Monday, August 13, 2018

Lynn Lempel’s New York Times crossword—Jenni’s write-up

I love Lynn Lempel’s puzzles. Her Monday puzzles are smooth and fun to solve as well as accessible to new solvers. This one played a little harder than an average Monday for me, but that may be because it’s Sunday night, I’m on call, and we just finished a party with four of Emma’s preschool friends to send them off to college. Erp.

We have four theme answers and a revealer.

NYT 8/13, solution grid

• 17a [Leave a lasting legacy … or do worse at school] is GO DOWN IN HISTORY. Rudolph, the red-nosed reindeer….
• 23a [Succeed on the gridiron … or invite a slap in the face] is MAKE PASSES. Not a big fan of joking about being sexually inappropriate, but at least we’re not making it delightfully romantic.
• 39a [Score in baseball … or ruin some hose] is GET A RUN. I had GET RUNS at first, which seems more baseball-authentic to me.
• 54a [Be lucky in Scrabble … or come up short memorywise] is DRAW A BLANK.
• 61a [Start of a mixed message, as illustrated by 17-, 23-, 39- and 54-Across] is GOOD NEWS, BAD NEWS.

I liked this theme despite my raised eyebrow at 23a.

A few other things:

• 9d [Carole King’s “Tapestry” and “Music”] are LPS. I hadn’t heard of the latter. I looked it up and it turns out I know all the songs. This is not surprising. #childofthe70s
• Birds! IBISES in the grid and pelicans in the clue for BEAK.
• 36d [Nongovernmentally owned ship decked out for war] is a PRIVATEER. Thanks to The West Wing, I thought a PRIVATEER was a person. Turns out it can also be said person’s ship.
• 45a [Shoe with holes] is a CROC. Yes, I went there.
• 51d [Unclear] is VAGUE. I very rarely have to take out an answer on a Monday. I had the G from 61a and dropped in FOGGY. Wrong.

What I didn’t know before I did this puzzle: see above re: the album “Music” and the PRIVATEER.

Lewis Porter’s Wall Street Journal crossword, “Front Loads” — Jim Q’s review

Jim Q standing in for Jim P. So mind your P’s and Q’s. Has that joke been made yet? Probably.

This puzzle served as a reminder that I must see to the mountain of laundry piling up near my front loader. I ran out of detergent about a week ago.

THEME: DETERGENTS

Different detergent brands begin the theme answers.

17a. [Aztec practice] SUN WORSHIP. I didn’t know this was a practice… and I’m not entirely sure I’ve heard of Sun detergent.

21a. [Coastal region of Virginia] TIDE WATER. Is the “Tide Pod” eating craze still a thing? I hope not.

33a. [Pep rally performer] CHEERLEADER. 

42a. [As a group] ALL TOGETHER. 

52a. [Emphasized, typographically] BOLD FACED. 

61a. [Laundry needs, and the starts of 17-, 21-, 33-, 42-, and 52-Across] DETERGENTS. 

See? Don’t they all look pretty much the same?

It’s hard to say whether or not all these brands are familiar. I use Purex (usually on sale 10 Gallons/$1 or something like that). But the different brands sort of blend together in the detergent aisle at my grocery store. It’s as if all the detergent makers got together and decided to use the same color palette and fonts in their packaging. Here’s a list of top sellers from a quick Google search.  Looks like only All and Tide made the cut from this puzzle. I’m a bit surprised Gain wasn’t included in the grid.

The puzzle is clean overall I thought (it’d better be… there’s plenty of detergent in it). I’m always impressed when themers are stacked on one another and the result is devoid of gunk.

I got inexplicably hung up in the NE when I entered TROT for [Horse’s gait] and refused to change it. Instead I shoehorned A ONE in for [Pinnacle] instead of ACME and foolishly erased LIMA as the capital of Peru (I dunno. Figured the clue wanted some kind of currency instead). My normal Monday time is about 4 minutes and this took me 5. Seriously, 20% of my time was spent in that corner cursing my own idiocy.

The one clue I was going to question was [Cheesy talk] for SASS. But just now I’m realizing that I misread the clue. [Cheeky talk] works much better [Facepalm]. What can I say? I woke up late and I’m groggy.

Fun puzzle, Lewis! Also, a clever title. 3.5 stars from me. Happy Monday!

Anna Shechtman’s New Yorker crossword—Jenni’s write-up

I love this crossword series. It’s great to have a good chewy themeless on a Monday – especially a Monday that’s as dreary as this one is. Rain, rain, go away. Or go to California, where they really need you.

I was surprised to see my time when I finished. It felt like longer than that, in part because the NW was the last to fall. The only answer I put in on my first pass was HAUT for 2d [High up on the Eiffel Tower] and I took that out and put it back a couple of times. It was correct, in the end.

There are four stacks of 11-letter words anchoring this puzzle, and they’re all terrific. In the NW we have the ones that stumped me:

The New Yorker 8/13, solution grid

• 1a [Subjects for Canova and Botticelli] turns out to be THREE GRACES. The TH fooled me into thinking the answer started with THE, and RRNA at 3d was the last answer I put in. I have heard of ribosomal RNA, but messenger RNA is so much more common in crosswords that I had it stuck in my brain, which is why I took HAUT out.
• 15a [They witness the rise of the blogosphere and reality TV] had me thinking we were looking for a demographic group – a subset of millennials. Nope. It’s EARLY AUGHTS.
• 17a is [Symbol of racial subjugation]. I got it from crossings – it’s SUNKEN PLACE. Google tells me this is a reference to the movie “Get Out,” which I admit I have not seen because I can’t tolerate horror movies.

Highlights of the NE:

• 12d [Fratty Silicon Valley type] does not end in BRO, as I expected. It’s BROGRAMMERS. I love this word. I know some of them.
• 13d [Petition to a higher court] is CERTIORARI. I know it’s a legal term and don’t know what it means. Those of you who do can comment on whether the clue is correct.
• I really liked 12a [Keep apprised, in a way] which is BCC. Entries without vowels always look odd until they fall into place.

We continue the Email theme in the SW:

• 24d [Commits a common workplace faux pas] is REPLIES ALL. I did some part-time work for a telemedicine group last year, and they sent an Email to all the providers in the spring without blocking the list of recipients. It still amazes me that people who are, in theory, smart enough to practice medicine are not smart enough to realize that hitting “reply all” to complain about other people hitting “reply all” just makes the problem worse. It took a full week for it to die down.
• 26d [Valerie Solanas and Donna Haraway wrote famous ones] is MANIFESTOS. Valerie Solanas was a radical feminist who wrote the SCUM manifesto in 1967. Donna Haraway wrote A Cyborg Manifesto: Science, Technology, and Socialist-Feminism in the Late Twentieth Century. See, boys, it could be worse. You could have one of them writing crossword reviews instead of me.

And in the SE:

• 56a [Ruled by the one percent] is PLUTOCRATIC. No comment.
• 61a [Pigeonholes] is a neutral term for STEREOTYPES.

I also liked PINK TAX for [The cost of being a female consumer]. My husband and I have identical blazers from our alma mater. They are almost the same size and are constructed in precisely the same way. It costs $10.00 more to have mine dry-cleaned because it’s a woman’s jacket.

What I didn’t know before I did this puzzle: I hadn’t heard of either Valerie Solanas or Donna Haraway, and thanks to Anna and the crew at The New Yorker for educating me.

Brendan Emmett Quigley’s themeless Monday crossword — Laura’s review

BEQ – 8.13.18 – Solution

[34a: Phrase said after trailing off]: WHERE WAS I? Oh right … writing a blog post. [45a: Instruction beginning]: STEP A: Post the solution grid. Step B: Tell them some things you liked about the puzzle:

• [16a: Java alternative]: PERL. Because it’s a programming language used in web development.
• [32a: ___ River (northwest California river,
  doubtful if it has any)]: EEL. Nope. It has lampreys, though, which spawn in fresh water, and European settlers thought they were eels.
• [55a: 2018 Jon Chu movie]: CRAZY RICH ASIANS. Based on the 2013 novel by Kevin Kwan, about an Asian American woman who meets her fiancé’s wealthy family in Singapore. I’ve heard it’s great!
• [62a: Alphabet creator]: SERGEY BRIN. Wait, what? Oh, right. Google restructured in 2015 and the parent company became known as Alphabet.
• [35d: Spandau Ballet singer Tony]: HADLEY. I know this much is true.

Craig Stowe’s Los Angeles Times crossword—Nate’s write-up

Two Craig Stowe Mondays in a row! He’s certainly not vacation, so don’t expect a 59a:

LAT 8.13.18

17a: BIG BOARD [NYSE nickname, with “The”]
24a: CHEAP TRICK [“I Want You to Want Me” band] – Such a good song!
35a: HAMMERHEAD SHARK [Stingray predator named for a tool] – For whatever reason, this made me want to listen to Peter Gabriel’s “Sledgehammer”!
51a: MIND READER [Clairvoyant] – It’s odd that 34a SEER is also clued as [Clairvoyant]. I know that sometimes two pieces of fill will get the same clue to make things a bit trickier, but it feels odd to spread that over one themed clue and one non-themed clue.
59a: POSTCARD [Vacation memento … or where you might find the ends of the answers to starred clues?]

This is a cute revealer, giving us CARDBOARD, CARD TRICK, CARD SHARK, and CARD READER. The middle two refer to the same type of card, but that’s only the tiniest of dings. Another small ding for some less than exciting short fill, including ULA, UTE, ECCE (fun fact: I read this as [PiRate’s “Behold!”] for way too long + AVAST did not fit), CLE, and EES. Otherwise, a lovely Monday puzzle. What more could you want? BEATS ME!

Charlotte RAE

#includemorewomen: There’s only one (!) woman represented in today’s clues or fill (aside from maybe one of the clairvoyants?), and it couldn’t be more timely. Charlotte RAE was an actress and comedian who died just last week at the age of 92. She was most well known for playing Edna Garrett in both Diff’rent Strokes and The Facts of Life, and more recently featured in Girl Meets World. Amazingly, she was childhood friends with previous #includemorewomen honoree Golda Meir during their early years in Wisconsin! She starred across stage and screen to much acclaim and conquered pancreatic cancer along the way, but ultimately succumbed to bone cancer. The upcoming The Facts of Life reboot simply won’t be the same without her. Rest in Peace, Charlotte Rae.