Wednesday, May 19, 2021

Gary Larson’s Wall Street Journal crossword, “Digs Down”—Jim P’s review

Theme: Phrases whose last word can be a synonym for “dwelling.”

Wall St Journal crossword solution · “Digs Down” · Gary Larson · Wed., 5.19.21

• 3d. [Dwelling for a baggage handler?] PORTER HOUSE.
• 7d. [Dwelling for sailors on weekend passes?] LIBERTY QUARTERS. This only works if you happen to know that such passes are called “Liberty Passes” in the Navy/Marines. I barely knew this, and I’ve been around the military all my life. My dad was in the Navy but he retired well before I knew anything about anything. I expect most solvers wouldn’t get this one.
• 9d. [Dwelling for squabblers?] RUN-IN PLACE. Meh. “Place” is not a synonym for dwelling. When you add a possessive pronoun—my place, your place, etc.—it is, but on its own, it’s not.
• 26d. [Dwelling for a search party?] SCOURING PAD. Why do search party members need a dwelling? Don’t they have more pressing matters to attend to?
• 30d. [Dwelling for the “U Can’t Touch This” singer?] HAMMER HOME.

I couldn’t get excited about this. Too many little foibles for me, and some of these were just too on the nose.

Some of the long fill is quite nice (POLECAT, PET PEEVE, TRIANGLE, AGRIPPA), but there were too many distracting gluey bits (UNEEDA, AQI crossing DREI, REARER, ETES, ABBE, SRI). I for one didn’t know UNEEDA and that first letter crossed Y_P [“You betcha!”]. An E seemed almost as likely as the U there.

Various issues kept me from enjoying this grid. Three stars.

Ashish Vengsarkar’s New York Times crossword—Amy’s write-up

NY Times crossword solution, 5 19 21, no, 0519

This is just another one of those “poetry meets physics” crossword themes—they’re a dime a dozen, aren’t they? What’s that you say? You don’t think you’ve seen a physics/poetry mashup in a puzzle theme before> Here’s what Ashish brings us:

• 1a. [This is the way the world began, per 51-Across], BIG BANG / 51a. [Physics Nobelist who co-discovered cosmic microwave background radiation, confirming 1-Across], PENZIAS. How is it that I’d never seen Arno Penzias’s name before, never heard his life story? I’m glad to learn a little now.
• 71a. [“This is the way the world ends,” per 24-Across], WHIMPER / 24a. [Literature Nobelist who penned 71-Across], T.S. ELIOT.

And then there are the PAST, PRESENT, and FUTURE progressing through three 15s:

• 16a. [At an ungodly hour], PAST ONE’S BEDTIME. I only invoke that when I’m up past two.
• 39a. [Tomorrow’s cash flow assessed today], NET PRESENT VALUE. This phrase isn’t remotely familiar to me.
• 64a. [Classic film series that anticipated the invention of hoverboards] BACK TO THE FUTURE.

Awfully scholarly for a Wednesday puzzle! And I don’t quite grasp why PRESENT is incorporated into the theme structure. Just a “You Are Here” bit?

With 73 theme squares, things do get a mite crowded, and we get lots of stuff like NACRE, ARN, KOP, SES, SLO, BBL, BAAS, and whatnot.

Five more things:

• 4d. [Chinese dumpling], BAO. If you’ve never seen the Oscar-winning Pixar short Bao and you have access to Disney+, do take a few minutes to watch it.
• 12d. [___ octopus, creature so named for its large, earlike fins], DUMBO. It’s great to watch!
• 49a. [Fictional N.Y.C. locale on children’s TV], SESAME ST. Ugh, no, just … no. Also not a fan of abbreviated ELM ST in a grid. These are not good fill! You could do worse than to remove these two from your word list if they’re currently included.
• 5d. [Man’s nickname that omits “-old”], ARN. Hmm. Is that actually a nickname as reputable as Arnie? Feels awkward to make a point of that “-old” when OLDE’s in the grid.
• 13d. [Like C-O-L-O-U-R or M-E-T-R-E], SPELT. As in the British equivalent of “spelled.” Cute clue!

Four stars for the physics/poetry part, three stars for the rest.

Malaika Handa’s AVCX, “Parting Company” — Ben’s Review

AVCX 5/19 – “Parting Company

This week’s AVCX is a guest puzzle from Malaika Handa, and 36A/38A explains all of what’s going on:

• 36A/38A: Regulatory slogan from Elizabeth Warren, and what the black squares between the shaded letters in this puzzle do — BREAK UP / BIG TECH

This affects AMAZON spread across PANAMA (“Site of a canal that did NOT have a giant ship lodged in it for several days”) and ZONKS OUT (“Falls asleep”), GOOGLE between MAGOO (“Nearsighted Jim Backus cartoon character”) and GLEE (“TV show that featured the Warblers and Vocal Adrenaline”), APPLE in SLAP (“Play with the knuckle, as strings on a bass guitar”) and PLEAD (“Get on one’s knees, maybe”), and FACEBOOK between BONIFACE (“Name for nine popes”) and BOOKER (“Cory, partner of Rosario Dawson”).  It’s a cute theme, and as soon as I had the revealer, I was easily able to fill in the circled squares.

Other fill notes:

• It’s Eurovision week, so enjoy ABBA‘s winning performance from 1974 above.
• STEVIE Nicks was the first woman inducted into the Rock & Roll Hall of fame.  This year Tina Turner, Carole King, and The Go-Gos join her there.
• “Machine that helps you chill” for ICE MAKER was one of my favorite clues.

Happy Wednesday!

Elizabeth C. Gorski’s New Yorker crossword – Rachel’s writeup

New Yorker crossword solution • Elizabeth C. Gorski • Wednesday, May 19, 2021

Good morning! My aunt texted me a picture of a camel this morning so I guess that means it’s Wednesday! Let’s talk about the New Yorker puzzle.

Although there were parts of this puzzle I very much enjoyed, on the whole it left me a little cold. The spanner SUGAR SUBSTITUTE isn’t exactly exciting, and with the clue [Sweet freebie at a coffee bar], I almost felt a little ripped off? Like if I saw a sign outside a coffee shop that said “Sweet freebies inside!” and then the barista was like “…yeah, it’s the Splenda packets,” I’d never go back to that coffee shop again! False advertising on the sweet freebie, for sure. I did enjoy most of the other long entries, particularly:  RIDE-SHARE / UNVEILING / LATE TEENS / I DISAGREE / ARAB SPRING / CHILD ACTOR / ADVANTAGE / HUCKSTERS. I don’t think I knew that HUCKSTERS just meant “people who huck things”– for some reason I thought there was some element of a scam involved. I guess many infomericals *are* scams, so maybe I wasn’t wrong?

The fill today was pretty hit-or-miss. I liked some of the short fill (DUH, PAN-, MAE), but a lot of it I could definitely live without. In particular, CCCL / MEAS / AST / SQ MI / REL / TAC / SEG / ERNES / LINE A are all pretty icky, and I’m not convinced that SUGAR SUBSTITUTE and a couple neat corners was worth it.

A few more things:

• Favorite clues:
  • [Minor celebrity?] for CHILD ACTOR
  • [Intro to sexuality?] for PAN
  • [They’re designed to raise people’s standards?] for FLAGPOLES.
• I identify as a FRUMP
• Lol’d at AHOLE in the grid

Overall, not my favorite, but a decent start to the morning nonetheless! See you Friday.

P.S. Claire Rimkus and I have started an independent crossword blog called “Just Gridding!” where we will be publishing our own puzzles on a regular (or semi-regular) basis, as well as the occasional “just gridding,” which will be  just a grid that we will crowdsource the clues for. We’ve got one puzzle each up so far– check them out here and here!

Jennifer Marra and Brian Gubin’s Universal crossword, “Produce Containers” — pannonica’s write-up

Universal • 5/19/21 • Wed • Marra, Gubin • “Produce Containers” • solution • 20210519

Nothing fancy about the title this time around. ALSO, there’s a clear revealer: 56a [Like many strudels, or the starred answers?] FRUIT FILLED. And we get starred entries, and circled squares. Nothing left to chance here.

• 16a. [*Alternative to a stud] HOOP EARRING.
• 23a. [*German women’s tennis great] STEFFI GRAF.
• 33a. [*”Creature” that makes many children laugh] TICKLE MONSTER.
• 47a. [*Occasional residence] PIED-À-TERRE.

Pear, fig, lemon, date. All are legitimate strudel fillings. Good consistency in that each of the fruits spans one or more words in the entries. Is there grid art suggesting a strudel’s stretched surface, revealing its filling? Open to debate, but I think not.

• 12d [They won’t keep you up at night] DECAFS. Barring a placebo effect.
• 20d [Number that only goes up] AGE. Got me thinking of M Amis’ book Time’s Arrow and whether that phrase was, like so many others, taken from Shakespeare or Cervantes—but no. Did lead me down several rabbit holes concerning—among others— BoJack Horseman and Arthur Eddington, though. 64a [In the past] AGO.
• 24d [“I wanna be there!” mentality, briefly] FOMO. Fear Of Missing Out, in contemporary parlance.
• 37d [Scheme that makes a villain say “Mwahaha!”] EVIL PLAN. MEH (1d [“I’m indifferent”])
• 48d [Cologne’s waterway] RHINE. Had the clue spelled it Köln, then the answer would be RHEIN.
• 1a [Hot chocolate drink?] MOCHA. I guess the question mark is there is to warn the solver away from COCOA.

Adam Wagner’s LA Times crossword – Gareth’s summary

LA Times
210519

From the get-go we can see this quite a busy theme. The entries with circled parts plus the final ten come to 62 squares: 10/13/16/13/10. The theme is SHELLGAMES, and each of four sets of circles surround their answers and spell out a board game (considered loosely). The set of entries that contain them were a little dry: TWINSISTER, CHERRYPICKERS, OPENINGNARRATION, and CHRONICSTRESS; but this is understandable given the large words spelt out by the circles!

I was very impressed with the design of the top-left and bottom-right stacks. Both have two theme entries plus a second pair of tens and a pretty open style. I imagine the “painting in” of the grid start there with CASECLOSED and SWEATITOUT. The top stack also has MENSCH and NEONOIR with the bottom a little more difficult to balance, resorting in a right-most SSTS to hold it all together.

Gareth