On Sunday, March 12, The Atlantic ran a puzzle by Caleb Madison which had a dare for the solver at 17-Across: [With 35-Across, group of 10 movies hidden in the previous week of Atlantic minis, two in each puzzle. Can you find them all?]
It's a pretty fun scavenger hunt for a puzzle, one that (owing to the lack of an easy archive for Atlantic puzzles) probably won't have the permanence it deserves. So I'm making this post which easily links to the week of minis in question, so you the solver can play along if you wish to do so.
Monday, March 6 - Tuesday, March 7 - Wednesday, March 8 - Thursday, March 9 - Friday, March 10
If you're stuck on remembering the ten films that were nominated this year, Wikipedia's got your back. (Hey, don't sweat it - I forgot that Elvis was nominated this year, and I *watched* Elvis. Unfortunately.) And if you're really, really stuck beyond that, and just want to appreciate Paolo's subtle (and not-so-subtle) constructions, I'm having this post double as an answer key. Scroll way, way down, below the poster below, if you want confirmation of the answers.
Monday is easy peasy.
Top Gun: Maverick: 1-Across (the "top" entry) of the puzzle is "GUN."
The Fabelmans: 4-Across, AESOP, is clued as [Fable man].
Tuesday is pretty straightforward, but requires a bit more lateral thinking for one of the titles:
Elvis: the film title is contained within ELVISH at 9-Across.
All Quiet on the Western Front: The stretchiest of the bunch: 1-Down is MUTED (a synonym for "quiet"), and runs along the western edge of the puzzle.
Wednesday: this is easier than Monday, I'd argue.
Avatar: The Way of Water: AVA is stacked on top of TAR in the northwest. And yes, this means this puzzle counts for...
Tar: 7-Across is literally TAR (sans diacritic, natch)
Thursday: The trickiest of the bunch, I would say.
The Banshees of Inisheran: The film's title is spelled out by the first letters of the clues.
Triangle of Sadness: It took me a little while to figure out what was going on here, but eventually I cracked it. There are three instances of the word SAD in the grid (in CRUSADED in the top row, and in SADE and SAD at the bottom) which, when connected, make a triangle. Very cute.
Friday: Not too hard to spot (in fact, you're likely to stumble onto one of these by accident) but arguably the most impressive one of the bunch.
Women Talking: THE VIEW at 9-Down is clued as [Show that features women talking].
Everything Everywhere All at Once: OK, now this one is really cool: it's a Schrodinger puzzle, where EVERYTHING and EVERYWHERE can both be the correct answer for 13-Across, as illustrated by my 5-minute MS Paint diagram below:
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