It’s Oscar night, so it’s time for a movie crossword. Twelve answers are clued as though they are remakes of certain films. What makes them “remakes”? They’re anagrams of the movie titles in their clues.
- 24A: [Remake of the 2010 film “Predators” with sad characters?] is “TEARDROPS.”
- 32A: [Remake of the 1979 film “Norma Rae” that’s set during the period of Augustus’s reign?] is “ROMAN ERA.” This was an interesting anagram in that the letters aren’t exactly scrambled all over the place. NORMA anagrams to ROMAN and RAE anagrams to ERA, and then those two words can be combined to make a real phrase.
- 35A: [Remake of the 2019 film “Parasite” that teaches people how to make “H” sounds?] is “ASPIRATE.” This was the first anagrammed title I found since my first thought was to look up best picture winners.
- 51A: [Remake of the 1968 film “Bandolero!” that’s set in a restaurant serving ramen?] is “NOODLE BAR.”
- 53A: [Remake of the 2004 film “Spanglish” with more swimming pool scenes?] is “SPLASHING.” I said more swimming pool scenes because, even though I haven’t seen “Spanglish,” I noticed there was a swimming pool in the trailer.
- 62A: [Remake of the 2023 film “Ferrari” focusing on a character who puts shoes on horses?] is “FARRIER.”
- 72A: [Remake of the 2015 film “No Escape” that features an unsolved crime?] is “OPEN CASE.”
- 76A: [Remake of the 2009 film “Precious” in which people cook basmati in broth?] is “RICE SOUP.”
- 93A: [Remake of the 1995 film “Crimson Tide” with an aesthetic evoking early 20th-century art?] is “MODERNISTIC.” “Crimson Tide” was one of a small handful of 11-letter movie titles I saw that could be anagrammed to form a legitimate word or phrase. The others were the 2000 film “Center Stage,” which anagrams to “SECRET AGENT” (which was itself a 1936 Alfred Hitchcock film), and the 1938 film “Stablemates,” which anagrams to “STEAM TABLES.”
- 104A: [Remake of the 2018 film “Replicas” in which people wear piercing-free jewelry?] is “EAR CLIPS.”
- 108A: [Remake of the 2019 film “Hustlers” with more cruel characters?] is “RUTHLESS.”
- 117A: [Remake of the 1996 film “Trainspotting” with a new beginning?] is “STARTING POINT.”
“STARTING POINT” was the entry that made me feel like I caught lightning in a bottle. I didn’t find any other 13-letter or longer title that anagrams to something real, but besides that, “STARTING POINT” is kind of a sneaky revealer for the circled letters in the grid, which leads me to the meta element of this puzzle. The first letters of the anagrams are circled and they spell out “TRANSFORMERS,” the robots-in-disguise movie franchise that I think aptly describes the concept of anagrammed words.
Credit where due: Today’s crossword got a big assist from the puzzle constructor and software engineer John Kugelman. I have a fairly extensive word list for building crosswords, but I needed a quick way to find all the words in my list that could be anagrammed to find other valid words. That’s something that can be done with computer coding, but if you don’t have coding skills (and I don’t), then the only way to find the anagrams you need is to check each title one by one manually, which could take a very long time. John came through with some Python coding to show me all the valid anagrams in my word list right away. After that it was just a matter of checking the list for movie titles whose anagrams start with the target TRANSFORMERS letters. This probably saved me several days if not weeks of fruitless searching. Much appreciated, John.
Some other answers and clues:
Enjoy the Oscars if you’re watching. What did you think?
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