Laura Dershewitz’s New York Times crossword — Sophia’s write-up
Theme: POST-IT NOTES – phrases where the first three solfège notes (in order!) follow the word “it”, so literally they’re “post-it notes”.
New York Times, 07 22 2024, By Laura Dershewitz
- 21a [Explain something in steps] – BREAK IT DOWN
- 31a [Acts like one’s true self, colloquially] – KEEPS IT REAL
- 40a [Was understated in one’s description] – PUT IT MILDLY
- 50a [Sticky yellow squares … or a description of the circled letters and what they follow?] – POST IT NOTES
I liked this theme a lot! Having the answers in DO RE MI order adds a level of elegance to the answers. Even though the three “IT” answers have the same structure, the puzzle didn’t feel repetitive, and none of the wording felt forced. My only small complaint is that the puzzle feels very segmented – the black squares in the middle basically break it into two distinct parts, which can make it harder for new folks to find footing in different puzzle sections since answers won’t span different areas. But that’s a very minor construction nitpick.
Random thoughts on the rest of the puzzle:
- Favorite down entries: LOST SLEEP, MAD SKILLS, THE BOSS clued with Bruce Springsteen
- A lot of musicians in the puzzle today: besides the Bruce shout-out, we’ve got NEYO, Marvin GAYE, and Lady GAGA (with apologies to Bradley Cooper, fellow “Shallow” singer).
- Kind of randomly funny that UP A TREE and IN A SPOT basically mean the same thing and are only one answer away from each other. Somehow this felt more repetitive to me than all the theme answers?
- Clues I liked: [Bird that’s still getting wise to the world?] for OWLET and [“Up in arms” or “break a leg”] for IDIOM
- New to me: [Smoked salmon] as a clue for NOVA.
Happy Monday all! Congrats to Laura on a great solo NYT debut.
Renee Thomason & Zhouqin Burnikel’s Wall Street Journal crossword, “Final Draft”—Jim’s review
Theme answers are familiar phrases whose final letters spell out a synonym of “draft” (i.e. a rush of air).
Wall St Journal crossword solution · “Final Draft” · Renee Thomason & Zhouqin Burnikel · Mon., 7.22.24
- 17a. [Back-to-school sales time, perhaps] LATE AUGUST.
- 27a. [Rhyming slogan from Blockbuster] “BE KIND, REWIND.” Ah, what a lovely slogan that was only around for a specific period of our history. If only it could be repurposed for the modern era.
- 46a. [Happening just once] NONRECURRENT.
- 60a. [Hogwarts house with a badger on its crest] HUFFLEPUFF.
Nice Monday theme. I like that the hidden word is different in each case and that they aren’t their own words but parts of longer words. That makes the theme just that little bit more interesting even if it’s “just a Monday.”
Smooth fill all around with highlights: OKINAWA, LANE LINES, GOING RATE, ERRATIC, and ANCHORS crossing ON SHORE in the center. Only ONE ON looks a little iffy in the fill, but I’ve heard it often enough, and I don’t even watch baseball.
Clues are Monday straight so let’s put this one to bed. 3.75 stars.
Dan Caprera’s Los Angeles Times crossword — Stella’s write-up
Los Angeles Times 7/22/24 by Dan Caprera
I like this theme because I did this theme in a slightly different way earlier this year. (Note that I in no way think that Dan got the idea from me; based on what I know about LAT lead times, I bet we each submitted the idea to our respective editors around the same time!) His has as the revealer what I used as the title (reflecting the fact that LAT puzzles, unlike USAT puzzles, do not have titles): 60A [“The Stuff You Love” toy company, and what this puzzle’s circled letters do] is BUILD-A-BEAR, because the circled letters in the theme entries (and in the revealer itself) successively BUILD the word BEAR.
- 18A [Common key in big-band music] is B FLAT MAJOR; the circled letter is B, or the first letter in BEAR.
- 26A [“Stop futzing with that!”] is LEAVE IT BE; the circled letters are BE, so “building” by adding the second letter of BEAR.
- 48A [Actress who played Dorothy Zbornak on “The Golden Girls”] is BEA ARTHUR, so now we have the first three letters of BEAR.
- …and BEAR itself appears in circled letters in the BUILD-A-BEAR revealer.
I’m not even going to think about how much money I spent on those silly bears for my niece (who’s about to turn 30, oh my god I’m old) when she was a kid. Pretty good racket, getting people to stuff their own plushies and pay dearly for the privilege. I used to roll my eyes hard at one particular part of their schtick: A kid stuffing a bear would get a tiny puffed fabric heart to put inside the bear (and therefore never see again), but before you put your bear’s heart in, they have the kid blow on it and make a wish (I think? or maybe say some “magic words”?). I know that those little polyester hearts probably cost about $1 for a pack of ten at retail at the craft store at the time (who the hell knows what they cost at wholesale), and the finished bear was put into a cute cardboard box “house” and out went like fifty bucks (in 2000 dollars) from my wallet. The things we do for love, amirite? (I love my niece to the moon and back, but even she now admits those things were a waste of money.)
Anyway, the puzzle: I thought it played harder than usual for a Monday. I’d say this had more to do with the clues than with the fill itself (EKCO in the SW is the only one that really sticks out as not Monday material): For example, [Wearing red and green, perhaps] doesn’t take you to the answer, FESTIVE, quite as immediately as Monday clues usually do.
Brian Callahan’s Universal crossword, “French Blend” — pannonica’s write-up
Universal • 7/22/24 • Mon • “French Blend” • Callahan • solution • 20240722
Haven’t retroactively examined this theme yet, so let’s take a look.
- 24aR [Each of the starred clues’ answers, or what these answers’ starts collectively sound like] PORTMANTEAU.
- 7d. [*Place to go outside?] PORT-A-POTTY.
- 34d. [8Certain string swimsuits] MANKINIS.
- 36d. [*Vegan Thanksgiving dish] TOFURKEY.
PORT-MAN-TŌ, ok.
I’m slightly hesitant about the portable part of PORT-A-POTTY, but it seems to check out. Maybe it’s just the hyphenation that makes me doubt its portmanteau nature? Nevertheless, an interesting if somewhat modest theme—it feels as if it would have filled a 13×13 grid more satisfyingly, but that isn’t how the biz works.
Otherwise, a smooth early-week grid.
- 39a [Bad sign, perhaps] OMEN. There are good omens and bad omens; in this regard (and to continue the ongoing discourse here) it’s like odor.
- 50a [Goes out for a bit?] CATNAPS. 54a [Where one might go out on top?] BUNK BED. Fun pairing.
- 58a [“Um, of course!”] OBVI. I guess that’s how it’s rendered latterly? My preferred abbrev. is obvs.
- 62a [Fall blooms, in brief] MUMS. Chrysanthemum.
- 1d [Go over quickly] SCAN. A classic contranym.
Kameron Austin Collins’s New Yorker crossword—Amy’s recap
New Yorker crossword solution, 7/22/24 – Collins
Turns out I’m still worn out from Saturday’s wedding reception (beautiful outdoor venue, perfect weather, good food and service, but exhausting all the same!), so I’m not sure if this puzzle was on the harder side for a Monday TNY or if it’s just me.
Fave fill: CHAUCER (my son went to grade school with a Criseyde), “FAST CAR,” HUGGERS, CRY FOUL, KOREANS in film, trendy KETOSIS, APPARATCHIK, PORTERHOUSE, OVERDOING IT (it me), SKIN-TIGHT, MINOR KEY (though I sure couldn’t have told you the song was in a minor key; and of course everyone wanted the also-8-letters HAMILTON first), FOR KICKS, MAELSTROM (hi, Matt!), COTTAGECORE (not my vibe at all), ESTATE SALES (my sister snagged some neat glass paperweights for me before a friend’s mom’s estate sale opened on Saturday, v. excited), READY TO ROCK (it not me).
New to me: CAPELIN, [Smelt fish whose roe is sometimes called masago]. Never heard of the fish, and neither has my fisherman husband.
Four stars from me.
NYT: Very smooth and enjoyable! That’s quite a feat on a Monday! Brava.
I agree! And cute and clever, too. A quality Monday for sure.
TNY: Finally, a truly challenging Monday crossword from the New Yorker!
I breezed through the lower right half then went much slower on the upper left, finishing in a pretty reasonable time. I didn’t know the references at 1D and 7D, or the slogan (?) at 35A, but was able to infer the answers from crossings. The only complete unknown was 17A.
Very good puzzle overall.
Pretty similar for me except 1d. I’ve been listening to In Our Time via podcast for 15 years, or so. Each week the host has three guests from academia and for 40 minutes or so they discuss a topic from science, history, culture, philosophy, or religion. I enjoy listening to Melvyn herd his guests when they wander afield. And not surprisingly, academics will wander.
https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b006qykl
To the contrary, I’m getting nowhere in SE quadrant, plus two of the long answers coming down from the NE. I don’t know if I can break in at last. In fact, I may bot have got a foothold anywhere to get where I’ve reached if I hadn’t read Chaucer. It’s just back in TNY “what you know” territory.
I eventually got it, but it took lots of wild guesses, some of which paid off while others had to be modified as they crossed one another.
My last to fall was just below the top of the NE. I had “ready to roll,” and felt luck to catch the mistake. New to me where PAGET, COTTAGE CORE, FAST CARE, and KART where I was wondering why “go kart” or something I knew from childhood wouldn’t fit. I made it worse for myself by somehow forgetting KATY. Anyway a lot of iffy crossings and trivia in a small space.
This is just selfish, but I keep thinking about Chaucer’s poem, which even those who’ve read a chunk of the Canterbury Tales may not know. There’s a moment that always haunts me.
Troilus, who has lost his true love, comes to realize it. “And well I know,” he says (where I’ll simplify the spelling) “clear out of your mind you have me cast.” The original phonetic spelling would have you pronouce it (my cheating again) like this: clair oot of yer meend ya han may cast.” I can still hear his slow, resonant sadness.
And then he adds that still he cannot “unlove you a quarter of a day.” As far as I know, “unlove” wasn’t an idiom of the time, but something he just plain made up. It still brings me to tears.
KAC makes the perfect TNY Monday crosswords. I wish we got more of his work.
I agree. It was challenging but doable! Very satisfying to have solved it. The grid wasn’t filled with extremely obscure answers.
Me three
This one kicked my butt the way a Saturday Stumper sometimes does. So much that I had never heard of: “In Out Time,” geekwad, “The Room Where It Happens,” WEIS Markets (OK, maybe I knew that when I lived outside of Philadelphia – for about nine months in 1972–1973), CAPELIN, the “Front page of the Internet.” I’m sure some of those were gimmes for some people.
Probably my biggest slowdown was at 18A, where I stuck with cAdenzA for way too long. When I ditched that and put in ARIETTA, I started to make a little progress.
It was all derivable with enough crosses, but it was slow going.
I usually love KAC’s puzzles, but this one was a bit much.
Universal: “There are good omens and bad omens; in this regard (and to continue the ongoing discourse here) it’s like odor”… except that in this case, the clue included “perhaps”, giving the word omen wiggle room to be positive :) . Most of the stinky odor clues don’t include maybes, it seems.
Yep, I was goosing the conversation.
LAT: I’m pretty convinced now that the LAT doesn’t have a test solver who’s on my crossword clue/answer wavelength. Based solely on my solve times, their puzzles throughout the week often seem to be published on the wrong day. That’s assuming that they’re still trying to have a progression of puzzle difficulty as the week progresses. This wasn’t the case until a couple of years ago, around the time that Patti Varol took over as editor from Rich Norris.
Today’s LAT puzzle seemed very Monday-like to me. The theme makes me cringe, but not as much as the real-life Build-a-Bear Workshop.
I loved the NYT puzzle! What a great way to start the week. Fun theme and great cluing!
Loved that LAT puzzle, way more interesting than the usual Monday fare with some lovely odd words and a fun little revealer!
STRO/NAURU was kind of a drag so you’re losing half a point :P