Robyn Weintraub author page

Attend the tale of Titus Andronicus.

Jim here, sitting in for Jeff Chen who is unsuccessfully skipping stones. I'm excited (well, excited and scared) to credit Robyn Weintraub for including one of my favorite crossword gimmicks. NYT headline writers are famous for little in-jokes that might include, say, an innocuous near-quote from a musical. They do this knowing only a percentage of the readers will notice but those that do will get a jolt of joy.

Today at 58-Across, we're asked to remember an obscure Shakespearean gastronomic detail. Well, the detail isn't obscure, it's the climax of the story, but the gory play itself is seldom performed and is considered bottom-shelf Bard. The PIES in question are more Mrs. Lovett than Sara Lee. As Lavinia cleans off her plate, she learns that her murdered sons were baked into that tasty meat pie. Yuck, right? But also (maybe) hey, I knew that!

A more familiar gimmick is the fake sex reference. You knew "Fun times between the sheets" wasn't going to be naughty, but it's an example of the general category of clues that foil your first assumption. "Hall of fame collaborator" has nothing to do with The Hall of Fame. Pay attention to those capital letters! "Lead-in to street name" has nothing to do with names of streets. Slang is fair game. "It looks better with curls" has nothing to do with your own beautiful locks.

Many people assume RIM SHOT (4-Down) is some percussion "flourish" that involves a quick ta-da-dum and a cymbal crash. This is wrong. It's a single shot with a drumstick that hits the rim and the head of a snare drum simultaneously. I don't know where that other notion comes from. (If the drummer repeats a rim shot, is there a repercussion?)

Leviticus 11 does indeed prohibit eating PORK (37-Across), but that barely scratches the surface of what you are enjoined to not just avoid but even detest. It is fascinating reading. If you're a biblical textualist, you have your work cut out for you.

CFLAT is a tough word to clue. There are no famous orchestral works in that key. It's the enharmonic equivalent of B Major (five sharps), so there's no obvious reason to go to the trouble of writing music in C Flat (seven flats.)

Ms. Weintraub's clue is "Harpist's home key." That's brilliant, and it's mostly true, especially for modern Concert Harps, the kind you see in orchestras. It does raise the question, why are harps tuned to such an awkward key?

To understand, you need to know how harps work. There are seven strings per octave (like the seven white keys on a piano), the strings are color-coded according to their letter names, and there are pedals that stretch the strings, altering their pitch, but only in one direction — sharp.

So, the strings all start in C Flat (all seven notes in the scale are flat.) Pushing, say, the D pedal and locking it down causes all the Ds to rise to D natural. Another notch down, and they all sound as D sharp. Correctly positioning all seven pedals allows you to play in any key and keep the color-to-note-name mapping consistent.

If you started in, say, C instead of C flat, you could still play in any sharp key (G, D, A, etc.), but playing in a flat key (F, B flat, etc.) would require you to drop down to a different (now raised) string. That messes up the color mapping, but critically, it would make that string unavailable for the correct note in whatever key you're in.

Why don't harps have 12 strings per octave so every possible note could be played in any key? For one thing, harps already have so many strings it's difficult to keep track of them all. More importantly, you'd lose the ability for harps to do that effect they're most famous for — the glissandos where strings are strummed to make that familiar shimmering effect. That only works if the notes blend because they're all in one key or one chord.

Fun fact: Harpo Marx, who played beautifully, didn't use a C Flat home key or any normal scale. He had his own unique tuning scheme — not surprising given that he was completely self-taught.

I've often said that crosswords is unusual among puzzles because your life experiences greatly affect your solving experience.

Is BRAE obscure for you? I'll never forget it. On my first trip to the UK, I hired (not rented) a car in London and drove it all the way to a fishing town on the north coast of Scotland to meet a shirt-tail relative. The further north you go in Scotland, and the further you travel from large cities, the stronger and more incomprehensible the accent becomes. By the time I got to Buckie, I could barely pick out a word per sentence.

My directions in town were spotty, so I stopped the car to ask a boy on the street how to get to the Council House that I knew was close to my destination. "De ya nae ken Buckie?" he asked. This much I understood. I explained I was a visitor.

"Aye, then, well ya see the wee quinie doon the brae?" I was at a complete loss. The young loonie (boy) was frustrated with my stupidity but I eventually came to understand that a quinie was a girl and doon the brae was down the hill. I think of that story with great pleasure every time BRAE pops up in a grid.

Because of your own life adventures, you know plenty of obscure things that most people nae ken. I bet each time you encounter one in a grid, it makes you smile.