Going Head to Head (Published 2018) (2024)

SUNDAY PUZZLE — Happy September, everybody! Today Tom McCoy brings us a puzzle full of twists and turns (more turns, really), a good theme that draws on your mental agility and your memory for famous combinations.

This grid is a pangram, and sneaks in a few other neat details, including one illuminated by Mr. McCoy in his notes. It’s also a very even solve, if you’re reasonably well-rounded in your knowledge of heroes and their foes. I think we’ve seen puzzles with dynamic duos before, but I don’t remember duos in opposition, which did get me thinking about what makes us need someone to root for wholeheartedly and someone else to be the heel (we secretly root for that person too, a little).

Tricky Clues

There were a few gotchas in this grid to slow a solver down (“alia” or ALII; “yap” or YAK). I also found some engagingly-clued fill, like BED, EAR, NERF, SUN, DORM and DOT. I also think there were fewer name entries in the fill than usual, perhaps because of the theme, and what there were I knew (except for ELISE).

34A: You can join several tours, including a horse tour here, where you’d ride through vineyards, stopping at castles. When doing so you might go through Tours, the ancient city on the LOIRE River in France.

58A: I mistakenly thought that o/o was on/off; neither of those options fits, and I landed on OWNER eventually. The abbreviation can mean a few things, including “owner occupied” and “owner operator;” it’d be a great graphic for an owner/operator of an optical shop, wouldn’t it? Just missing the NOSTRILS.

95A: This was one of those bits of knowledge that you’ve either got in that mind of yours or you don’t. It’s appeared once before in the puzzle, similarly clued, as a set of proteins that form a protective coat around the genetic material in a virus: a CAPSID. It’s actually pretty vital; without it, that genetic material can work only inside a host cell, as a viroid, apparently unable to replicate and infect animals at all, just plants. Still simpler, though, are prions — remember them? They’re behind mad cow disease, and its outbreak in the ‘90s that led to an eye-opening reveal of our livestock practices, like a modern version of “The Jungle.”