The theme clues range from simple trivia to some really sweet puns, and each one is assigned a different country, which appears at the end of the clue in parentheses. Having read the title of the puzzle, ‘In the Money’, and then noticing some of these countries – Qatar, Rwanda – my heart sank a little. International currency, I thought. I am immersed. The first two thematic clues did nothing to assuage my fears, but I was happy with 49-Across, “Give up all at one (Ecuador).” I had some crosswords and enough idea here to figure out the answer, QUIT COLD TURKEY. The shaded squares appear at the beginning of the indication and the circle is in its fifth position – the C in COLD. TURKEY threw me for a moment. (What do Turkey and Ecuador have in common? Not money — Turkey has a lira and Ecuador uses the US dollar.) Then I got 100-Across, and that’s where the shaded letters made sense. “Santa Claus Activity (Rwanda)” solves catalog creation. the shaded squares start at K and end at I, and the circle surrounds N in the REGULATION. These shaded letters, KIGALI, spell the capital of Rwanda. back to 49-Across, QUITO is now popping up in a way that makes me wonder how I missed it. This is one of those topics that goes from zero to 60 once you get the hang of it, I think. In each of the subject entries, the shaded letters denote the capital of the listed country. This helped me a lot with trivia that I didn’t remotely know, though I still screwed up that “Golfer who won the 1998 Masters (Italy)” at 26-Across (as I’ll explain in a minute). It also helped me understand the two puns. I especially liked 114-Across, “One who walks to work? (Qatar)’, in which one’s occupation involves movement, as a DOG HANDLER: DOHA is shaded and G is in the circle. This revealer, in 119-Across, “What are the circled letters in this puzzle in relation to the surrounding shaded squares?” makes a great punchline. These extra letters represent CAPITAL GAIN, i.e. increases in each capital. These circled letters, however, found me at a point of reflection.
