As a starting point, library staff [Nancy Herther, Meghan Lafferty, and Katherine McGill] brainstormed for library-related potential theme entries and subsidiary words, presenting me with an Excel spreadsheet of nearly 200 words, terms, and phrases ranging from 3 to 28 letters in length. Adding WILL_SHORTZ to the mix, this gave me more than enough to draft the puzzle, which was further refined by our usual Barany and Friends process. Note that the central spanning entry, DOESN'T_HAVE_A_CLUE, just sort of fell into my lap once four 10-letter entries had been arranged in a "pinwheel" pattern, but it seemed remarkably apropos. Nancy and Meghan suggested a few clues, while Jon Jeffryes test solved our earlier drafts with a special focus on the library angle. Meanwhile, representing our core Barany Friends group, Marcia Brott, Martin Herbach, and Michael Hanko were my first line for evaluation and refinements, including Michael's inspired clue for 39-Across and his brilliant recommendation for the puzzle's title that riffed on this apparently highly popular on-line game that I myself had never heard of [although I am quite fond of the classic board game Scrabble, on which WWF is apparently based]. Trying to avoid test solvers who were likely to be in the audience, we also reached out to Noam Elkies, Dan Feyer, Brent Hartzell, and Karen Kaler, who each provided additional highly useful feedback that further improved the puzzle.
Since some of the answer words (and corresponding clues) may not be immediately familiar, there follows a brief list along with perfunctory annotation. Solvers who are inspired to do further research via Google should in no way feel guilty; our purpose is to teach as well as entertain.
18-Across. DESIDERATA. In library-speak, this refers to things (e.g., books) that are wanted or needed (click here for definition and etymology). However, most people will associate the word with this 1927 prose poem, which starts with ... Go placidly amid the noise and haste ... that I've seen in poster form in many a college dormitory room.
27-Across COS. We are an institution of higher learning, so I elected to clue it as the trigonometry ratio, cosine, which also figures importantly in calculus, etc. Easier to some might have been the familiar name of comedian, entertainer, author, activist, megastar Bill Cosby (referred to in the Barany household as William Cosby, Jr., star of arguably the greatest TV sitcom of all time), or I could have gone chemistry nerd on solvers with the chemical formula of carbonyl sulfide.
60-Across HATHITRUST is a partnership of academic and research institutions, offering a collection of millions of titles digitized from libraries around the world. If you visit their twitter page, you find the logo (embedded within the graphic on the main page for this puzzle) and their slogan "There's an elephant in the library" which is evocative of this. For more fun reading about "hathi," please click here.
63-Across TRET is an allowance for waste, after subtracting the tare. It's a word that has appeared only five times in the Will Shortz era, and only once in the 21st century. The suggestion was made to change the second T to an X, which would have the powerful T_REX (see also this) crossing the partial SEX_ON (the beach), but this was deemed to flunk the "breakfast test."
65-Across AFBS are air force bases, and our clue refers to U.S. airplanes, the B-2s (stealth bombers) and the B-52s (stratofortress bombers, not the American New Wave band or the cocktail). Given the crossing word (62-Down) of UFO, for "unidentified flying object," great pains were taken to not create cross-referential clues based on this famous incident, and besides, we already had some fun with our clue for ALIEN (64-Across), the possible UFO pilot.
2-Down CIVET refers to a small nocturnal mammal that is also the source of a musk perfume.
3-Down OPEN ACCESS is an issue of considerable current concern to librarians, with spill-over ramifications into how scholarly work is refereed, evaluated, disseminated, and supported financially.
6-Down DOS refers to "disk operating system." This is what personal computers (PC's) ran on, in the early 1980s, until Microsoft introduced Windows platforms (click here for a fascinating historical outline).
30-Down WILL_SHORTZ, the man of the hour, is the subject of several fascinating profiles/interviews found (most recent first) by clicking here [this first one, on the day of the event, in the Minnesota Daily], here, here, and here. You may also enjoy Will's definitive 2001 essay on How to Solve the New York Times Crossword Puzzle, and this 9-minute video entitled Stealth Lawyer.
31-Down ETUI is a word, derived from French, that means a small ornamental case for carrying small items like needles, toiletries, etc., especially as used by women. Though much derided as "crosswordese," the word has been used often both during the Shortz and pre-Shortz eras—just too useful a 4-letter combination for it to be any other way.
53-Down ARETE is a mountain ridge, examples of which can be viewed by clicking here. Regular crossword solvers will recognize the word, but its intersection with the obscure TRET at 63-Across creates a potential "Natick." Changing ARETE to A_NOTE would also create replacement Across words IN_STONE and TROT, and we'll be curious to learn on September 12 whether or not the Puzzle Master considers that an improvement over the current arrangement.
59-Down ISBN, or International Standard Book Number, is well-explained here.
