Matt Jones’s Jonesin’ Crossword, “Hassle-Free” — it’s themeless time. – Erin’s write-up
Jonesin’ solution 8/13/24
Hello lovelies! We’ve been gifted with a themeless this week, so 1-Across (LET’S BEGIN)!
- 62a. [Pop star who recently tweeted “kamala IS brat”] CHARLI XCX. “Brat” is the English singer’s album released in June 2024, and it refers to someone with a more rebellious and hedonistic attitude compared to the “clean girl TikTok aesthetic. Or something.
- 26d. [Meathead’s real name] MIKE STIVIC. Meathead was the son-in-law of Archie Bunker in the 1970s show “All in the Family.”
- 6d. [It’s not “esto” or “eso”] EL OTRO. It’s not “this” or “that” so it’s “the other” in Spanish.
- 10d. [Nachos and sandwiches, for example] EPONYMS. I knew about the Earl of Sandwich, but I didn’t know that Ignacio Anaya was the maître d’ of a restaurant in Mexico and heated some cheese and jalapeños on tortilla chips because the chef wasn’t around and folks were hungry. He called it “Nacho’s Especiales” and the name stuck.
Until next week!
Benjamin Panico’s New York Times crossword—Amy’s recap
NY Times crossword solution, 8/13/24 – no. 0813
Oh! Look at that. TONI MORRISON‘s name and the titles of her first six novels (for which she received the Nobel Prize in Literature) fit into a symmetrical theme. There’s JAZZ (which is still the only Morrison novel I’ve read, somehow), THE BLUEST EYE, TAR BABY, SONG OF SOLOMON, BELOVED, and SULA. Which of these should I read next? (Also, if you haven’t read Percival Everett’s James, a retelling of Huck Finn from Jim’s perspective, check it out. It’s as propulsive a read as Twain’s book, but without the cringe factor.)
Quick puzzle with an easy theme if you know Morrison’s oeuvre, a bit more checking the crossings if you don’t.
Three things:
- 25d. [Black, poetically], EBON. Crosswordese vibes here. Could also be clued as The Bear actor Ebon Moss-Bachrach, but that could be a tough crossing for a solver who doesn’t know of Morrison’s TAR BABY.
- 28a. [Like Taylor Swift’s “Shake It Off,” key-wise], IN G. I personally hate music clues like this. For a Tuesday puzzle, a nice and easy verb ending clue would work just fine!
- 43d. [YouTube journals, essentially], VLOGS. A question: Is every person who has a YouTube channel that features themselves on camera a vlogger? Or is this a particular subset of YouTuber? The last person I encountered specifically identified as a vlogger was a Dutch creep who travels the world “helping” people with his sperm and has something like 1,000 biological children, per a Netflix documentary.
Four stars from me. If this is a debut puzzle, the constructor’s off to a good start!
Elizabeth C. Gorski’s Cr♥ssw♥rd Nation puzzle (Week 690), “Fasten-ating Rhythm!”—Ade’s take
Crossword Nation puzzle solution, Week 690: “Fasten-ating Rhythm!”
Hello there, everyone! I am already suffering withdrawal symptoms from the Summer Olympics being over, and they don’t feel good. What a fun two-plus weeks that was, and hope you were able to enjoy some of the events and the pageantry of Paris that shot through everyone’s screens.
Today’s hook for the puzzle deals with answers that are synonyms to hooks, if you will. And by hooks, I mean objects used to fasten articles of clothing, and each of the theme answers has a word contained that is also a type of fastener.
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- RHUBARB BUCKLE (15A: [Tart fruit dessert with a streusel topping])
- SNAP DECISION (27A: [Spur-of-the-moment verdict])
- ZIPPER SPIDER (42A: [Web-spinning creature named for the zigzag patterns it makes])
- CUTE AS A BUTTON (55A: [Utterly adorable])
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I’m sure a younger generation of solvers would have a few NITS with this puzzle given the number of answers that referenced things that were popular in a previous generation or two, but I was more than OK going down memory lane (52D: [Minor quibbles]). Not bad to have an earworm after seeing RHONDA (63A: [Girl in a Beach Boys classic]) or PETULA, as “Downtown” is now the song that’s chiming in in my head as I type this (43D: [Singer Clark]). KOTO (40A: [Japanese stringed instrument]) was new to me, and thank goodness the crossings on that weren’t too hard, while it has been a good while since I’ve come across EOLITH in a grid (31D: [Crude stone artifact]).
“Sports will make you smarter” moment of the day: SASH (19A: [Obi, for instance]) – A somber post this week as we remember former Super Bowl champion safety Tyler Sash. The University of Iowa product was a All-Big Ten First Team selection in both 2009 and 2010, setting the school record for career interception return yards (392). Sash was drafted by the New York Giants in the sixth round in 2011 and was part of the 2011 Super Bowl team. Sash passed away in 2015 at the age of 27.
Thank you so much for the time, everybody! Have a wonderful and safe rest of your day and, as always, keep solving!
Take care!
Ade/AOK
Jamey Smith’s Wall Street Journal crossword, “Dog Days”—Matt’s recap
Jamey Smith’s Wall Street Journal crossword solution, “Dog Days,” 8/13/2024
Themers are of the form “X in (Y city)”:
- 16a [*TV Land sitcom with Betty White and Valerie Bertinelli] HOT IN CLEVELAND
- 23a [*With 55-Across, rom-com that ends atop the Empire State Building] SLEEPLESS / IN SEATTLE
- 62a [*Classic album featuring “Son of a Preacher Man”] DUSTY IN MEMPHIS
A central revealer ties it together:
- 37a [Hit for the Lovin’ Spoonful, and a hint to the starred answers] SUMMER IN THE CITY.
This lands a little flat for me – sure, summer is HOT. Is it necessarily DUSTY? In some places, perhaps. SLEEPLESS? Eh. I think this is a neat set that doesn’t quite tie fully together.
Highlights in the fill: the easy-but-takes-a-sec [Paper with a blue circle logo] for USA TODAY and DOT BOMB.
Some mustiness on the other end of the spectrum that reminds me it’s been a bit since I’ve reviewed a WSJ puzzle: SOT [Rehab candidate] isn’t great vibes, nor is CECIL Rhodes, even if he is clued to the eponymous scholarship. PEOPLE by Barbra Streisand was released in 1964 and, uh, it’s not like that’s the only clue available for the entry. Do FIVESPOT, ‘fin’, or ‘Abe’ exist anywhere outside of crosswords anymore?
Seth Weitberg’s Los Angeles Times crossword — Jenni’s write-up
The revealer on this one made me giggle. I recognized the pattern in the theme answers. I wasn’t expecting the joke.
Los Angeles Times, August 13, 2024, Seth Weitberg, solution grid
- 20a [Be too afraid to] is CHICKEN OUT OF. A bit awkward. Not incorrect.
- 28a [Add extra protection] is BEEF UP SECURITY.
- 43a [Ask leading questions] is FISH FOR ANSWERS.
My giggle came at 48a [Noncash corporate benefits, or what a cook would call the starts of 20-, 28-, and 43-Across?] is STOCK OPTIONS. Fun!
A few other things:
- Sushi with NORI at 3d and ROE at 11d. Plus DOMO arigato at 40d.
- 26a [Rears, at sea] is STERNS. For a minute I was thinking of breaching whales rearing up. Don’t know why.
- I haven’t read any BERTIE Wooster books in years. I hope they’re still as funny as I remember.
- I filled in 53d from crossings and was surprised to see the clue [Win shares in basketball, e.g.]. I was, of course, expecting the medical definition. I don’t follow basketball and had to look up that particular STAT. I didn’t understand it, but I did look it up.
What I didn’t know before I did this puzzle: see above re: win shares. I also had never heard of Ego NWODIM.
Jay Silverman’s Universal Crossword, “That’s the Way the Cookie Crumbles” — Matt F’s Review
Universal Solution 08.12.2024
This puzzle was created by Jay Silverman, and polished in the editing room by Taylor Johnson. Thank you both!
No revealer today, so let’s grab our favorite crossword cookies from the shelf and get right into it. We have an erosion theme today, in which a letter is taken out of the “theme word” in each successive answer. The “theme word” today is OREO! Here’s how it breaks down:
- 17A – [Blended drink with cookies and ice cream] = OREO SHAKE
- 30A – [Miner’s lode] = ORE DEPOSIT
- 49A – [“That’s what was said to me”] = OR SO I’M TOLD
- 66A – [Most common blood type in the U.S.] = O POSITIVE
This is a rare case where not hiding the theme word adds a constraint to the puzzle. You’ll notice that each starting word consists only of the theme content – from OREO to O – instead of a broader hidden word theme that might allow, say, OREGON DUCK in place of ORE DEPOSIT. This is a small detail, but it really elevates the puzzle by forcing an extra constraint on the theme.
The 4 (four!) bonus words are fun, too. TREAD WATER, TRACK SUIT, RIPS APART, and IMPRESSIVE bring joy to every corner, without requiring any crossword-y gunk to hold the grid together. There’s a fun animal fact at 43A, and a cute little BOP/BOOP cross you can’t help but smile at. Nice and smooth puzzle all around!
Erik Agard’s New Yorker crossword — pannonica’s write-up
New Yorker • 8/13/24 • Tue • Agard • solution • 20240813
A decent workout. I’d say it was pretty much ‘moderately challenging’. For me, it was due to several unknowns/half-knowns rather than overly tricky cluing.
There’s a mini-theme—or at least a rationale—to the stepped stack in the center: 33a [People from Adamsville or Bankhead] ATLANTANS. 35a [H.B.C.U. portmanteau] SPELHOUSE; both Spelman and Morehouse Colleges are in Atlanta. 36a [OutKast’s follow-up to “Aquemini”] STANKONIA; OutKast was formed in Atlanta. “Aquemini” is a portmanteau of Aquarius and Gemini.
- 3d [Tends to need cooling] RUNS HOT. Much better than GUNSHOT, right?
- 8d [Fans’ imagined versions of stories] HEADCANON. Or lore. I suspect this is something quite a few of you might not be familiar with. Agard used it last year in a USA Today crossword.
- 9d [Assistance from a spotter?] LOAN. Nothing to do with weightlifting. 58a [Spotted] SEEN.
- 11d [First person?] WINNER. Nice misdirect.
- 33d [IDGAF feeling] APATHY. ‘I don’t give a fuck’.
- 34d [Term paper?] TUITION. Too much of a stretch?
- 41d [“Ciao!:] BYE-BYE. 27a [“Ciao!”] TA-TA.
- 50d [Esfahān’s country] IRAN. Obviously this is the contemporary transliteration for Isfahan.
- 51d [ __ visualization (infographics, etc.)] DATA. Edward Tufte is the gold standard here.
- 26a [Very frequently] A TON. For a while I had A LOT, which entailed changing 4d [Absorb] from the correct TAKE IN to the incorrect TAKE IT.
- 37a [Actress Pounder] C.C.H. I remember her from ER.
- 47a [Compound with the same atoms in a different arrangement] ISOMER. Knowing this one allowed me to quickly correct 38d [Defeated by a large margin] to CREAMED from CRUSHED. There are many types of ISOMERs. For instance, if it involves chirality (‘handedness’) they’re called enantiomers. ISOMERs are also a very common source of cis-trans terminology.
- 49a [People also known as the Cree] NEHIYAW. Totally unfamiliar to me.
- 51a [Marvel superhero whose body is a portal] DOORMAN. Ditto.
- 56a [In-__ laundry] UNIT. Not a new concept to me, but I haven’t seen it with UNIT before. The sort of thing you’d see in a real estate listing.
NYT: A good but maybe too easy Tuesday puzzle.
I’m not crazy about 32A “No later than” clueing UNTIL.
Sure, people use it this way. But people misuse lots of words, and “until” means nothing more or less than “up to the time of”, saying nothing about what may or may not occur after that.
Sorry, but you’re the one misunderstanding the word. Everyone knows that “until” means that the action stops at that point. If you told a new hire “you need to stay until 5pm,” you would be incorrect to be surprised to see them gone at 5:01. If a hotel says you can stay in the room until 11am, you can’t stay through the afternoon and say “you didn’t say anything about what may or may not occur after 11!”.
NYT
Not a fan of “pained sounds” clueing OYs instead of OHs or OWs, especially on the cross of a novel name that might be in a language other than English.
More properly OY, or OI, is used to attract attention.
I use OY as clued (though I entered OWS first) – when something goes wrong or I’ve done something stupid, “Oy!”
M-W: “used especially to express exasperation or dismay”
That use is more of a British thing. OY as clued comes from Yiddish.
I’ve been watching a lot of Australian and New Zealand made TV lately (newer American made is not in my wheelhouse… no zombies or superheros pls.) Anyhoo….. OI is used there often to attract attention. Oy is as clued, and often goes with Oy Vey in the Yiddish vernacular. (Has anybody tried Soy Vey teriyaki marinade? I’m assuming the maker is Jewish owned? maybe not).
At least that’s my take on oy vs. oi.
Of course OY is a pained expression. That’s what it means in Yiddish or English, literally as well as in use. I grew up with it, often intensified as oy gevalt. I also for the life of me don’t understand Dan’s objection to the clue for UNTIL, just another routine equivalent for “up to to the time that.” If that’s not UNTIL, what is? My own puzzlement is in not yet understanding LEND for confer. I’d have said one confers an outright gift.
I was expecting a rough puzzle for a Tuesday, requiring six titles. I’m a huge fan of the author, who’s surely up there on everyone’s list of possibilities for greatest living writer, especially now that Roth is gone. But even for me books have a way of blending together over time, and factoids they are however much I like them.
Still, I was impressed at how all that thematic material fit right in (symmetrically, too) without forcing just plain awful fill. And she did win a Nobel prize, which for me is more of an endorsement than movie box office, music sales, and TV ratings. One day I may yet have to make myself remember Nobel peace prizes.
There’s just one big thing keeping Toni Morrison from being the “greatest living writer.”
Oh, so sorry. How did I forget that.
NYT – @Amy i vote for 19a for your next read (but obviously you can’t go wrong). i still need to check out 35a and 30a. lovely puzzle 🥰
Amy – yes today’s NYT is a debut. Impressive.
NYT: very nice debut puzzle, but I do have a question: Am I the only person who has never heard of a lanai? I also had a “moment” when I initially parsed 19A as “The Blue Steye” 😎
lanai has been in NYT and other puzzles frequently. If patio doesn’t work in the puzzle, lanai usually will. It is basically a type of patio that originated in Hawaii. Capitalized, it is also an island in the state of Hawaii.
speaking of Lanai the island, it is 98% owned by Oracle founder Larry Ellison, where he pretty much rules as king. What he says, goes. :( . Not much sympathy for native Hawaiians or anybody not rich.
Many Floridians have a screen-enclosed space, with or without a swimming pool, that they might call a lanai. The cast of “The Golden Girls” a few decades back had a lanai attached to their Florida house.
For 20 years, we’ve been going skiing in the Wasatch outside Salt Lake City. The lodge where we stay has only about a half-dozen rooms, each named after the stain used on the paneling. LANAI may be one of the few rooms there that we haven’t stayed in.
I don’t know what’s behind the red WSJ puzzle with small white squares for clue numbers. As a pdf printout solver, I can’t know what online solvers see, so perhaps the review picks up on that. But i do find it a tad harder to read.
I downloaded the PUZ version and it was no different than usual – after reading your comment I went onto the WSJ site and downloaded the PDF, but I don’t see what you describe. I thought the large numbers in the answer grid seemed unusual, but I have no reference point (although I did choose a random puzzle from the past on their site, downloaded the PDF but the fonts looked the same). I saw no red. Curious.
I didn’t say I saw red in the pdf or, for that matter, on the WSJ puzzle page. I said I see it in Jim’s review and wondered where that comes from (and don’t like it). I just tried not to make it a big deal in case Jim was reflecting the experience of online solvers. I don’t want to come off as needlessly demanding.
Oh, so sorry. The review is credited for once to Matt, not Jim.
Ah, my mistake. My guess is that it’s a technical glitch encountered when uploading the image of the grid. I do see it now; not sure why I didn’t notice it before.
Agree–Very difficult to read.
I was impressed by the NYT puzzle. Getting all six titles and the author’s name into the grid with nothing that I would call icky fill is quite an achievement.
I did not enjoy the NYT at all; I am aware of Toni Morrison but not her books, therefore I had to fill in the crossings for every theme answer. Some, like 35A could be parsed from a few well placed crossings, (it is a well known phrase in circles other than Toni Morrison titles) but others, like 19a had to wait until the last letter. Blue? Blues? Bluest? The crossings were very easy – so this puzzle had no middle ground for me.
Agree.
TNY: somewhat faster than yesterday for me, but not by much. Several names I didn’t know: STANKONIA, MUFASA, NEHIYAW, and DOORMAN (as clued; a superhero, really?). I’d vaguely heard of the Miranda July novel, but wanted ‘All YOURS’ at first, then decided MUYASA was not plausible. I don’t really know what a HEADCANON is, or why it’s so named, but it rings a bell from somewhere.
SPELHOUSE was new to me, but I guessed it from a few letters.
STANKONIA? Superficial crap. NEHIYAW? Give me a break. CCH whoever the heck she is? Not a word or a legitimate entry. I wish Erik would go away.
Maybe stop doing the puzzles you know you’re not going to like rather than just complaining all the time.
Life is hard enough without actively making yourself miserable.
+1
To each their own. I am always happy to see e.a., or n.l., or k.a.c. as the constructor, especially on Monday difficulty for TNY (always a workout, always learning moments).
CCH Pounder was a gimme for me, she’s been nominated for quite a few awards. Her first “name” is derived from the initials of her given birth names. No more difficult for me than Sza which I can’t pronounce correctly I don’t think.
The Stankonia and Nehiyaw as well as headcanon were learning moments for me.
I know and like CCH Pounder from the roles she played in ER and NCIS New Orleans – but I’ll be darned if I can ever remember her name!
I couldn’t believe I’d found an actor I’d heard of, but I’d forgotten the “H.”
It was a DNF for me. I had about two dozen things I could only guess at, many of them crossings and almost an equal number of crosses and downs. Of course, I never guessed the “mini-theme” in the center. For me, and I believe for Grumpy, it’s not about what we’ll like or fill we’re happy to know. It’s about what’s fair.
John, saying “I wish Erik would go away” is way worse and way more unfair than anything Erik’s puzzle may have done to you or anyone else.
It wasn’t John who said it. I didn’t like the puzzle either, but I guess we have enough puzzles every week that satisfy us. I’m glad some people liked it.
Lois, I know it wasn’t John who said it. The point is that it’s weird for John to be far more bothered about a crossword he didn’t like than he was by Norm’s vicious comment about a friend of mine who wrote that crossword. One of those things he called unfair; the other he treated as though it were justifiable behavior.
If you didn’t like today’s New Yorker puzzle, just shrug and move on with your day. It’s really not asking much to do that and avoid saying something incredibly low like “I wish Erik would go away” (and also avoid defending the haters who say things like that).
Mr. Grumpy – I can relate to your feelings and I mostly find e.a.’s puzzles uninteresting. But he’s a niche creator (ala BEQ), and while some people like his stuff, they’re not for me, so I move onto the next puzzle.
Tough but fair New Yorker. Lotta new stuff for me, but solvable from crosses.
NYT: Mildly disappointed 54-Down [Construction area] wasn’t GRID. ;-)
(Somehow, some day, somewhere… – but not here…)
New Yorker: It took me about 20 seconds less than Monday’s New Yorker, but felt significantly more challenging. There were a lot of long answers that I didn’t know, including SPELLHOUSE, STANKONIA, NÉHIYAW and HEAD CANON (which I’m glad to have learned). It took me longer than it should have to figure out the acronym IDGAF.
But it was a good challenge. I eventually got even the weirdest-looking entries by filling in what I did know and making educated guesses on what I didn’t know. Nice clues for LOAN and TUITION.
Jonesin’: I found this puzzle a tab below Matt’s usual funny/punny standard.
But 7D was a nice entry: “Gish Gallop” (dishonest debate tactic) reminded me of Trump’s ability to spew rapid-fire lies and then change the topic.