Sunday, March 25, 2018

Hex/Quigley 14:11 (Jim P) 

 


LAT 7:48 (Amy) 

 


NYT 11:36 (Amy) 

 


WaPo 15:28 (Jim P) 

 

Finn Vigeland’s New York Times crossword, “Follow the Sun”—Amy’s write-up

NY Times crossword solution, 3 25 18, “Follow the Sun”

How to sum up the theme? The theme answers go on a bender, zigging up or down to “follow the SUN” and then zigging back across to finish the phrase.

  • 26a. [Catastrophic event that can be caused by a gigantic earthquake], MEGA-TSUNAMI. Looks like the answer ins MEGATS, but it drops down in the circled S-U-N and then continues through the end of MON AMI.
  • 29a. [Folds, as a business], GOES UNDER.
  • 56a. [Hollywood labor groups], ACTORS’ UNIONS. Small ding for ONE-ACT also being in the grid. (See also: AIRILY and AIR FLOW.)
  • 68a. [How someone in awe might describe himself], MONKEY’S UNCLE. Incomplete without “I’ll be” before it, no?
  • 98a. [Amérique], ETATS UNIS.
  • 102a. [Only words on the front of the Great Seal of the United States], E PLURIBUS UNUM.

The SUNs going up and down (from our geocentric perspective here on earth, that’s just what the sun does) appear in some lively fill—SUNK COST, SAMSUNG, and T MINUS ZERO.

Favorite fill: REAL TALK (with I HEART in the grid, would have preferred a clue other than [Preface to a heart-to-heart conversation]—ignore that circled R in REAL TALK, that was my reminder to mention it here), TIN HATS, MIC DROP, AS SEEN ON TV, PEDUNCLE (also a word in medical terminology!), Tony KUSHNER, and FRENZY (I had FRACAS first but prefer the word FRENZY).

What else? I don’t know. But! Erik Agard is in 1st place tonight at the ACPT, after the first six puzzles. And it’s a commanding lead—4 minutes ahead of multi-year champion Dan Feyer and 7 minutes ahead of multi-year champion Tyler Hinman. That sort of lead is astonishing—last year, Dan had just a 2-minute lead over his fellow finalists, Joon and Tyler. Team Fiend wishes Erik a smooth, clean puzzle 7 and being in the zone during the finals tomorrow.

4 stars from me.

Evan Birnholz’s Washington Post crossword, “Designated Critters” — Jim’s review

Jim P. here filling in for Erin who I’m sure is crushing/crushed it in Stamford.

This puzzle was made for someone like me who enjoys re-parsing themes. Evan’s found words and phrases where the last few letters are a type of animal. The whole phrase is then given the wacky treatment in the cluing

WaPo – Sun, 3.25.18 – “Designated Critters” by Evan Birnholz

  • 23a [Amazing night hunter?] SUPERB OWL. Super Bowl. A nice start to the set.
  • 30a [Drones employed by a tech giant?] APPLE BEES. Applebee’s.
  • 42a [“The View” co-host Behar’s collection of little bloodsuckers?] JOY’S TICKS. Joysticks.
  • 68a [Hard-working colonists marching for political reasons?] PROTEST ANTS. Protestants. Nice. I wonder if they joined the “March for Our Lives” movement yesterday.
  • 94a [Donkeys that give people free tickets?] COMP ASSES. Compasses. “Comp” as in short for “complimentary.” I think I would clue this one as a verb: [Give your casino guests free donkeys?]
  • 110a [Grizzlies that alert others that they’re about to drive?] “FORE!” BEARS. Forebears.
  • 119a [Rooster in possession of an opium source?] POPPY COCK. Poppycock.
  • 9d [Actress Betty’s draft animal?] WHITE’S OX. White Sox.
  • 16d [Rabbit relative working for a New York daily news publication?] TIMES HARE. Time-share.
  • 80d [Rodents featured on an old Fox TV show set in Southern California?] “THE O.C.RATS. Theocrats. Whew! This one required the most mental gymnastics. You had to remember that The O.C. was a teen soap about privileged kids in Orange County, CA. Honestly, though, I never saw an episode. I like this entry, though.
  • 88d [Fowls on Miami’s basketball team?] HEAT HENS. Heathens. Ha! Cute.

As you can see, there’s some inconsistency in how each theme answer is formed: some have a letter taken from one word and given to the other (a la SUPERB OWL) and some are just split in two (a la COMP ASSES). The least interesting are the ones where the animal is already obviously present (FOREBEARS, POPPYCOCK). (Curious. The internets tell me that POPPYCOCK comes to us from the Dutch “pap” meaning “soft” and “kak” meaning “dung” resulting in “pappekak.”)

But the inconsistency only bugged me a little bit. I thoroughly enjoyed the theme as a whole.

Plenty of fun, solid fill despite all that theme material: LOW-RISK, CANAPES, “ONE LOVE,” SIDE CARODD JOB, PROCTOR, AUTHORS, FOOT RUB, “SEE THAT?”, JORTS (jeans shorts). Warning in case you’re thinking of running out and buying a pair of JORTS: Urban Dictionary says, “Worn mostly by children and douchebags. JORTS are perhaps the easiest way to recognize people you will not like.” See also: this.

A few things:

  • Boy, that 104a entry (DESTINE clued as [Preordain]) sure looks weird to me, and I don’t know why. Maybe because you rarely see it in the present tense. Also, there is a Destin, Florida, pronounced the same way. DESTINE looks like it should be pronounced “dest-een” or perhaps “de-Stine,” as in [Remove all references to author R.L.].
  • 74a [John Jacob ___, optical industry pioneer]. BAUSCH. We would also have accepted JINGLEHEIMER SCHMIDT as a rebus answer. Feel free to scar your kids by having them watch this.
  • 86a [Merman with a powerful singing voice]. ETHEL. Could not stop thinking of Mermaid Man from Spongebob Squarepants (played by Ernest Borgnine). One gets the sense that I watch a lot of kids’ TV.
  • 97a [Sole-stirring performance, say]. FOOT RUB. Not sure that “stirring” is the best word here, but a fun clue nonetheless.
  • 128a [Bunch of Rose’s, once?] REDS. Ohh! I just got this. Pete Rose played for the REDS, therefore the REDS are Rose’s bunch.
  • 43d [Magic giant of the ’90s]. O’NEAL. Love this clue!
  • 59d [Brown and Rice, e.g.] AUTHORS. Double misdirection! For the tiniest of nanoseconds your brain was thinking food, but obviously Brown is not a food. Then, you savvy solver, you thought of universities. But nope. Wrong again. Eventually, the crossings led you to the correct answer. AUTHORS Dan Brown and Anne Rice, presumably, but I’m sure there are others who can fit the clue.
  • 64d [Cuban byproduct]. ASH. I was thinking of Dallas Mavericks owner Mark Cuban for much too long. Is he perhaps an arsonist?

Fun puzzle. I’ll put it in the 3.8 range.

Zhouqin Burnikel’s Los Angeles Times crossword, “Word for Words”—Amy’s write-up

NY Times crossword solution, 3 25 18, “Word for Words”

A classic sort of theme: Redefine a familiar term as something else. With so many English words having a multiplicity of meanings, there’s ample fodder for the theme—but here, the riff is that the original term starts with a three-letter, all-caps entity (acronyms or initialisms), and Zhouqin reinterprets each as a three-letter word. (The “Word for Words” title is apt: One word replaces multiple words that the abbrevs connote.)

  • 23a. [Pet Airways security device?], CAT SCANNER. Cats vs. computerized axial tomography.
  • 25a. [Narrative from novelist Levin?], IRA ACCOUNT. Ira Levin vs. individual retirement account.
  • 37a. [The Yankees during the Babe Ruth era?], SWAT TEAM. I never remember what SWAT is short for.
  • 45a. [Wine glass-making component?], STEM EDUCATION. Science, technology, engineering, and math.
  • 69a. [Alley designation?], PIN NUMBER. Bowling pin vs. personal identification number. Bowling pins are referred to with numbers, though the numbers aren’t printed on them.
  • 90a. [Seminar on Hughes’ poetry?], TED CONFERENCE. Ted Hughes (husband of Sylvia Plath), TED Talks. I forget what TED stands for. Looking it up … “technology, entertainment, and design.” They’ve expanded their ambit since coining that.
  • 99a. [Hockey contract negotiator?], ICE AGENT. Ice vs. Immigration and Customs Enforcement.
  • 115a. [Association of gamblers?], BET NETWORK. Betting vs. Black Entertainment Television. This themer is broken, though, because “BET Network” in the singular doesn’t appear to be a thing. The BET channel is part of Viacom’s “BET Networks” along with various BET music channels. And for an “association of gamblers,” bet network would be an awkward phrasing.
  • 117a. [Injury treatment for a top pitcher?], ACE BANDAGE. A pitching ace vs. ACE brand bandages. Apparently the brand began 100 years ago as “All Cotton Elastic” bandages. Who knew??

I’m OK with the theme including Ted and Ira as names along with seven common nouns.

Five more things:

  • I like “AW, C’MON,” a pretty PANSY (Chicago’s spring flowers have not come out yet, but it’ll be soon!), TO-DO LIST, “NO BIGGIE,” ATOM ANT, and KATHMANDU (many of us grew up without the H, I think, but that’s not correct now). I want to like STRESS-ATE, 82d. [Took a course under duress?], but I’m not sure stress-eating takes the past tense like that. “I was stress-eating” sounds better to me.
  • Some old crosswordese-type stuff popped up here: AMAIN, ARECA. I’ll bet ARECA is a more familiar word to Asians (particularly in India and Southeast Asia) than among white Americans, though. Does it count as crosswordese to you? Words I was first exposed to in crosswords of yore always trigger my crosswordese sensors, but the sensors can be recalibrated.
  • 124a. [Dover souls], BRITS. I’ve probably seen this clue before, but I still enjoyed it.
  • 59a. [Dress policy at some fancy restaurants], NO DENIM / 49d. [City in southern France], NIMES. Well, that’s an awkward duplication. Denim gets its name from de Nimes. Particularly glaring since these entries cross at the M.
  • 111d. [eBay competitor], UBID. Ha. I just edited an EBAY clue that called it a uBid rival, because I looked up uBid and it appears to be low-rent trash (the site/business, not the things people auction on it).

Four stars from me.

Brendan Emmett Quigley’s CRooked Crossword, “Internal Reflection” — Jim’s review

I sailed through this puzzle in a speedy (for me) time of 14:11. Not a lot of trickery or wordplay which is what I expected. Things were mostly straightforward.

The theme is two-word phrases where the final three letters of the first word start the second word but in reverse order, hence the title.

CRooked – Sun, 3.25.18 – “Internal Reflection” by Brendan Emmett Quigley

  • 23a [1967 medical achievement] HEART TRANSPLANT
  • 39a [Chinese and Thai, e.g.] TONAL LANGUAGES
  • 49a [Cambridge theater arts program, casually] HARVARD DRAMA
  • 65a [Stat for UPS] SCHEDULED DELIVERY
  • 83a [Monopoly setting] ATLANTIC CITY
  • 92a [Cause of some swelling] WATER RETENTION
  • 110a [Current path] ELECTRIC CIRCUIT

This seems like a theme that might have been done before, but that doesn’t matter. It’s very well done here with plenty of sparkly surrounding fill: RAPHAEL, SCREEN CAP, INTRINSIC, HELSINKI, NO LIMITS, GNARLY, a Burnsian “EXCELLENT!,” and a HAND GUN, which is nice to see in a puzzle but not in real life.

And with that, I’m going to bring this to a close. I’m blogged out. Time for a much needed break…until tonight. See you tomorrow!

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17 Responses to Sunday, March 25, 2018

  1. huda says:

    NYT: I really enjoyed this puzzle. I like it way better than the typical Sunday with wacky themes. And the concept of following the SUN is appealing as we hope for real spring to come soon.

    I had some funny moments: e.g. (All) THUMBS was for a while (All) THat BS).

    Interesting clue for KUSHNER, avoiding the obvious one, but that KUSHNER/LINEARA corner was probably the hardest for me.

    Good luck to all the contestants!

    • huda says:

      PS. One of my favorite clues was in the Mini Puzzle:
      “Maybe this world is another planet’s ___”: Aldous Huxley”
      Something to think about!

    • Amy Reynaldo says:

      It took me four days to realize that “the obvious one” is Jared K. I forgot that the name belonged to anyone but playwright Tony and rabbi “When Bad Things Happen to Good People” Harold!

  2. huda says:

    PS. One of my favorite clues was in the Mini Puzzle:
    “Maybe this world is another planet’s ___”: Aldous Huxley”
    Something to think about!

  3. Lise says:

    The NYT was wonderful. I liked the non-symmetry of the theme entry placement, while the theme concept had its own symmetry – a Goldilocks just-right construction.

    Loved NERF WAR – which should be the only kind of projectile war ever – and MINIONS. And a lot of other stuff. Thanks, and good luck, everyone at the ACPT!

  4. PJ Ward says:

    Pretty neat with the sun setting (going down) in the west and rising in the east.

  5. Norm says:

    Loved the WaPo. Yeah, FOREBEARS and POPPYCOCK (and APPLEBEES, for that matter) were underwhelming, but THE OC RATS was so tremendous that I’ll give Evan a pass — and 5 stars.

  6. roger says:

    Looked up TIN HAT, never heard that before, and found that it is TIN FOIL HAT. Must have been thinking of Jack Haley.

    As for NERF WAR, seems that making war a game for kids is probably not the best activity for children these days. Or ever!

    Think that REAL TALK is a heart-to-heart conversation, not a preface to one.

    • Amy Reynaldo says:

      These days, I mainly see “real talk” on Twitter, used to convey “I mean it” or “listen here.” A tweet last night from a Marjory Stoneman Douglas HS student who attended the March for Our Lives in Washington: “Ok but real talk I gotta be up in like 5 hours and I’m running on very little sleep and all I can think about is how exhausted I’m going to be tomorrow.” Someone else’s tweet: “LeBron’s the greatest basketball player I’ve ever seen, real talk.” Nobody is having a heart-to-heart discussion about ranking NBA players!

      • roger says:

        Forgot to mention this yesterday but 30A. CLEAVES and ADHERES are opposites so the answer and the clue don’t match.

        “LeBron’s the greatest basketball player I’ve ever seen, real talk.” What’s the heart-to-heart talk that this is supposed to be a preface to?

  7. Penguins says:

    Wow, no “I’ll the Follow Sun” video!? Nice puzzle. The WSJ was fun (and funny) as well

  8. Noam D. Elkies says:

    SWAT and STEM are not TLA’s, but that’s only a problem with the description, not the puzzle.

    (And of course we know that “PIN number” is redundant. Not as redundant as “personal PIN number”, though.)

    Meanwhile xwordinfo already reports that E.Agard held on to his lead and won this year’s ACPT. Hope that fun was had by all.

    NDE

  9. Dianah says:

    Did not like NYT clue and answer for 103 down: Not taken seriously? Unwed
    Seems quite archaic.

  10. e.a. says:

    just now getting to C.C.’s magnificent opus of a sunday puzzle, i was sad when it was over

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