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Note to readers: In the past, Wordplay indicated crossword clues with quotation marks. In crossword construction and editing, though, clues are typically indicated by brackets, a practice Wordplay is now following.

TUESDAY PUZZLE — Seth Bisen-Hersh, who constructed today’s crossword with Jeff Chen, wrote that he was inspired to craft this grid’s theme while watching a TV show hosted by Penn & Teller, the prolific magician duo. I grew up admiring Penn & Teller, too — only it was because of their prank book, “How to Play With Your Food.” The book was given to me by my aunt, no doubt in the hopes that I’d terrorize my parents with it. And reader, I did: One my favorite tricks from the book involved palming a single-serve creamer from a restaurant’s dining table, and then casually starting to play with a fork near my face. Having subtly brought the hand with the creamer near my eye, I’d stab the cup with the fork and scream as the creamer spattered unsuspecting family members with a stream of white liquid that my eye seemed to have expelled.

This puzzle’s theme relies on slightly higher-brow sleights of hand — hint — but I’m willing to bet that you’ll love it.

Today’s Theme

You may know the [Card game whose winning hands can be found hidden in 17-, 27-, 42- and 54-Across] (33A) as blackjack, but constraints in the grid led the constructors to refer to it by its other name, TWENTY-ONE. Each of the entries cited in the revealer clue hides a pair of cards that adds up to 21 — or blackjack — in the game.

[Sloppily making out, in slang] (17A) is known as SUCKING FACE. The [Piece of jewelry consisting of a single line of diamonds] (27A) is a TENNIS BRACELET. An ace is worth 11 points, while the remaining honor cards — jack, queen and king — are worth 10 apiece. TWENTY-ONE is played with a two-card hand, which means that to reach exactly 21, you have to have draw an ace and an honor card.

Not a fan of gambling? Play it safe by revealing the remaining themed entries below.

Tricky Clues

23A. Solving clues is only half the battle: You’ve also got to be able to read what you filled in, which can be hard when the correct answer is a two-word or hyphenated term. A [Steep-roofed house], for example, is called an A-FRAME. Since crossword grids rarely include hyphens or spaces, you might have become stuck trying to read this entry as an odd adverb; say, a picture mounted “aframe.”

50A. I conceived of two possible answers for [Provide, as with an ability], but the answer turned out to be a secret third thing: ENDUE. My two related but incorrect guesses: “endow,” which can have this sense but tends to be used in the context of financial provisions, and “imbue,” which describes a gentler, permeating instilling of qualities (as opposed to abilities).

62A. The New York Times’s earliest recorded use of the phrase [Life of Riley], which denotes EASE, was in a 1921 article about the curtailment of spending on minor league baseball teams:

“No longer will the minor league ball players ‘lead the Life of Riley’ if club owners in the smaller circuits adopt the policy laid down by M.H. Sexton, President of the National Association of Minor Leagues, in his speech this afternoon before the annual meeting of that body.”

41D. Think of the “it” in [You might leave room for it] as a sort of “x” that we’re solving for. Here, it’s DESSERT. In a different puzzle, the answer might be “disagreement,” though I see no room for disagreement about the deliciousness of DESSERT.

44D. Entries in a foreign language are often indicated in clues by including a place where that language is used or a famous figure who speaks it. [“Go, go, go!,” to Goya] is ANDALE, because Francisco Goya was from Spain.

Constructor Notes

Seth Bisen-Hersh: I often write to Jeff with complicated Sunday puzzle ideas, and in many cases they either peter out or are whittled down to weekday concepts. I remember that for this puzzle, I was looking to do a magic trick with cards, since I had been watching Penn & Teller’s show on television.

While looking at the names of playing cards that could be hidden in phrases, we noticed that the ACE/TEN were in a few and ACE/KING were in a few. That prompted us to see if we could find ACE/JACK and ACE/QUEEN. When we did, and saw that we could find symmetrical theme entries, we knew we had blackjack! But the entry “blackjack” proved a bit gluey in the middle with its J and K — we’re not J.K.! — so we traded it out for TWENTY-ONE, which has friendlier letters (and is also a valid name for the game).

Collaborating with Jeff is wonderful, and I highly recommend reaching out to him if you are a new (or old) constructor. I’m so happy to be back in The Times with a second puzzle, because it proves that my first acceptance wasn’t a fluke! This is Jeff’s 154th puzzle, and his success is clearly no fluke. We’ll be back before you know it!

Jeff Chen: Seth is a pleasure to work with. He epitomizes my philosophy of quantity leading to quality — we must have batted around two dozen ideas before eventually landing on this one. His grit and persistence are fantastic.

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