The crossword from Bored to Death S2E5

A freeze-frame from the episode In HBO’s Bored to Death episode S2E5 “Forty-Two Down,” protagonist Jonathan Ames (Jason Schwartzman) introduces himself to his target Vikram (Ajay Naidu) by asking his help with that day’s New York Times crossword. We get two brief shots of the crossword itself. The first, a closeup, is just enough to irk the crossworders in the audience, as we see a plethora of unkeyed letters. The second medium shot shows that the black squares in this asymmetric grid spell out the word “HIT.” (Or does the black blob in front of the “H” represent a fourth letter?)

The episode aired 2010-10-24, but the Times shown is mostly the issue of Wednesday 2007-11-14: the facing column contains Mike Hale’s review of the TV show Kenny vs. Spenny, and the “Answer to Previous Puzzle” at lower left is indeed Fred Piscop’s puzzle of 2007-11-13. The crossword, however, is completely doctored — I see no resemblance to the Jim Page puzzle that actually ran on that date. The clues (which do not match the grid) are hilariously zany! Here’s the crossword as best I can make it out, with all of the answers Jonathan has (ineptly) filled in so far. (Download as TeX; PDF.)

The crossword, cleaned up

The Across clues seem entirely parodic; I can’t think of words that would fit any of these clues, except that “Chemical found in some emetics” might be IPECAC. “Goatherd’s undergarment”? “Wombat-like ruminant”? “Etruscan tuber”? For “Hungarian flautist Proog,” Jonathan has filled in the name ICTO. Some of the Across clues incorporate crosswordese tropes while remaining nonsensical: “Snide, to a Scot”; “Amateur proctologist’s grp.”

But more than half of the Down clues are real: Jonathan has correctly filled in “Rubber ducky’s place” (BATH) and “Canyon sound” (ECHO), and the three after that are obviously SLED, PIER, and INNING. So Jonathan’s guess for 1-Across “Juice of a clam” — BESPI — turns out to be correct!

The same pattern appears in the upper right corner: 10-Down is obviously BLINK, 11-Down LAND, 12-Down OHIO; but this forms no coherent words going across. And middle left: GIRLS, OCEAN, ITALY. And lower right: AFRO, GAIN(?), UKES, BELA.

42 Down is “A silly, foolish, or stupid person,” ten letters, of which Jonathan has (somehow) gotten the POOP part without the NINCOM.

“Like some statistics” is VITAL (from the NYT puzzle of 1999-04-16); “Breathing organ” is not LUNG but GILL (from 1996-02-01); and “What candles may signify” is AGE (from 1998-09-27).

RALANDOE (or maybe RACANDOE) and SUTRACAL don’t make any sense to me. 67- and 58-Across together spell the name of contemporary BBC reporter JANE CORBIN, for whatever that’s worth.