NYT 2:54 (pannonica)
LAT 3:43 (pannonica)
CS 7:29 (Ade)
BEQ 5:55 (Amy)
Zhouqin Burnikel and Dennis Ryall’s New York Times crossword — pannonica’s write-up
NYT • 12/15/14 • Mon • Burnikel, Ryall • no. 1215 • solution
The final across answer serves as a revealer. 69-across [“Freeze!” or, when broken down into three parts, how the answer for each of the six starred clues goes] STOP, or literally S TO P, as the clue’s labored explanation spells it out. Mondays.
- 1a. [*Obstetrician’s action on a newborn child] SLAP. Not so much, these days.
- 18a. [*Goal an N.H.L.’er shoots for?] STANLEY CUP. Presumably.
- 20a. [*Go swimming in one’s birthday suit] SKINNY DIP. Kind of hearkens back to one-across.
- 40a. [*Visit to Vail, maybe] SKI TRIP.
- 56a. [*Sharp mind, figuratively] STEEL TRAP. Steel rusts, you know. Less so with stainless and galvanized.
- 61a. [*Setting for “Meatballs” or “Friday the 13th”] SUMMER CAMP.
And surely it’s no coincidence that the central down answer is STP [Indy letters]? (36d). I can’t say that the theme or the theme answers are exciting or interesting. Very ho-hum. The revealer has a small amount of panache, but overall this has a very pedestrian feel.
EST’D, the ERL King, ALAE, PDAS, Jackie OAKIE, ACT I, A GUN, and my perennial cruciverbal nemesis ESAI Morales. These are not the type of fill I want to see in a crossword puzzle, and especially not a Monday.
- Liked the marc and franc duo in the clue for EURO (14a).
- 42a [Down, on a light switch] OFF. Usually.
- 55d [Contented cat sound] PURR. Yes, but they are also wont to do so when they are injured or in deep distress. It’s a much more complicated phenomenon.
- 11d [Quickly take the lead] RACE AHEAD, 34d [Sports car with a Spider model] ALFA ROMEO. Nice symmetrical pairing. Fiat also made a Spider, and Spyders have been offered by Porsche, Lamborghini, Mazda, Toyota, and Chevrolet.
- 19d [F equivalent, musically] E SHARP. E# is also how Downtown mainstay Elliot Sharp sometimes billed himself.
- 8d [When prime time ends on most Fox stations] TEN PM. What an utterly odd, odd clue.
Underwhelming crossword.
Gary Schlapfer and C.C. Burnikel’s Los Angeles Times crossword — pannonica’s write-up
LAT • 12/15/14 • Mon • Schlapfer, Burnikel • solution
Regional orography! Who’d have thunk it, especially for a Monday.
- 56a. [Pacific Northwest range, three of whose peaks end 17-, 24- and 47-Across] THE CASCADES.
- 17a. [Beer named for an American patriot] SAMUEL ADAMS.
- 24a. [Girl who found a wolf in her grandmother’s clothing] RED RIDING HOOD.
- 47a. [Monaco ruler married to Grace Kelly] PRINCE RAINIER.
Adams and Rainier are in Washington, Hood is in Oregon. The big peaks in California are Shasta and Lassen. Baker, St Helens, and the Three Sisters are also quite well-known.
- Jaded me filled in –LERS for one-across [Royals and Giants, e.g.], but it turned out to be the relatively prosaic TEAMS. And even before that, I had ASEPTIC for 5d [Like operating rooms] when the correct answer was STERILE.
- Nifty tricky clue at 34a [Clock radio letters] AMPM, not AMFM. Clock radio, ouch.
- 61a [Skirt named for a letter] A-LINE. May also refer to dresses and even coats. Symmetrically paired with 14a A-LIST.
- Long down answers consist of a pair of full names—MATT DAMON and JUAN PERÓN—and the fairly interesting DISCO ERA and AWAY GAME.
- 28a [Temper tantrum during a flight] AIR RAGE. Is this enough of a “thing” to be crosswordworthy?
The crossword as a whole is solid, with an acceptable amount of abbrevs. and partials. Decent Monday.
Brendan Quigley’s blog crossword, “Themeless Monday”
BEQ crossword solution, 12 15 14 “Themeless Monday”
This 64-worder has one really zippy answer, which I assume was Brendan’s seed entry: OCULUS RIFT (40a. [What can go to serious gamers’ heads?]). It’s some sort of gaming headset/glasses doodad that a bunch of people plowed money into on Kickstarter, and then the maker sold to a big corporation and all the “I wanna help the little guy” gamers felt like chumps.
Low-word-count puzzles look prettier empty than full. When full, they tend to look hideous, with obscure terms and roll-your-own words and whatnot. This grid’s pretty solid, actually, if not particularly thrilling. (I will always prefer Brendan’s 70s and 72s for their crisply au courant fill.)
Ten things:
- 13a. [Pet name for a little one], PEANUT. When I had PE**UT, I was surprisingly mystified here. A case of the Monday-morning slows.
- 20a. [Group known for noodling], JAM BAND. I wonder if Brendan knows Mr. Noodle. “Goddammit, Mr. Noodle.” (I think the story is actually fake, because where on earth is there a motel where the only TV channel it gets is PBS?)
- 32a. [“___ is fleeting, but obscurity is forever” (Napoleon)], GLORY. Words to live by. For true immortality, strive for obscurity.
- 37a. [Progressive opponent], ALLSTATE. Insurance companies, not Teddy Roosevelt in 1912.
- 45a. [Toss-and-catch string game], DIABOLO. If you’re like me, you know this one only from crosswords.
- 51a. [File uploaders in torrenting], SEEDERS. Feels like a roll-your-own formation, but with a clue that makes me feel like I don’t know anything about BitTorrent and whatnot.
- 9d. [Followers of cues?], ARS. Would rather see an Ars Technica or Ars Poetica clue than plural spelled-out letter name.
- 21d. [No rival], BOND. Dr. No, James Bond. Love this clue. It kept me wondering.
- 38d. [Trick shot?], EFFECT. As in special effects in movies, I assume.
43d. [“Can’t you see I’m driving here!?”], FORE. Tried TOOT first, assuming car driving rather than golf.
4 stars from me. Not all that fun, not like one of BEQ’s 72-worders, but surprisingly smooth and solid for a 64-worder.
Donna S. Levin’s CrosSynergy/Washington Post crossword, “Getting the Hang of It”—Ade’s write-up
CrosSynergy/Washington Post crossword solution, 12.15.14: “Getting the Hang of It”
Welcome to another week of crossword puzzles! Hope all is well with you as we’re just 10 days away from Christmas. Today’s puzzle, brought to us by Ms. Donna S. Levin, is a straightforward theme in which each of the last words in the four theme answers are also objects that can be used as mounts for hanging up pictures. Well, at least the first three are. The last one actually is the frame itself, instead of what is used as a mount to hang it.
- CAPTAIN HOOK: (21A: [Smee’s boss])
- UNDER THE WIRE: (26A: [Just in time])
- GOES TO THE MAT: (43A: [Fights tenaciously])
- FREEZE FRAME: (50A: [Cinematography technique seen at the end of “Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid”]) -Or, how I would have clued this, “1982 hit by the J. Geils Band”.
Nice little trivia tidbit with ELLEN (17A: [Groundbreaking sitcom originally called “These Friends of Mine”]). Good move to change that title, don’t you think?! Oh, and speaking of trivia, even this sports nut was caught off-guard a little by the note at GREECE, even though I had somewhat of a prior working knowledge of that beforehand (43D: [Country that always leads the Parade of Nations at The Olympics]). I think it’s time I’ve had some falafel with my PITA – well, at least the next time I have a meal in pita bread (19A: [Falafel container]). The smell emanating from the food carts in New York City that sell falafel dishes is enough to bite off a chunk of your right arm sometimes. The entry which clue mentions the end of a classic movie is intersected by BOYZ, which also has a very memorable, if not, very sad ending (41A: [“N the Hood” fellas]). Loved the clue to EYE LEVEL, although, for some idiotic reason, I put in “eye sight” to start (37D: [Height at which h artwork is commonly hung]).
“Sports will make you smarter” moment of the day: OILER (62A: [Pre-1999 Titan]) – Before the Tennessee Titans’ NFL team moved to their current location in 1997, they were in Houston and called the Oilers. Running back Earl Campbell and quarterback Warren Moon were probably the two greatest OILER players. Houston was a founding member of the American Football League in 1960, and won the first two AFL championships (1960, 1961). Oh, and they had a fight song. A very cheesy fight song…
Thank you for the time, and I’ll see you tomorrow!
Take care!
Ade/AOK
I thought the NYT was a pretty good Monday. Not a particularly exciting theme, but not much junk fill, either. The only answer that was unfamiliar to me was 65-A OAKIE, but I’m not much of a movie guy.
8-D, which pannonica called out as “odd” might actually be incorrect. In the Central time zone (or at least the parts of it I’ve spent time in) Fox’s prime time ends at 9 p.m. I’m not sure how things work in the Mountain time zone, but I think it might be the same. According to Wikipedia, there are 194 Fox stations in the U.S. and by my count 95 or so are in the Central time zone. So it could be that prime time ends at 9:00 pm on “most” Fox stations.
“Fox stations” normally means owned-and-operated, for which the clue is correct.
If that’s the case, I stand corrected – the clue isn’t incorrect, just ridiculously obscure, especially for a Monday. Maybe it’s reasonable for solvers to recognize the difference between “Fox stations” and “Fox affiliate stations” (or McDonald’s restaurants and McDonald’s franchises), but even then, how many will know that 15 of 28 of those stations are in either the Eastern or Pacific time zone?
I watch the 10:00 news on our Fox station and Letterman at 11:00. It’s the only news that’s on an hour early. The Sacramento CBS station has a one-hour advance on their programming, so they’re on the Fox early-primetime schedule too so a quick turn of the rotor and I’m in business.
I see now that solvers in flyover country had a bit more of a challenge. But I’d think that they would recognize that a) their local Fox station has primetime an hour earlier than the other networks (and possibly 9:00 PM news instead of the others’ 10:00 PM news), and b) because they’ve heard “8:oo PM Eastern and 7:00 PM Central” since they first encountered television that perhaps the reason NINEPM didn’t fit is because it is Eastern/Pacific-centric. I wouldn’t expect them to really know all the Fox stations on a Monday.
So, in other and fewer words, it’s a bizarre clue?
The NYT and the LAT don’t give a rat’s patootie about what goes on in Central and Mountain time, do they? “The 11:00 news” has been alluded to in puzzles even though the giant central swath of the nation has the newscast at 10, with prime-time network shows in the 7, 8, and 9 hours. In Chicago, Fox 32 and WGN end their prime-time shows at 9 for the 9:00 news, an hour before the ABC, NBC, and CBS affiliates. (And that 9 would be 10:00 in the weird Eastern and Pacific time zones.)
re LAT — I like map stuff a lot more than pop stuff, but didn’t we already note recently that IRANI is incorrect? Should be Iranian?
Yes, but it’s tiresome to perennially complain about the same oh-so-frequent things in crosswords. Except for ESAI Morales – I never get tired of whining about his appearances, and it hasn’t anything to with him personally.
In English, “Irani” is an accepted adjective for people or things from Iran. The only context where Iranian must be used is when speaking of the language family that includes Persian. BTW, the Persian word for Persian, Farsi, is discouraged when referring to the language of Iran in English. The proper name is “Persian.”
In India, “Irani” means a Zoroastrian who emigrated from Iran in the 19th century. Zoroastrians who came to India many centuries earlier are “Parsi.” One means “Iranian” and the other “Persian.”
It wasn’t a thrilling Monday, but is there such a thing? I was just glad that it didn’t heavily rely on crosswordese. It was pretty zippy for me — just about 6 minutes or so (on paper). I didn’t even grok the theme until I’d written in STOP near the end, and at that point, but it was pretty enjoyable.
I liked the BEQ, especially the Ouija Board, and the Blind in poker…