Andy Walker’s New York Times crossword — Sophia’s write-up
Theme: DINER’S CLUB – each theme answer is phrase made up of a type of food followed by a type of golf club
New York Times, 08 05 2024, by Andy Walker
- 18a [Garnish for a glass of iced tea] – LEMON WEDGE
- 32a [Appliance at a hotel breakfast bar] – WAFFLE IRON
- 42a [Expensive cabinet material] – CHERRY WOOD
- 57a [Credit card industry pioneer … or a hint to 18-, 32- and 42-Across] – DINER’S CLUB
I have heard of DINER’S CLUB before, but couldn’t name anything about it other than “it’s a thing”. It still exists though, and is now owned by Discover. The “club” part of each phrase works well for me, and I noticed it as I solved the puzzle. I did not pick up on the “diner’s” part of the theme, though. It… almost works for me? My hangup is just that CHERRY and LEMON feel less like “things to dine on” than a WAFFLE does… almost more like a flavor. But that’s pretty minor, and WAFFLE IRON was my favorite of the theme answers anyways. So overall – I liked the two-part theme answers, but the second part was a lot stronger for me.
Other notes on today’s puzzle:
- Some overall fill highlights: ALL DONE, ROOMBAS, COBRAS
- A lot of cat content, between [Be a chatty catty?] for MEOW, and [Feline foot] for PAW.
- New to me: TREY Anastasio of Phish (I wasn’t even sure if “Anastasio” was his first or last name).
- IGA Swiatek won the bronze medal in women’s singles tennis this weekend at the Paris Olympics – congrats to her! It’s Poland’s first tennis medal.
- Best clue in the puzzle: [Legendary stoner?] for MEDUSA.
Happy Monday, and congrats to Andy on a great NYT debut!
Shaun Phillips & Ben Wildman-Tobriner’s Los Angeles Times crossword — Stella’s write-up
Los Angeles Times 8/5/2024 by Shaun Phillips & Ben Wildman-Tobriner
Looks like half of this constructing duo is making their Olympic debut! Sort of, anyway — this puzzle is a timely nod toward the Olympics, and in particular TEAM USA at 38A [Olympic delegation cheered on by the chant found in 16-, 22-, 49-, and 60-Across]. USA! USA! That is, you’ll find the letters USA running through each of the theme entries:
- 16A [Performance in the center ring, e.g.] is CIRCUS ACT.
- 22A [Facetious “Do not disturb” sign] is GENIUS AT WORK.
- 49A [Year-end feat for a star student] is A-PLUS AVERAGE.
- 60A [Leafy dish that may be topped with vegan ranch dressing] is TOFU SALAD.
In each entry, USA is split across two words, which is kind of a must these days when your theme word is only three letters long. Grid was pretty smooth, with some nice mid-length entries like DRUM SET, TOP SEED, and PRIME RIB, which is amusingly near that clue about vegan ranch dressing.
Dylan Schiff’s Universal crossword, “Political Spectrum” — pannonica’s write-up
Universal • 8/5/24 • Mon • “Political Spectrum” • Schiff • solution • 20240805
A theme that surely developed from the revealer.
- 55aR [Post-filming celebration … or each set of noted letters?] WRAP PARTY. The clues explicitly mention the relevant squares, but my grid as usual has them circled.
- 16a. [Extreme extent] NTH DEGREE (Green). The name begins at the rear of the entry, then wraps around to the beginning.
- 21a. [Asana expert] YOGA INSTRUCTOR (Tory).
- 34a. [Poker variant with two winning hands] HIGH-LOW (Whig).
- 49a. [Boozy-sounding baking extract] BOURBON VANILLA (Labour). “The majority of the world’s vanilla is the Vanilla planifolia species, more commonly known as Bourbon vanilla (after the former name of Réunion, Île Bourbon) or Madagascar vanilla, which is produced in Madagascar and neighboring islands in the southwestern Indian Ocean, and in Indonesia.” (Wikipedia)
An interesting selection. With the exception of WHIG, these are all extant and viable British political parties. Why waste a good theme idea when the US political parties have such unwieldy names, right?
- 7d [Water cooler?] ICE. A double entendre.
- 10d [King’s realm?] HORROR. Stephen King, the author.
- 11d [Goes in] ENTERS.
- 23d [Underwater “lung”] GILL. They’re roughly analogous in function but not structure or process.
- 35d [“Dancing With the Stars” judge Carrie Ann] INABA. New to me, unsurprisingly.
- 40a [Forbidding words] DO NOT. Literally.
Interesting theme. Crossword cluing pitched at an easy level.
Matt Forster’s Wall Street Journal crossword, “Containment”—Jim’s review
Each theme answer is a familiar two-word phrase with the first word being an item that HOLDS WATER (58a, [What a plausible theory does (and what the start of each of 17-, 28- and 43-Across does)]).
Wall St Journal crossword solution · “Containment” · Matt Forster · Mon., 8.5.24
- 17a. [Traffic jam cause, often] BOTTLENECK.
- 28a. [Collected items to do before dying] BUCKET LIST.
- 43a. [Maneuver at an air show] BARREL ROLL.
Solid theme which I didn’t pick up on until I got to the revealer. Frankly, some of the other long Across entries seemed like they could be part of a theme, so I waited for the revealer to make sense of it.
There were a few entries in the fill that were less than ideal (RETORE and RECOOK mainly), but there was so much more to like, starting with those two 7s in the center, FAN BASE and THE WAVE which make for a great pairing despite seeming like they might be theme-related. Other goodies: SON-IN-LAW, BAR SCENE, EREBUS, PEN NAME, and EYESORE. I didn’t recall the poet Derek WALCOTT (if I ever knew his name), but I do know the song by Vampire Weekend.
Clues of note:
- 14a. [It won’t go off without a hitch]. U-HAUL. Cute clue.
- 50d. [Loads of housework]. WASH. I figured this would be laundry-related but “laundry” itself wouldn’t fit, obviously. One could pick a nit and argue it would normally be called “the wash” but I think it’s close enough.
Solid theme and strong fill. 3.75 stars.
Natan Last’s New Yorker crossword–Amy’s grid
New Yorker crossword solution, 8/5/24 – Natan Last
Hi! This one took me 16:27 because I kept dozing off whilst solving. A little sedation in the morning really packs a punch!
New to me: HANYA YANAGIHARA, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hanya_Yanagihara.
Can’t talk sensibly about the puzzle because I was so out of it. Seemed fine to me!
The app is showing a completely different Thursday difficulty puzzle featuring weather forecast puns!!!!!!!
That’s Sunday’s puzzle.
NYT: It was a smooth solve which is really important on a Monday and seems to require a special talent.
But I agree that the second part of the theme works better than the first- two fruits and a waffle seems inconsistent. And I don’t think of cherry or lemon as dinner (but might if I were a fruitarian).
I too liked the clue for MEDUSA.
Nice debut!
I had such a zippy solving experience with the NYT that the two parts of the theme answers didn’t click for me until I was finished. But even as I was typing 42A CHERRY WOOD, I thought it a bit odd. I’m sitting at a beautiful dining table that we’ve had for over 30 years, but if anyone asked me what it’s made of, I would just say CHERRY.
I agree about CHERRY WOOD. Not exactly wrong, but doesn’t sound quite right to my ear. I do some woodworking, and I might say a piece of furniture is “solid cherry” to distinguish it from veneered plywood, but I’d say the only place I come across “cherry wood” is on a bacon label in the supermarket.
My other nitpick was, out of LEMON WEDGE, CHERRY WOOD, and WAFFLE IRON…
– LEMON WEDGE is just a form of the base food, which makes it feel less like the other two
– CHERRY WOOD is related to where cherries come from
– WAFFLE IRON is what you make a waffle out of.
Wished the food terms were ones that have totally non-food meanings, or inspired by the foods but not directly related to where they come from (SPAGHETTI WESTERN, CHIP A TOOTH, PANCAKE MAKEUP), etc.
Huda,
Interesting. M-W does say “dining” is limited to eating dinner, but I find that surprising. To my ear, one can dine on fruit for lunch, say. How many people take lunch at restaurants called “diners,” after all? Named for the dining car of trains, which served all meals.
But that’s what makes language so much fun.
While MW does define DINE only as “take dinner,” RHUD has a second definition as “to take any meal.” I haven’t looked further, but i bet we’d find support for that.
Didn’t feel smooth and zippy for me, especially for a Monday. The fill went a tad slower than usual for early week, owing to factual answers I didn’t care for, and the theme just felt strained, even if you remember Diner’s Club as more than maybe a name.
We’d so few such themers, so why those foods? Surely they should be more focused. Something seemed seriously missing. And then my inexperience or indifference when it comes to golf slowed me in making sense of the second half, assuming I even had to. (I think of iron and wood as broad types, wedge as something more specific, although I couldn’t tell you what.) And yes, “cherry wood” seemed unnaturally redundant.
Good point about “WEDGE”, which is a specific type of “IRON”, but it seems fine to me for a crossword themer.
I don’t golf, but thanks to crossword puzzles, I finally learned why golfers need so many clubs and what the numbers mean.
I guess I could’ve asked my brother-in-law or my former boss, but they were both jerks.
I didn’t even realize there was a theme – even when I got to the revealer. I remember my dad having a Diner’s Club card when I was growing up in the 1960’s – I didn’t know it still existed.
While the strict definition of “dine” is “to have dinner”, I think it’s pretty inclusive as to fare. In the Cambridge English Dictionary, one of the usage examples is “We dined on salmon and strawberries”. I wouldn’t be surprised if the salmon were served with lemon wedges.
I had fun trying to visualize the US map and, before remembering Hawaii, I came up with Ohio. On looking at the map, I would argue that Maine’s border with New Hampshire is *mostly* straight, but takes a little hook to the east at the southern end.
TNY: Several Naticks at the bottom. Typical Last puzzle.
YMMV. Zero trouble squares for me.
I knew the name across the bottom, more or less, but couldn’t remember exactly how to spell it. The crossing with SEGNO was troublesome but G seemed right. Apart from that I found it fairly unchallenging for a Last puzzle.
Agreed.
Typical of him that both full-length answers are proper names (and ones I’d never heard of), one crossing the odd LAVAS , the other SEGNO (which I’d always called a “repeat mark”) close to SEITAN (which RHUD doesn’t even list). Once I got enough of EVERLASTING from crossings, I was hoping for POOH as the first word, given “Winnie,” but no such luck, alas.
OTOH, much of it went faster and was more interesting than many of his. The clue for ROOMMATES is clever, say. I’d forgotten who said “That’s not writing. That’s just typing” (reported far more often than Last’s version), so nice to be reminded. It was my experience of “On the Road,” too.
SEITAN is in both the American Heritage Dictionary and Merriam-Webster. Dunno what that says about Random House.
I don’t think I have ever eaten it, but with a cross or two, it was easy to get.
Actually SEITAN is not in MW’s last desk dictionary (11th Collegeiate) either. So I guess it’s a relatively new fad and once again Last wants me to know I’m behind the times. I tried SEUTAN for a while, trying to guess the clusters around the bottom long, weird name.
SEITAN not that new. M-W (online) says the origin is unknown but dates it to 1968. AHD says it was c by George Ohsawa (1893-1966), Japanese advocate of macrobiotics.
As the Louvin Brothers told us, “SEITAN is real!
https://tinyurl.com/4rwjmvzr
Back in the 1990s, I was on a trivia team named Spawn of Seitan. Familiar enough in our circles for punning!
Fish eggs that have been deviled? Lol!
Ben Wildman-Tobriner, one of today’s LA Times co-constructors, won a gold medal in swimming at the 2008 Beijing Olympics, so he knows a thing or two about the theme.
Thanks DP … neat tidbit that enhances my appreciation of this puzzle
New Yorker: I found it on the easy side for a Nathan Last grid. The top two-thirds went quickly and the stuff I didn’t know (JOHN MAYER, as clued; the first part of TUCK EVERLASTING; even HANYA YANAGINHARA) filled in without too much trouble. I did have to guess at the last one, having forgotten SEGNO but thinking a G made it look like something in Italian.
I’m pretty sure the CAPOTE quote is in the play “Tru.” We saw a PBS broadcast of it 30 years ago, and I can still hear Robert Morse saying that in that whiny voice CAPOTE had.
The clues for ROOMMATES and COINAGE are pretty good.
Those two clue/answers (roommates, coinage) were real standouts, great misdirections so there was a nice “aha” when I got back on track. I also liked seeing Capone and Capote so close to each other… dunno why it just tickled me.
I’m also happy to see the aa and pahoehoe lavas, as well as the reference to Hawaii in the NYT… one of my favorite places.
I had no clue on the long acrosses (classic childrens book and the author at the bottom) so it was a good learning experience, and they were pretty gettable from acrosses, with maybe a little help.
I too was amused when I realized that Tom Hardy had played CAPONE. I didn’t remember that, though he’s an actor I’ve enjoyed in other things.
LAVA was a good start for me, though I have never been to Hawaii. As is a useful word in Scrabble.
Aa. Thanks, auto correct.
It all seemed to go pretty smoothly for me, too – until I got to SEGNO crossing SEITAN and HANYA YANAGINHARA. Oy!
I played the clarinet in middle school, but didn’t know SEGNO then, and have had no reason to look at sheet music since – guessed that it was re-something. I have a few friends who are vegetarian, but no vegans, as far as I know. And YANAGINHARA didn’t seem very intuitive to me. I finished with a couple of errors when I guessed “rekno” for 41-D – seemed a little unlikely, but I kinda like the way it sounds.
Universal: Nice breezy Monday puzzle.
49A BOURBON VANILLA reminded me of an interesting and alarming story I read in the NYT yesterday.
https://tinyurl.com/pyewka9j
New Yorker: Ha! I finally beat Amy Reynaldo’s time! (I was at 11:19.)
Amy, I hope whatever procedure required the sedation went well and that you’re feeling better now.
+1
LAT: I really liked the creativity by co-constructors Shaun Phillips & Ben Wildman-Tobriner, and they even threw in some Olympic Games related answers such as: Speedos, Suni, top seed, and putts.