶️ as a corrective to that (contemporaneously, as it turned out, with AVCX and The Browser), but we were still tempered by knowing our suite was for paying audiences, and so we chose blockbuster bits of culture to highlight. As you'll see today, though, sometimes following our bliss means paying tribute to something much more niche. Odds are you don't know this one, but we'd love to make the introduction.

JM and Rackenfracker fairness cop John Sams became pop music-philes rather late. In their early college years, madness drove them to make a definitive collection of ’80s music mixtapes. In that process, they discovered a shared love of Billboard charts, which led to the two of them collecting every #1 hit ... and then #2 ... and then #3 ... and really there's no bottom to this well. That love of pop music, we hope, shines through in puzzles and clues where that theme emerges. More than once, a collaborator or editor has commented that our ability to pull from the breadth of popular music really landed a tricky clue.

So this puzzle is mostly "themed" and there's even a little more going on than that. It also gave JM an excuse to title a puzzle after the only #1 hit by his namesake The Rasmus (a #1 hit in ... New Zealand, but his mania extends as far as collecting most anglophonic nations' #1 hits, so he's okay with that).

Thanks to John and fellow test solvers Andy Stilp and Dave Sanderman, and also to returning guest editor Frisco17. Also, at subscriber request, we're reinstating our practice of making the .ipuz file downloadable so you can use your preferred solver.