Kevin Salat’s Wall Street Journal crossword, “Starch Blockers”—Jim P’s review
SMALL POTATOES is our theme, as revealed at 37a [Insignificant thing, or what can be found four times in this puzzle]. It turns out this is a rare rebus puzzle with small representations of potatoes in four of the grid’s squares.
Wall St Journal crossword solution · “Starch Blockers” · Kevin Salat · Thu., 8.29.19
- 9a [Green grocery choices] (TOT)E BAGS crossing 9d [How stew may be seasoned] (TO T)ASTE
- 17a [Brilliant but troubled soul] FLA(WED GE)NIUS crossing 4d [Unhemmed feature ] RA(W EDGE)
- 60a [Fiji, e.g.] AR(CHIP)ELAGO crossing 50d [Silicon Valley debuts, in brief] TE(CH IP)OS
- 62a [Calamity for a superhero] UNMA(SKIN)G crossing 52d [Trumpeter and bandleader Hawkins] ER(SKIN)E
There are some issues here. A skin or wedge isn’t really a small potato unless it’s preceded by the word “potato,” so it seemed like mentally adding “potato” was part of the theme. Thus you would get potato skin, potato wedge, and potato chip. All good. But you would also get “potato tot” which absolutely isn’t a thing in that form (“tater tot” yes, “potato tot” no). So that felt like an inconsistency.
Second, TECH IPOS. Is that a phrase? Googling in quotes yields 167k hits which makes it feel legit, but it sure was hard to parse. Thankfully the crossing ARCHIPELAGO was crystal clear.
Not so the case (at least not for me) with the WEDGE rebus. I finished the grid with the one empty square which I assumed was the rebus in FLA_NIUS crossing RA_. The clue [Brilliant but troubled soul] had me wondering if this was the proper name of some old Roman I hadn’t heard of, and the down clue felt completely unhelpful. It took a few minutes of cogitating to finally realize that the last part might be GENIUS which led to RAW EDGE and the aha for FLAWED GENIUS. For me, this felt to be about as tough a rebus crossing as I’ve encountered. I won’t go so far as to say it wasn’t fair, but boy it was hard for me to see.
There were also a couple questionable items in the fill. POOL AREA feels rather “green paintish,” and I’d never heard of a JOGBRA. “Sports bra” yes, but JOGBRA no. I’m not saying it’s wrong, just that I’ve never heard of it. I’d welcome comments from those more knowledgeable on the subject.
But there’s a lot of good stuff to admire as well, like starting off with AMARETTO and LAVATORY crossing ALFRED, MALALA, and AVATAR. What a strong corner! We also get SIZZLE, “IT’S ON ME,” TEAR-DROP, NEPALIS, SAFARI, ONAGER (I happen to like this entry though some don’t), yummy SAMOAS, and UPSTAIRS. I’ve also seen GOATEE a lot lately—like three times in the past week, I think.
Clues of note:
- 15a [Can]. LAVATORY. I don’t think these are equivalent. “Can” is very slangy where LAVATORY feels much more formal, especially if one pronounces it “lav-uh-tree.”
- 44a [Monterrey jack?]. PESOS. Nice one. Note the two Rs which makes it different than the American city with a similar name.
- 65a [Flight destination?]. UPSTAIRS. Another good clue.
- 1d [Wayne Manor figure]. Did you first put in BATMAN as well? I did, thought about it for a second, then switched to the correct ALFRED.
- 27d [The answer is blowing in the wind]. KITE. Yet another good one.
All my nits aside, I did like this puzzle with its surprising rebus theme and its strong fill and cluing. 3.8 stars.
Jeff Chen’s New York Times crossword—Ben’s review
NYT 8/29/2019 — no. 0829
Jeff Chen has this Thursday’s NYT, and this week’s out-of-the-box theme feels a little more standard:
- 17A: Word that can complete CARE___R — GIVE OR TAKE
- 27A: Word that can complete SH___ED — IN OR OUT
- 38A: Word that can complete DE___ — FRIEND OR FOE
- 49A: Word that can complete ___TING — DO OR DIE
- 61A: Word that can complete ___ER — BOOM OR BUST
It’s a pretty straightforward theme (CAREGIVER or CARETAKER, SHINED or SHOUTED, etc.) elevated by the cluing elsewhere in the grid.
Things I liked: CASTS clued by “Molds”, UBENDS, SERIFS, TARZAN, GAWP, IKEA‘s maze of aisles, RAGMOP, I BEFORE E, FOG OF WAR
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5kg6regArFY
Good Eats is back, so let’s all take 20 minutes to learn how to properly make Chicken PARM.
Happy Thursday, all!
Matthew Sewell’s Universal crossword, “Tinder Profile”—Jim Q’s review
THEME: Phrases that include items that can be used as “tinder,” clued as if they are part of a Tinder profile.
Universal crossword solution · Matthew Sewell · “Tinder Profile” · Thur., 8.29.19
THEME ANSWERS:
- 20A [“Hoping to feel sparks with a fellow German literature fan; here’s me reading ___”] GUNTER GRASS.
- 11A [“… Nintendo fan; here’s me playing ___”] PAPER MARIO.
- 29A [“… nutty candy fan; here’s me eating ___”] ALMOND BARK.
- 57A [“… barbershop fan; here’s me performing in my ___”] STRAW BOATER.
I was excited when I saw the title. I’ve been toying with the idea of constructing a puzzle with a “Swipe right” or “Swipe left” theme, but haven’t figured it out.
I wore one of these when I was in “The Music Man” in high school!
This one fell short, mostly because the themers were not all that exciting to uncover. That could be me: I haven’t read GUNTER GRASS, never heard of PAPER MARIO in all the Super Mario iterations, didn’t realize that the classic barbershop quartet hat was called a STRAW BOATER, and if you asked me to name types of nutty candies ALMOND BARK wouldn’t have made the top ten. Also, two of the “tinder” words are at the start of the phrase and two are at the end- I wonder if there was a way to keep it consistent across the theme using more familiar/fun phrases. I would’ve preferred that.
And as far as I know (read: I know) one doesn’t caption each of his/her Tinder profile photos as the clue makes it seem. I appreciate what it’s trying to do- but it misses that mark. “Stuff that can be used as tinder” doesn’t feel like a strong enough concept on its own without referencing the dating app, but that’s just not how the app works.
GEARHEAD and SPAMBOTS were fun to find, but I was on autopilot for most of the puzzle. Overall, I would’ve swiped left on this one.
2 stars from me.
Ed Sessa’s LA Times Crossword – Gareth’s summary
LA Times
190829
Today’s theme features another hidden letter string. The hidden letter string today is DOOR, but there is an extra wrinkle that makes things a lot more elegant. It is a REVOLVINGDOOR, and the hidden tetragram cycles from RDOO to ORDO to OORD and then to DOOR itself in the revealer.
I must say the closed off grid design was a good choice today, and limited the impact of the overlapping WORDOFMOUTH/MADETOORDER themers in the centre, which potentially could have put a lot of strain on the fill.
CRISISMODE and RHINOCEROS look like they’re part of the theme, but they aren’t!
3,75 Stars
Gareth
Brendan Emmett Quigley’s website crossword, “Old Town Rows”—Andy’s review
BEQ #1187, “Old Town Rows”
The title gives this one away a bit — “Old Town Rows,” a pun on “Old Town Road,” means we’ve got four rows comprised of “old towns” mashed together. Like so:
- 17a, TROY HERCULANEUM [Old town row #1]
- 25a, CARTHAGE BABYLON [Old town row #2]
- 43a, SODOM PERSEPOLIS [Old town row #3]
- 57a, NINEVEH GOMORRAH [Old town row #4].
The titular pun wasn’t funny enough to justify this non-theme, which was repetitive to solve and didn’t really have an aha moment. Nothing bad in the fill, but not a ton to love either: I’M SAVED and CTHULHU were the only highlights for me. Maybe I’m just grumpy, but this was one of my least favorite BEQs in a long time.
The silver lining is that I get to post this:
Until next time!
Letters that can complete LO___S — S OR ES. OR B. Jokes aside, I had a different appreciation of the theme than Ben. I thought it was a neat idea to repurpose common X or Y phrases to fit a certain letter pattern to create new words. I did want the choice of remaining letter strings in the clues to be tighter or more compelling, though. I suppose Jeff’s original grand meta plan to fill the blanks with the letters E-R-A-S-E, in that order, fell through during the final editing cut.
WSJ: I believe JOGBRA was originally a brand name of sports bras. That seems to still be true, according to Ms. Google, but it is used more generically now.
Both the WSJ and NYT felt like good Thursday puzzles. Both were Thursdayish, but in different ways. Finding ___ OR ___ expressions that each fit inside a word must have taken some doing, and I thought it was clever.
And in the WSJ, I liked that all of the potato rebuses were different, and thus more challenging to come up with. TOT was my last one, probably because of the tater/potato discrepancy, but that was fine.
Today’s WSJ, fixed up:
https://www.dropbox.com/s/9g6pe4ljuqp106q/wsj190829_fixed.zip?dl=1
Is there a problem with the posted file? It looks ok to me.
The original file I got didn’t have the rebus indicator. The fixed file shows the rebus indicator, which would have helped me for one immensely. I couldn’t make sense at all of any of the theme answers .
Ah. Yes, the WSJ puzzle app doesn’t show rebuses so the datafile has no concept of rebus indicator. And I solve with it turned off to avoid what I consider a spoiler, so I never noticed it. I’ll add it to my list :).
Martin:
About every time (and probably each and every time) the WSJ has published a puzzle with rebus squares, I’ve added that to the PUZ file and uploaded the link here. It’s not so much the “rebus indicator” that matters to me (like you I solve with all hints off), as much as the rebuses themselves not being present in the PUZ file.
This one is probably the 11th or 12th I’ve done overall.
Yep, I understand. My habit is just to use the initial letter for a rebus, so not having them coded is also not something that bothers me. But I understand that a lot of solvers, especially beginners, can find it confounding. The comments today at the WSJ site bears this out.
Hopefully the WSJ will update their app someday and I’ll make sure to preserve rebuses if they do. Until then, we might be letting you augment things.
I guess what bothers me (I keep WSJ files along with some others around to redo or give to people who aren’t so online-active) is more the correctness issue upon sight of the answer. So I fix it so I have grids that reflect correct answers.
I’m surprised they haven’t fixed/updated it with Shenk’s repeated intention to publish rebus grids. It’s a pretty bad look on them to have software that doesn’t support rebuses when they publish them. I get the WSJ files offered here are copied from their files, but still it’s a bad look on everybody for the WSJ to not support rebuses in their software when they publish puzzles with them. Hopefully someone there will get the clue.
That said, did you pick up any of the others I posted here over the last 3 years (first rebus was in August 2016 iirc)? If necessary, I can wrap up all the rebus files I have on record if you want to update yours.
Sure, I’ll be happy to use those for the archive. And if you send me any future ones, I’ll use them when I get them. Mail them to me at martin.herbach at gmail.
I liked the WSJ and I liked not having the rebus indicator. Although I had nearly the same experience as Jim P., the WEDGE was too hard for me to figure out.
WSJ toothy, NYT rubbish.
LAT was superb. No messy fill, great long fill, and an aha-moment of a revealer. Everything I need in a crossword!
+1. LAT was great!