“Weird Al” Yankovic: Master parodist. Accordion maestro. Budding guitar god. And now, it turns out, crossword-puzzle author.
“Eat It” singer Yankovic co-wrote Wednesday’s edition of the New York Times crossword puzzle, and as you might expect from someone who brought the world songs such as, well, “Eat It,” the resulting work has its share of food puns. In particular, cheese puns.
The clue for 20A, for example, asks, “Cheesy military drama?” with the proper answer being, “A Few Gouda Men,” a play on the 1992 film “A Few Good Men.”
In other film/cheese pairings, 28A bears the correct answer “Feta Attraction,” a takeoff on the movie “Fatal Attraction.”
Non-cheese answers include “Lava,” identified in the clue as a “rock that rolls.”
Puzzle constructor Eric Berlin, who collaborated with Yankovic on the puzzle, said that he first came up with the idea of working with the musician in December.
According to Berlin, the puzzle might have been even cheesier, had the puzzle not been restricted to referencing specific types of cheese. Entries rejected because they didn’t meet that guideline included “Quesoblanca,” “Fondue the Right Thing” and “Cheesy Rider.”