Adrian Johnson’s New York Times crossword—Amy’s recap
NY Times crossword solution, 9/6/24 – no. 0906
On the harder side for a Shortz-edited Friday puzzle, somewhere in the median for Fagliano-edited.
Fave fill: PEACE DEAL (if only—I think many agree that IT MEANS A LOT TO ME), SKA BANDS, IN THE ZONE, UMPTEENTH, EPHEMERAL, TEEN VOGUE, YARD SALE, BIG PHARMA, AREPA (liked the clue, [Relative of a pupusa]—once had some amazing Salvadoran pupusas in D.C.), RAW NERVES, EMPANADA (also a fan), and SODA BREAD (which I don’t love, despite being part Irish, and I’d never heard [It’s leavened with sour milk]; you can also make it with buttermilk and baking soda so milk gone beyond isn’t required. Heck, baking soda’s the “soda” in the name!).
Speaking of SKA BANDS, crossworder Tony Orbach has played sax in a number of bands, including the NYC ska band Urban Blight. That’s Tony in the gray (blue?) shirt in the video below. I also came across a Facebook video of a band with Tony as one of maybe a dozen horn players. So [They often have multiple horns] is accurate, though it might trick you into thinking of a triceratops.
Four stars from me.
Zachary David Levy’s Los Angeles Times crossword — pannonica’s write-up
LAT • 9/6/24 • Fri • Levy • solution • 20240906
I had a little trouble finishing up the revealer entry due to trying to parse the beginning as ANDY, and not properly thinking of 59d [Brand celebrating Hello Kitty’s 50th Mani-versary in 2024] OPI—SANRIO certainly didn’t fit.
- 58aR [Rude greeting, or an apt title for this puzzle?] AND YOU ARE? The bigram U-R has been prefixed to the various theme phrases.
- 17a. [Cash in Eurasia?] URAL GREEN (Al Green).
- 24a. [Greetings from the bear’s den?] URSINE WAVES (sine waves). (32a [Storybook bear] PAPA.)
- 35a. [Like an address bar?] URL-SHAPED (L-shaped). (39d [Spot for beer and video games] BARCADE.)
- 49a. [Tunes for some pathetic Dickens characters?] URCHIN MUSIC (chin music).
Ur-text context.
- 4d [Spicy herb seasoning in gumbo] FILÉ, which is powdered young leaves of sassafras.
- 5d [End to end?] -ING, which seems more than a little open-ended.
- 10d [Fragrance] AROMA. 34d [Fragrance] ODOR. Thank you!
- 40d [Scannable squares] QR CODES. The UR-QR dynamic distracted me, especially when it came time to deal with the revealer.
- 45d [Exam for pupils] EYE TEST. Ha.
- 6a [Air quality monitoring org.] FCC. Strong misdirect to EPA.
- 30d [Friendly opening] ECO-. 24d [Friendly opening] USER-.
Dylan Schiff’s Universal crossword, “Block All Cookies”—Jim’s review
Theme answers are familiar(ish) names and phrases whose final words are also popular types of cookies. The letters in these cookies are ignored in the Down direction in order to satisfy the crossing asterisked clues, yet those Down entries are still valid (though unclued) crossword words if one was to include the letters in question. There is no revealer, but the title does a sufficient job of indicating the theme.
Universal crossword solution · “Block All Cookies” · Dylan Schiff · Fri., 9.6.24
- 17a. [Laws of Motion namesake] ISAAC NEWTON with crossings FINERY, ACES, NEWT, NAT, EGO DENALI. I cottoned on to the gist of the theme relatively quickly here when I got to EGO.
- 28a. [Actress in “Who’s the Boss?” and “Charmed”] ALYSSA MILANO with crossings OMAR, DENALI (doing double duty!), BOLT, GIVES AWAY, NINA, ON IT.
- 46a. [First Pacific Island nation to gain independence] WESTERN SAMOA. with crossings SINES, PANAMA, MALIGN, BORED, AAS. I incorrectly assumed 30d would be SINEW which made the island look like WESTERN WA___. Took me a while to correct that error.
- 60a. [Mobile operating system version between Nougat and Pie] ANDROID OREO with crossings OPS, OPRAH, NIECE, TOED. Never heard of the Android OS names, so I only had _RE_ in place. Thankfully, a glance at the title clued me in to the cookie angle and that’s all I needed.
Nicely done. This must have taken a lot of patient construction to put together. As a solver, I enjoyed being stymied at first but then figuring out the trick with the first entry then fully grokking the theme with the last entry. A fun solving experience from start to finish.
With so much theme material (and their crossings), there isn’t much fill that isn’t affected by the theme, but RED STATES makes for a good anchor in the SW. I’m also impressed with ICE AGE stacked atop NEWTON. I did wrinkle my nose at BAY AT with awkward clue [Howl toward], but that’s the only real iffy bit in an otherwise impressive grid.
Good puzzle. Four stars.
NYT: This felt a bit tougher than usual but did not end up taking an unusual amount of time.
I loved this puzzle for its fresh entries as well as its fresh clues. Looking forward to seeing more from this constructor!
I had the exact same feeling; finished under my average time, but it just seemed to take a little bit for the answers to start falling into place. Maybe I’m getting on Fagliano’s wavelength.
I don’t know if they’ve announced anything, but it seems like perhaps Will isn’t coming back? He’s been doing the NPR Sunday puzzle for a bit, and sounds better every week, but I wasn’t sure if he’s said anything about returning to edit the NYT, or if it will be Joel from now on.
I’ve been curious about Will myself. I hope he recovers well enough to be able to return because we all know how much he loves editing the NYT puzzle. Maybe he and Joel could split the workload?
I periodically search for updates on Will Shortz’s condition, but never find anything. I just listened to one of his NPR appearances from a few weeks ago. He doesn’t sound horrible, but he also doesn’t sound like he did before the stroke.
I hope his recovery is going well.
Like many of us here, Mr. Shortz is no youngster. I hope his recovery is going well and that he will continue to do whatever fulfills him – for a long time to come.
If he returns to edit the NYT crossword, good for him! If not, I think Joel has proved himself a worthy successor.
My thoughts exactly. Nicely said.
LAT: loved seeing the “Real Genius” reference in the clues!
top 10 80s movies of all-time.
One of the things I saw about Real Genius is that, despite being nominally about undergraduate students, it felt like a much better representation of what being a science Ph.D. student was like. And shot on the Caltech campus, from what I remember.
Great movie / puzzle. Pretty much – although not actually filmed at Caltech. https://filming.caltech.edu/caltech-hollywood
(And since ugrads generally have more free time than grad students, maybe that was just a better “target audience”? More fun to have a few super-nerds, too…)
BTW, I love that classroom montage from Real Genius – which now kinda reminds me of “COVID days” at many a university…
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wB1X4o-MV6o
[Math on tape is hard to follow, so: Please Listen Carefully]
NYT: Buttermilk is “sour” milk in the same way sour cream is: not by spoiling, but by being cultured, which acidifies it. The acid in the buttermilk reacts with the soda to release the gas that causes soda bread to rise, so the “sour” buttermilk and soda are equally responsible for leavening.
Liked the puzzle, but thought it was easy for a Friday on either the Shortz or Fagliano scale.
I agree, but still only completed the northeast corner with Easy Mode! Still, I loved it, not everyone’s response to ease.
WSJ: I thought the meta was fun and easy. Even if you’re not a big movie fan, it shouldn’t be too hard.
Of course, we’re not supposed to discuss it until the contest deadline. I will say that the theme clues, essentially UN-clued, on top of too much other junk, made it a slog and all but impossible for me. As can happen on.a WSJ Friday, when I finally filled it, I had had enough and chucked it without thinking what it might mean.
As others have said better, NYT a worthy challenge.
I do my best to avoid spoilers when discussing the WSJ Friday puzzles before the contest closes. But when the meta is easy, I like to mention it in time for others who often struggle with the metas to give it a shot.
I like movies but am not a huge fan of biopics. Of the eight ones in the puzzle, I know I have seen two. There’s two more that I may have seen. But the years in the clues were pretty meaningless to me. (Is this specific movie five years old? 10? Who knows? That’s what IMDb is for.)
I could expand on the second sentence of my original comment, but I don’t want to spoil the fun for anyone.
Universal: It is a clever idea and must have been hard to construct, but if you don’t know something like ALYSSA MILANO or ANDROID OREO, it becomes almost impossible because you can’t check anything with the crosses. I found myself guessing at letters that made sense of the Down answers where they crossed the cookies and at the cookie names themselves.
I do appreciate that all the Down answers that cross the cookies are valid entries with or without the cookie. I just wish I had had more fun with it.
“Block All Cookies”. The starred answers make no sense based on the clue. I just find these “trick” puzzles frustrating, as if there’s some “in joke” that I’m supposed to know to solve them.