4 Dirty Little Secrets About the Numerology Industry

1. SUNDAY PUZZLE — On the one hand, the punny title for this breezy puzzle is a natural; on the other hand, it made me laugh at myself a little. First I sort of bristled, considering how the term “hysteria” targets my gender, and how aware we are becoming of so many women’s unsung contributions to math and computer programming, among other subjects. But it also made me think of that “Teen Talk” Barbie that famously said “math class is hard!” back in the ’90s, and how that inspired the Barbie Liberation Organization. Besides, the theme examples from Adam Fromm today are so amusing and tight that I have thrown away my math baggage. In an era when I look to the calculator on my phone to come up with an 18 percent tip on a $50 lunch tab, I consider my personal 2019 mathematics brush-up challenge finito, simply by solving this grid. I thought there was a lot of verve and toughness in the filler clues today. A handful of names tripped me up, like SIRI (which made me feel old! I wrote in “Jude”), NIKI, AIDAN, GIOTTO and ROSITA, who did not make her appearance on “Sesame Street” until 1991. I really loved the inclusion of SHMOO and SHOOP, and I thought that ANNI was a very sly little hat tip to the whole puzzle. 8A: It’s possible that the mention of this parkway, the TACONIC, evokes the same frisson of dread that math does among some of us — it is an early motorway, started in the 1920s, that has earned a reputation for being challenging to drive. 46A: I had “seller” here till the near end, a perfectly logical choice, but letters two and three would not jibe with their crosses — a hairstyle and another “seller,” actually, this one of “Famous Bowls” (football competitions? kitchenware?). A fishmonger is also a SCALER — that hairstyle is a FADE (a popular choice for many of you, I’m sure) and that “Bowl” is KFC fried chicken (in a bowl, with well-known mashed potatoes, notorious corn, celebrity cheese and some paparazzi gravy on top). 103A: Usually this scientist is clued as a winner of the Nobel Prize, or more specifically a “conditioned reflex researcher,” or my favorite from 1973, “Russian dog man.” If you are specifically referring to dog training, then I can do what PAVLOV did just by bringing home, I don’t know, a Famous Bowl every day at 3 p.m. for a week or two. My dogs found a piece of moldy cheese under a bush in my neighborhood almost two years ago and they still leave trails of drool when we walk down that street. I know, that’s a little different, but I still find it poignant that they continue to hope for more cheese. 43D: This piece of a motor is pretty recognizable if you look at one of those blown-out parts images, but I didn’t think of the STATOR as unmoving (and the name itself didn’t come to mind, either). 51D: Coincidentally, this exact route was on my mind this week, because at some point I was alerted to this recent photo essay, a very moody look at “The LONELIEST Road in America.” I don’t often see this part of the United States in person, but the allure of wide-open spaces is tangible when you are packed jowl to jowl on a subway car, inching through a tunnel. Or gripping your steering wheel grimly on the Taconic while S.U.V.s hurtle past you, come to think of it. Sometimes the Sunday theme is a big secret you need to figure out before you get anywhere, like the proverbial duck the size of a horse. Sometimes it is a bunch of little duckling-size horses that you have to corral one by one, like today’s puzzle. There are seven across clues, at 22, 39, 47, 67, 86, 95 and 116, that each present a cryptic equation. Our job is to solve them, and we get no credit for showing our Numerology work. They all rely on various mathematical operations, I guess, although 95A is really more a notation thing, I guess, if that’s what you would call a decimal. Put your pun hat on for the BB in “3.BB” and you’ll get it: THREE (3) POINT (.) SHOT (BB, as in BB gun). 86A is algebraic, with a variable divisor — X — and four $ signs, making a CASH DIVIDEND (how much we can’t

2. say, but it’s money). 39A is the purest form of a balanced equation — “x — y = x — y.” True — both sides are the SAME DIFFERENCE. My favorite, which had no actual numbers, was one of the occasional puzzle tricks that I remember thinking of once in the past, probably at one of those family meetings where everyone somberly discusses what to do when the piano falls through the ceiling and we need to know how to settle all the unforeseen debts (the piano was supposed to be full of rare coins, but they were worthless, all lead slugs). It is at 116A, and if you recognize “Esq.” as the lawyerly suffix then you can see what this is POWER OF ATTORNEY — “X” raised to the power of “Esq.” — an exponential quantity of lawyers. As long as you went to junior high school and know your West Coast newspapers and your satanic numerology, you will ace the rest of this test. Subscribers can take a peek at the answer key. Trying to get back to the puzzle page? Right here. What did you think?