Live, from New York—it’s Sunday Morning! Time for our Weekly Roundup, and with SNL at 8-Down in today’s puzzle (clued as "Ego Nwodim's show, for short"), let's see how useful some of the Not Ready For Prime Time Players have been to crosswords.
The queen of them all appeared at 2-Down in Wednesday’s puzzle, the great Cheri OTERI. How useful can a surname be to crossword writers? With its all-common letters and alternating vowel/consonant pattern, not much more useful than this. And there's only one good way to clue OTERI, so Cheri it is.
Other SNL alums whose names are tough to clue any other way: Kristen WIIG (love those double-I’s), AIDY Bryant, Colin JOST, and double-barrel GILDA RADNER, one of the original cast members, whose useful first *and* last names are each mostly only cluable with reference to the late, great star herself.
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Other helpful names that may or may not be clued with an SNL slant: Michael CHE (could be Guevara), Bowen YANG (could be Andrew Yang, but BOWEN is useful on its own), ANA Gasteyer, and NORA DUNN, again with two crosswordy names in one there.
A few characters from the show have proven useful to crossword writers, too: Gilda Radner’s BABA WAWA from back in the day; MR BILL, also old-school; Bill Hader's STEFON, and Dana Carvey’s lovably awkward Garth ALGAR.
Did I miss any crosswordy SNL-references? Wait until 11:30 PM ET on Saturday and tweet them to #beastxword. I'll answer during the ads.
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