Alan Siegel’s Wall Street Journal crossword, “Horsing Around”—Jim’s review
Theme answers consist of pairs of entries separated by a black square which spell out horse GAITs (53d, [Horse’s pace, which can be found jumping across black squares in rows 3, 6, 10 and 14 of this grid]).
Wall St Journal crossword solution · “Horsing Around” · Alan Siegel · Thu., 8.1.24
- WALK. 17a/18a: SAVE NOW / ALKALIS.
- TROT. 23a/27a: MAESTRO / TOPICAL.
- CANTER. 42a/44a: ITHACAN / TERABIT.
- GALLOP. 57a/58a: CHAGALL / OPEN MIC.
Probably like most of you, I couldn’t see the theme until I hit the revealer. The title had me looking for horse-related content around the edges of the grid, but that was a red herring (as it were). Along the way I kept running into grumble-worthy entries that made me hope the theme was going to be worth it.
Unfortunately, I felt underwhelmed when I finally grokked the theme. Neither the title nor the revealer adequately explained why the GAITs were broken up by black squares. I would have been more inclined to like the theme if the title alluded to horse competitions. Perhaps “Equestrian Event” or “Show Jumping” would’ve fit the bill. Envisioning horses jumping over the central black bars at the various paces is probably what the constructor intended, but the title and simple revealer didn’t quite do the trick.
Furthermore, the theme did not seem intricate enough to account for so much rough fill like: AGIN, MALO, ASE, A DIET, A NAP, BCD, ATMO, ENCS, RELS, E FOR, and proper names BON AIRE and ROHE crossing at the O (it did seem the most logical choice, but still). ASIA MAP and RED DOTS felt too generic. I did like highlights SOLID OAK, EYELASH, FAKE TAN, EAST END, and SEA WORLD, but the negatives outweighed the positives.
Clue of note: 44a. [Ultrafast data transfer unit]. TERABIT. A TERABIT is a trillion bits of binary data, ergo it’s a unit of storage capacity, not data transfer speed.
2.75 stars.
Rajeswari Rajamani’s New York Times crossword — Zachary David Levy’s write-up
Difficulty: Hard (16m47s)
Rajeswari Rajamani’s New York Times crossword, 8/1/24, 0801
Today’s theme: RIPPED ABS (Many a gymgoer’s goal … or what the starred clues in this puzzle must have for their answers to make sense?)
- EXPONENTS (..next to carets)
- PONZI SCHEME (vile investment..)
- EMAILS (..marked as sent)
- ORALLY (..by talk)
- BELOW THE BELT (..nasty hits)
Slowest Thursday of the year, probably because it took me so long to divine the theme. Was trying to add unseen “ab”s to the starred answers, and then, duh, it’s in the clues — to quote Douglas Adams, “We’ll be saying a big hello to all intelligent lifeforms everywhere, and to everyone else out there, the secret is to bang the rocks together, guys!”
Cracking: “Am I even good enough to have IMPOSTER syndrome?”
Slacking: RIDGY, not to be confused with any other adjective, because it’s the worst one
Sidetracking: it occurs to me that this might be RIDGY adjacent, but anyway, here’s the best of MIDGE Maisel
Renee Thomason & Zhouqin Burnikel’s LA Times crossword – Gareth’s theme summary
LA Times
240801
I feel like the theme of Renee Thomason & Zhouqin Burnikel’s puzzle today struggled to tie itself off in an interesting way. The core of it is five answers with newspaper comics as their final part: PICKLES, PEANUTS, SHOE, GARFIELD and CATHY. To try and make it into a theme the clues are made to be about the comic even though the base phrase is not normally, but it felt kind of forced:
- [Popular comic strip at a deli?], DILLPICKLES
- [Popular comic strip on an ocean liner], SALTEDPEANUTS
- [Popular comic strip at a pub?], TAPSHOE
- [Popular comic strip at the White House?], JAMESGARFIELD
- [Popular comic strip at a talk show?], CHATTYCATHY
Other musings?
- Is the other meaning of [Future ENT’s course], PREMED common in the US? As in sedatives given before a GA?
- [Brand that makes Froot Loops waffles], EGGO. That sounds disgusting. Our local Kelloggs rival, Bokomo, has just released Strawberry Weet-bix and I feel like that is similarly horrific.
- [Bird that stands on cattle], EGRET. But cattle egrets are not true egrets…
Gareth
Chandi Deitmer’s USA Today Crossword, “Green Initiatives” — Emily’s write-up
I be Kermit would love this puzzle!
alt=”Completed USA Today crossword for Thursday August 01, 2024”
USA Today, August 01, 2024, “Green Initiatives” by Chandi Deitmer[/caption]
USA Today, August 01, 2024, “Green Initiatives” by Chandi Deitmer
Theme: each themer starts with a type of green
Themers:
- 15a. [Symbolic peace offering], OLIVEBRANCH
- 37a. [Perfect shape, for collectibles], MINTCONDITION
- 58a. [Wise words of counsel], SAGEADVICE
Envious of this themer set? OLIVEBRANCH MINTCONDITION SAGEADVICE
Favorite fill: ITSSOSAD, POURITON, SOBEIT, and SOLIKE
Stumpers: ODOR (“trademark” made me think logo), DYE (new to me), and DETECTS (I kept thinking about the noun form for the cluing)
I’m really feeling the phrases today, as many ended up in my favorites list. Overall the cluing was more challenging for me so this was a longer solve for me, though once done none of the fill is super tricky, I just got stumped more than usual. Fair crossings helped so I got there in the end—DONTMINDME. Fun theme and themer set though and I enjoyed the hind in the title. How did you all do?
3.5 stars
~Emily
Michael Weinerman’s Fireball Crossword, “Hidden Traps” – Jenni’s write-up
This is the last Fireball of the summer as Peter is taking a well-deserved vacation in August. It was a fun one! I caught on to part of the trick early on and it helped me solve the puzzle. This is quite a feat of construction; I didn’t see the whole thing clearly until I started to write this and it is great. A feat of construction that was a pleasure to solve and gives two separate aha! moments? A rare thing. Thanks, Peter and Michael!
I’m giving you Peter’s grid because it’s easy to see what’s going on.
Fireball, July 31, 2024, Michael Weinerman, “Hidden Traps,” solution grid
- 1a is [Hanging curveballs, perhaps] and you can follow the green to FAT PITCHES. I knew the answer and thought maybe it was a rebus until I filled in THATCHES at 17a and all became clear.
- 20a [Guillotines] is the yellow path: DECAPITATES.
- 33a [How you might put eyes in the back of your head?] is a really fun clue. The answer is OCCIPTALLY, seen in aqua. It’s a wacky word and the clue makes it work.
- 46a [Induldging one’s misfortunes] travels the fuschia path and it’s SELF–PITYING.
And the revealer at 65a [Hidden traps found four times in this puzzle] is PITFALLS. Each of the theme answers drops down with the string PIT. So good.
A few other things:
- 5a [Safari destination] is URL. The browser, not the journey.
- 26d [In a sorry state] is MANGY. Took me a while to get that one for some reason.
- 37d [Conspiring] is IN LEAGUE. I think the clue needed a (with).
- 38a [Nicklodeon verb] is SLIME. That’s also a verb around here, or it was when had dogs and they liked to lick us…
- 48a [Palindromic elemento] is ORO. For some reason I thought we were looking for a number.
What I didn’t know before I did this puzzle: that ADRIAN VI was the only Dutch pope.
I thought the Times was unusually clever. As is sometimes the case, the theme answers were common words that could be fairly easily discerned from the crosses.
Because I solve from the top down, I didn’t even see the “ripped abs“ clue until late. I’m guessing this theme hasn’t appeared before.
NYT: I love “Viable investment plans” for PONZI SCHEMES. “Baby talk” for ORALLY does quite work for me; “Baby mouth” would’ve been better.
RIDGY is in the dictionary, though I can’t imagine using it. And I think of “kitchen paper” as WAXed, not WAXY (though I’m pretty sure the brand we buy is jut “WAX paper”).
But those are nits on a solid debut.
Great idea to make it Baby Mouth.
Ridgy wasn’t great, and I wanted waled which defines corduroy.
Since the clue was “LIKE some kitchen paper”, I found waxy fine for what we call wax or waxed paper.
Agree that baby mouth would have been a better clue for the orally one, but it still worked as is.
Overall, a pretty great Thursday twisty and I really enjoyed it. Nice debut!!
I was puzzled about ripping the abs until I rethought the revealer and ripped those abs from the clues.
Except “baby talk” is more of a thing than “baby mouth.” The clues’ “surface meanings” are just as important as their substituted meanings.
That’s a valid point, though “They’re found next to cabarets” is not a common phrase.
I had the same problem with ORALLY; it was the last to go in for me even after I had discerned the theme. Ended up slower than average for me too…
I actually found the NYT to be easy for a Thursday. I didn’t understand the theme until the end,but I was able to get the theme answers based on the letters already entered.
Same.
I couldn’t make sense of the revealer at first, so I just went ahead and solved the puzzle without worrying about it, and flew through it in near-record time. That was easy because the themers were all real words and phrases, even though they didn’t quite match the clues.
A decent enough debut puzzle, but running it on a Thursday unfortunately made it feel like a dud, since it was so easy to solve without paying any attention to the trick.
I found the NYT an unusually hard Thursday, even apart from its manipulation lying in the clues rather than answers (and the unusual clue for RIPPED ABS). After all, it had such things as weavers as birds, WAXY, and RIDGY. POLE CAR doesn’t come easily to me , I mistakenly remembered SKAT with a C, and I had SOUND for sounding the depth and EDEN for Columbia for the longest time (the first after the crossing U, while the second is new info to me I never expected). Taxes aren’t necessarily e-filed. And so on.
Interesting break from the usual though, more like the reliance on clues in Mike S. metas.
Pardon me, bad typo again. I had ASIA for Columbus for the longest time.
Asia was my first guess for the Columbus clue. I don’t remember knowing he thought he’d found EDEN. But the crosses sorted that out quickly.
NYT: PS Junipero Serra was admired during his lifetime, but in fact he is believed by many to have done really bad things to Native Americans.
(I see in Wikipedia that this trope is controversial.)
NYT: Thought today’s puzzle was extremely well constructed!
Clearly some trick was afoot, but I didn’t even try to suss it out until reaching the revealer, which gave it away. After completing the solve I saw how that worked.
I love the MIDGE video!
LAT: I take issue with 14D [McMansion plot] ACRE. Where I live in Central Austin, neighborhoods that go back 100 years or more have lost much of their charm because of huge houses built on lots much smaller than an acre.
In San Francisco, lots of 8,000 square feet (less than 1/5 acre) are being converted to McMansions.
That sounds like what goes on here. Our 1934 house is on a 7,000 square foot lot (narrow but deep). I know the new owner plans to add on, but at least he’s not tearing it down so he can build something huge.
How about less than 3,000 sq. ft. lot, more than $8,000,000?
You can’t beat San Francisco for insane real estate.
As nobody has answered Gareth with respect to “PREMED”:
I believe it is a quite-common term related to an undergraduate course of study for a student intending to attend medical school and become a doctor.
WSJ: I haven’t been this underwhelmed by a puzzle in some time, for all the reasons in Jim’s review. I was a bit annoyed by having to count rows, and ended up looking at row 7 rather than 6 and missing row 10’s CANTER, both of which are on me.
And you know how some people look at a grid and see a swastika? I look at this grid and see crucifixes.
The clue for OPT IN isn’t bad, though.
LAT: My nit to pick was 25d the part Spanish “Camino de Santiago element” (hinting at a Spanish word) being simply PATH. Trying to be tricky? I don’t get it, it just irritated and at first confused me. Never heard of the comic “shoe” so want it even with TAPS_O_in place
“Camino de Santiago?” I could’ve sworn that clue said “Carmen Sandiego”!
LOL, and where the world IS she?
I don’t know where Carmen is, but I have the song from the video game stuck in my head.
“Shoe” is a strip I vaguely remember from the 1970s. It had anthropomorphized birds working for a newspaper.
You have my sympathy… that is a terrible ear worm to have :( .
Now that you describe it, I vaguely recall Shoe also.
Thanks.
It’s not the worst earworm ever.
“didn’t want it”