NYT Magazine - March 22 2020

SPELLING BEE

Opulent (3 points). Also: Elope, lento, lepton, letup,

lotto, loupe, lunette, nettle, outlet, outpoll, pellet, peloton,

people, pollen, pollute, pullet, pullout, topple, tulle,

tunnel. If you found other legitimate dictionary words in

the beehive, feel free to include them in your score.

KENKEN

KenKen® is a registered trademark of Nextoy, LLC. © 2020 http://www.KENKEN.com. All rights reserved.

Answers to puzzles of 3.15.20

Answers to puzzle on Page 52

three dishes and Instagrammed it,’’ a former

employee says.

On a recent Thursday morning, I followed a

trail of curvy white W’s painted along a Wil-

liamsburg sidewalk up to the entrance of the

Wing’s newest club. In the elevator, I witnessed

a real-life Winglet meet-cute: One woman read

auras for GOOP; the other made $45 soaps for

GOOP; they bonded over a healer they both

knew. An eager young Wing employee met me

at the front desk, and then I headed into the

pink belly of the club, where Audrey Gelman

was waiting for me.

Gelman wore a golden Wing necklace and

an inviting smile. Flanked by the Wing’s senior

vice president for operations and an outside

public-relations professional, she listened to

the accounts of her employees and nodded

thoughtfully. Despite their intention to build

a women’s utopia, she acknowledged, the ills

of society at large had seeped in. ‘‘It’s hard to

hear that people have had this experience,’’ she

said. ‘‘These are familiar themes for us.’’ Every

employee concern, she assured me, had already

been incorporated into a sweeping business

recalibration. Even as it expanded, the Wing was

overhauling its organizational structure, raising

wages, extending benefi ts and instituting a code

of conduct for members which, if violated, could

result in the ‘‘clipping of wings’’ — termination

of membership.

Gelman reiterated an article published on Feb.

26 in Fast Company, in which she wrote that she

had tried to play the role of the perfect ‘‘girlboss,’’

promoting the ‘‘fantasy’’ that a female founder

could ‘‘have it all.’’ But behind the scenes, she

wrote, her ‘‘fear of failure’’ had led her to obscure

the ‘‘real challenges’’ unfolding at the Wing.

Wing workers, who had for years raised those

very issues internally, wondered why the Wing

only seemed to acknowledge them as members

spoke up and journalists circled. But when Gel-

man posted her mea culpa on Instagram, glowing

reviews fl ooded into the comments: ‘‘So import-

ant.’’ ‘‘I didn’t know I could love and admire you

even more.’’ ‘‘Bravo.’’ Whatever improvements

might be in store for its employees in the future,

the Wing had already successfully fi xed the fl aw

in its public reputation.

As the start-up world has reeled from the

dizzying falls of toxic male founders like Uber’s

Travis Kalanick and WeWork’s Adam Neumann,

it has set its sights on a new kind of hero fi g-

ure. Female entrepreneurs are paraded in the

press as saviors of the market, even though they

still receive relatively paltry sums from ven-

ture-capital fi rms. In their hands, the tensions of

capitalism may be laundered through feminist

messaging and come out looking bright and

new. At the very least, corporate feminism can

be defended as an incremental good. Yes, it may

co-opt a political movement for profi t, but it is

moving the levers of capitalism for the benefi t

of women, tailoring products for female con-

sumers and transferring cash into the coff ers

of women leaders.

When these women inevitably fail to secure

female empowerment through retail off erings

and exclusive hospitality experiences, it is sug-

gested that it is perhaps sexist to criticize them.

Men get away with so much. And yet this out-

pouring of sympathy rarely extends beyond the

executive suite. When a feminist company falls

short of its utopian vision, it is the workers who

must toil to maintain the illusion. And they are

women, too.

53

Wing

(Continued from Page 27)

Fill the grid with digits so as not to repeat a digit in any row or column, and so that the digits within each heavily outlined

box will produce the target number shown, by using addition, subtraction, multiplication or division, as indicated in the box.

A 5x5 grid will use the digits 1–5. A 7x7 grid will use 1–7.

KENKEN

ABBA I CU SCADS APCALC

DE ED FOP OAKEN HOORAH

AL LHA I LHAL LAL E ARMAN I

GL I DE L I BE L GAG KANYE

EYE I TALO RAKED CAF

BOOB L URR E DB L U E B I RD

DE PAUL TEAPOY BRANDO

IMAN I CE IMO E L I T I SM

SONE RVOUSNOS E RV I C E

UTE DENCH NEMEAN AXE S

SERRA CHAN DENS HUEVO

ESAU WARRED NOI RE DEW

STEVEDORED I VASTORE

SALT I NE PAT RED OUST

AG E I S T AG ENT S I DOTOO

DUTCHTOWNTOUCHDOWN

TIM OREOS RAISE SPF

ALEUT REC STONY EMCEE

L E TT E R BCHORDKE YBOARD

ERRATA I HOPE I RE ONCE

SAYHEY T I PSY ESP STYX

READY, SET ... GETS LOW!

ACROSTIC

A. Cab Calloway

B. Unearthly

C. Sleepyhead

D. Katydids

E. Disbelief

F. Real McCoy

G. Icelandic

H. Valiant

I. Inference

J. Nineties

K. Golden

L. Automatic

M. Standard

N. Motor City

O. Emissions

P. Tigers

Q. “Abbey Road”

R. Petty cash

S. Hipsterism

T. Obstacles

U. Rename

(RACHEL) CUSK, DRIVING AS METAPHOR — [A]
person traveling by bicycle feels an antipathy towards
cars, yet once inside a car can immediately become
irritated by cyclists, and as a pedestrian could dislike
them both, sometimes all in the course of a single day.

CRAZY EIGHTS TRIPLE TREASURE
FI
NA
NC
ES

LI

NG

UI

NI

FL

MA

NE

OC

DI

MI

NI

HS

OR

DT

NE

OY

UI

NI

CQ

VI

CO

RD

UR

OY

OH

ME

LA

ND

NS

OW

PL

OW

QE

UA

TI

ON

TL

OT

HK

RY

EI

CO

VS

SM

3

1

1

1

2

4 4

3

3