LAT 3:00 (Stella)
Newsday 22:49 (pannonica)
NYT 7:57 (Amy)
Universal tk (Matthew)
USA Today tk (Matthew)
WSJ untimed (pannonica)
David P. Williams’s New York Times crossword—Amy’s recap
NY Times crossword solution, 9/7/24 – no. 0907
Is it my imagination or has the NYT slid back to having far, far more male bylines than female ones? I know somebody’s been keeping track! Tell us the stats, please.
On the tougher end of the spectrum for Saturday NYTs for me.
Fave fill: LAMAZE, DOOFUS, GENE POOL, NITTY GRITTY, TURMOIL (though the Star Wars text clue did nothing for me), LOGJAM, BIKE LANE, “NICE ONE!”, “SO FAR, SO GOOD,” FUN FACTS, and DONGLE.
Three more things:
- 31a. [Methods for sharing pirated material], BITTORRENTS. I feel like BitTorrent is one method, not a thing you pluralize. You could put an S on the end and use it as a verb, though that upsets the people at the BitTorrent company. The company would also rather you not suggest that it’s used for pirating material. Sorry, BitTorrent PR!
- 48a. [Fast-food chain with palm trees on its packaging], IN-N-OUT. It’s in just eight states in the West and Southwest, and I sure don’t know its logo.
- 28a. [Like soffritto ingredients], DICED. My Top Chef knowledge is rusty and I needed lots of crossings here. I’m more familiar with the spelling sofrito (which is Spanish); this Italian soffritto looks wrong to me.
Rich Norris’s Los Angeles Times crossword — Stella’s write-up
Los Angeles Times 9/7/24 by Rich Norris
I found this grid design pretty cool and might have to steal it to see what I can do with it! Highlights:
- 7A [New parent, maybe] is STEPDAD — I thought this was a neat misdirect to make you think of the things people who’ve just had a baby might be doing, whereas in fact the newness refers to blending a family.
- 31A [Carmichael who composed “Heart and Soul”] is HOAGY. To me his real masterpiece is “Stardust,” but either way, I hope young folks who are solving this puzzle won’t dismiss this entry as an old and irrelevant reference. The music is pretty great.
- 38A [Go a-wassailing] is CAROL. If you don’t know the Christmas CAROL “Here We Come A-Wassailing,” get to know it. There’s “mouldy cheese” and “a little purse of stretching leather skin,” among other evocative images.
- 13D [Problem that may be confused with operator error] is a DESIGN FLAW. I’m a 20+ year veteran of the advertising industry married to a computer programmer, so there’s a lot of complaining about DESIGN FLAWs (whether in terms of graphic design or user interfaces) in our household.
- 25D [Big pile on the floor] is a SHAG CARPET, probably my favorite clue in the puzzle.
- 34D [Snail mail, e.g.] is RETRONYM. I like that the clue doesn’t give you much to go on.
Lowlight: 21D EASES UP TO, definitely my least favorite entry in the puzzle because it would feel like green paint anywhere you put it, but especially in the very middle.
Jim Peredo’s Wall Street Journal crossword, “Animalgamations” — pannonica’s write-up
WSJ • 9/7/24 • Sat • “Animalgamations” • Peredo • solution • 20240907
I’ll tell you this much, even though I understood the gist of the theme right away, I did not expect it to take the turn it did with the revealer—despite my apprehensions about the title.
- 99a/114aR [… H.G. Wells classic, where you might imagine an individual with all of the starred answers] THE ISLAND OF | DOCTOR MOREAU.
(92a [Org. that would object to 114-Across’s methods] SPCA.) - 23a. [*Tropical large-leafed plant] ELEPHANT’S EAR.
- 35a. [*Tessellated fabric pattern] HOUND’S TOOTH (or houndstooth).
- 37a. [*Big name in deli meats] BOAR’S HEAD.
- 51a. [*Three of the score 150 points in darts] BULL’S EYES (or bullseyes).
- 67a. [*Real jerk] HORSE’S ASS.
- 82a. [*Exceptionally great thing] BEE’S KNEES.
- 97a. [*Some wrinkles] CROW’S FEET.
S0mewhat gruesome and morbid, eh?
- 4d [Imitative individuals] COPYCATS, not COPYISTS. 74a [Mimic] APER.
- 5d [Oldest independent country in Afr.] ETHiopia. In modern times.
- 6d [Hindu god of new beginnings] GANESH, crossing ELEPHANT’S EAR.
- 14d [Prayers before vespers] NONES. Also a contemporary demographic category, those who are unaffiliated with any organized religion.
- 16d [Overhaul a plant, perhaps] RETOOL, not REROOT.
- 36d [One wearing very little clothing?] DOLL. Cute.
- 68d [Giving the chef the night off] ORDERING OUT. I’m more apt to say ordering in, but the PHRASEs (93d) mean the same thing.
- 75d [Film set on water?] POND SCUM. Not bad.
- 81d [Rub-and-scrub hub] SPA. 123a [Matched wits with Fritz?] RHYMED.
- 83d [Software contract most people don’t read: Abbr.] EULA, which stands for end-user license agreement.
- 19a [Title character with zero stage presence?] GODOT. iswydt
- 25a [Flour pot?] CANISTER. 32a [Drop-dead gorges?] CHASMS. Two of a number of such punny clues.
- 45a [Superfan of a 2010s musical TV show] GLEEK, which is a portmanteau of Glee and geek. But it’s also a much older word meaning gibe or joke.
- 64a [Word with star or bar] CHART. I would have thought bar graph to be more common than bar chart, but Ngrams indicates otherwise.
- 78a [They might need to be checked at the door] EGOS. Considered AGES for a microsecond, but dismissed it. Also: 1d [Long time to wait] AGES.
- 95a [Fact-checker’s person of interest] LIAR, but I had LEAD.
- 108a [Last part of this club] TYPO. I didn’t catch this at all during the solve; it was just an obscure mystery clue.
- 118a [To whom Jeanne d’Arc prayed] DIEU, not JESU as I had tried.
- 119a [Morgan Stanley subsidiary] E-TRADE. 10d [Virtual wallet contents] E-CASH.
Okay, not my cup of tea, but it feels obligatory:
I also found this:
Matthew Sewell’s Newsday crossword, Saturday Stumper — pannonica’s write-up
Newsday • 9/7/24 • Saturday Stumper • Sewell • solution • 20240907
A solve in six stages:
- almost nothing
- a few spots
- a lot of progress
- stymied with about ⅔ of the grid done
- slowly squeezing into the northeast
- reciting the alphabet to figure out the crossing of 37d and 42a
And in the end, it was about an average Stumper completion time. Some really tough, oblique and abstruse cluing in this one.
- 15a [Sectional starter] DECI-. Yeesh. I tried DEPT first, even though there was no abbrev. indication.
- 16a [Genre for Jo Nesbo and Stieg Larsson] SCANDI NOIR. A gimme. Yes from me to Jø Nesbø, and no on Larsson.
- 19a [Its founder got a Special Award at the first Tonys] SARDI’S. That’s very cliquey.
- 28a [Aptly named apple developed at Cornell] EMPIRE. It should have been obvious to me, but the only E apple I could think of was ENVY, and then with a couple of additional crossings I considered ESPRIT.
- 30a [Edgar cousin] AGATHA. These are awards for mystery writers.
- 33a [Bring home bags, say] EAT IN. 22a [Moved loads] IN AWE. Tough stuff.
- 34a [Subtly shady compliment] I LOVE THAT FOR YOU. Online, I see it exclusively as snark.
- 38a [Word related to Latin for “war”] REBEL. Similar to belligerent, bellicose, antebellum, et al.
- 39a [Move it] SPRINT.
- 42a [Variety headliners] PIX. The final crossing, with 37d [Undue influence] FIX.
- 43a [Avengers exclamation] YEOW. Huh?
- 50a [Where Queen Beatrix International Airport is] ARUBA. This was a key entry for getting through the lower right area. I had the A from 50d [Military mail designation] APO, and I was pretty sure 29d [LED-covered dancer with wedding guests] was going to end with ROBOT (it’s PARTY ROBOT, which I’m pretty sure is always actually a person in costume). With the first two letters in place it became obvious.
- 55a [Quite a challenge] HARD TO BEAT.
- 58a [“We will, in France, by God’s grace, play __”: Henry V] A SET. Yes, it’s tennis.
- 59a [Underlying sentiment] ETHOS. Another key entry, gettable because I presumed 41d [Didn’t dawdle] ended with -ED (DASHED). ~ 39a [Move it] SPRINT.
- 61a [Harsh finish] -NESS. Oh come on. So vague. 14a [Start to respect] DIS-. Same. 57d [Dog denouement] -DOM. Again!
- 1d [“Bulky” mountain range portion] MASSIF. Thanks, New York Times, for priming me on this one today.
- 2d [Puzzled over] ARCANE. Sneaky adjective clue.
- 3d [Claw] TEAR AT.
- 7d [Artist seen in “dairy” palindromes] KLIMT. I have never seen one of these MILK-based palindromes.
- 8d [Fintech giant] E-TRADE. Thanks, Wall Street Journal, for priming me on this one today.
- 11d [Nintendo persona battling Baron Brrr] ICE MARIO. Reasonable, in that I reasoned it out, after some crossings.
- 21d [Sort of carrot] COME-ON. Versus a stick.
- 32d [Courts of many stories] ATRIA. I was going to say it’s a bit weird, but now I’m realizing that stories here are not tales but height—and now this is my favorite clue from the puzzle.
- 44d [Only Greek state motto] EUREKA. I did in fact have a EUREKA moment here.
- 53d [Q & A in DC] is not a press conference or anything of the sort. They’re just lettered STS.
I agree with Amy. NYT was a harder than usual Saturday.
The NW corner ended up being last for me; I put in STRIKE for labor tactic (but in pencil, as I had a strong feeling it was a misdirection). Took me a bit to get going; the NW and SE corner were rather disconnected from the rest of the puzzle. Finished under my average time, but it did feel a bit on the harder side.
+1 on STRIKE as a first try, but after my first pass through the Down clues, that clearly wasn’t working out.
Slow solve for me, but nothing unreasonable.
Same. But I loved that clue for LAMAZE, and lots of other delicious clues in this puzzle.
Not so keen on the clue for GENE POOL, which is factually incorrect; or for UPTAKES (an ugly POC). You can be quick or slow on the uptake, because it’s a process, not a “moment.” I balked at both of those answers before giving in, thinking “that can’t be right” up until the very end.
Like Amy, no idea about the Episode 1 crawl or the IN-N-OUT logo.
But overall, a very entertaining Saturday puzzle!
Harder? How about impossible. For me who usually finishes Saturdays.
+1
I thought it was very hard and maybe unfair. But I’m still not sure and found it at least interesting.
NYT: I confidently wrote in “seance” and “nitty gritty “, then….. nothing. That was it for me. Sigh
Wow — fantastic NYT Friday followed up by a fantastic Saturday! Both get maximum stars from me. Really tough with nothing that I couldn’t get from crosses. I love it when it takes me multiple efforts to get a foothold, then have to abandon that foothold and try again, eventually getting everything to fall into place after all. Almost no pop culture nonsense in either puzzle, either.
Tougher than usual NYT. I had the same doubts about BITTORRENTS, which I believe is a company name, not a general method.
I also didn’t like the clue for GENEPOOL, which is the totality of all genes and alleles for a given species, whereas your ‘family inheritance’ is the specific genome you acquire from your parents.
Tougher than usual for me, too, but a good workout – I liked it.
I think BIT TORRENT is/was a proprietary name, but also a protocol/standard. I’ve used it, but not for many years, so I may be mistaken.
I think you’re right about the formal meaning of GENE POOL, but I think the clue/answer works more colloquially.
It’s possible that “family” could be read as the taxonomic category.
Tough NYT. Looked up surgeon-general and Star Wars crawl, then pushed through northward. I think ‘torrents’ are pirated materials and agree with above comment about GENEPOOL.
Least enjoyable Saturday NYT in a long time. There’s a difference between challenging and impenetrable.
NYT: It started off challenging for me, but once I got on a roll, it was fine — about a minute faster than my Saturday average for the last two months and less than half my time for the Sam Ezersky NYT Saturday from a week ago.
I agree with David L’s comment on GENE POOL. I got the end of that answer first, put in GENE, took it out because it didn’t seem right, and then put it back in when the crosses dictated it.
Fun puzzle, though I don’t care enough about the Wallace Stevens poem that allegedly inspires David P. Williams’s puzzles to actually investigate it.
“Thirteen Ways of Looking at a Blackbird” is a justly famous poem.
I’m sure it deserves its reputation. But I haven’t read much poetry since my high school days 50 years ago.
I should read more poetry. And more novels. And fewer crossword blogs.
Off-topic: The video you posted for “Walking on a Wire” is almost enough to tempt me to do today’s Stumper. “Shoot Out the Lights” is a justly famous album (or would be if Richard Thompson was as famous as he deserves to be j.
Perhaps you can help me find a poem that was in an Erik Agard New Yorker puzzle some months ago (I think he was the constructor). It was a relatively recent poem in which a guy standing in front of a mirror reflects on how much better-looking he would be if, like his son, he had some sort of his wife’s genes.
I really liked the poem, but didn’t make a note of it and now can’t remember the poet’s name.
Also one his most accessible. Can’t recommend enough your checking it out. Hey, “I do not know which to prefer, The beauty of inflections Or the beauty of innuendoes” could come from a crossword fan.
stumper
“reciting the alphabet to figure out the crossing of 37d and 42a”……..me to, for the win :)
Me, too! So that makes at least three of us. While I’ve heard of Variety, I’ve never seen one, so had no idea that a “pix” could be a headliner.
+1
I think the PIX clue just means “word in a headline.”
You could be right, but I’m still not sure how it would appear in a Variety headline — since Variety usually covers Broadway and pictures are seldom involved. However, not a big issue.
Variety covers film, music, TV, etc. Pedro Almodóvar is on the front page of the website today.
This clue harks back to the clipped language of Variety headlines. Most famously, “Sticks Nix Hick Pix”:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sticks_Nix_Hick_Pix
Ah! As I mentioned, I’ve never seen one, so did not know that they covered films, etc. in addition to Broadway! Thanks! (I learned something today!)
NYT: I enjoyed the puzzle, but I found it a bit inelegant to have two Italian words and two French words that are not all that guessable if you don’t know those languages at all: ORA / DENTE and PERDU / SEL. (Maybe SEL is guessable, since it’s basically clued as “French for salt,” and salt and SEL are very similar. But the rest, as clued, are not really guessable IMO.) Completely legit to have each of them in there, especially on a Saturday, but four in one puzzle seems like a lot, especially because they are only with two different languages rather than more spread out. And the Italian answers were both downs, and came pretty close to each other, as did the French answers as both acrosses.
There’s also POCO (which made its way into musical terminology from Italian) and the soffritto reference. I wonder if the constructor is an Italophile!
I wouldn’t characterize this as “wrong,” but I don’t know if I would have phrased the clue for UPTAKES as “moments of comprehension, in an idiom.” To me, that makes it sound like the answer is plural in the idiom. I assume the idiom is “slow on the uptake,” but maybe it’s me who is slow on the uptake, and the idiom is something else!
(These are all real nitpicks. I really liked the puzzle. A thousand times better than Sam Ezersky’s puzzle last week IMO. Commenter Dan had a great observation on last week’s puzzle that it felt like the constructor was his opponent, which is not the way he usually feels. I definitely felt that way last week as well, like I was battling Sam Ezersky. Last week’s puzzle wasn’t much fun at all for me.)
On an unrelated note, the only reason I knew that IN N OUT had palm trees on their packaging is from watching the season opener of Only Murders in the Building just a few days ago. The gang goes to California and gets stuff from IN N OUT.
Al DENTE seems like a pretty well-known phrase to me.
I think you’ve got the right idiom for UPTAKES. That took me a bit to get.
I completely agree with your assessment of this one as compared to last Saturday’s NYT puzzle. This wasn’t nearly as difficult and was a lot more fun.
IN ‘N’ OUT Burger showed up in Austin a few years ago, and there was one six miles from my old house. Never ate there, though, and had to get that answer from a few crosses.
Stumper: Ugh! Agree with everything pannonica said. Plus, I have no idea why 13A “sweep” is “area”!! The center was the worst with the “pix” cited.
P.S. Just curious — is “pannonica” for Baroness Pannonica (I forget the last name) or the butterfly?
See sweep sense 3d here.
More the former than the latter.
Goodness, never thought of “a broad unbroken area or extent”!
Re: name — cool! Are you familiar with the tribute song by Thelonius Monk? https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LOhiKsoCsjc
I might be.
It’s a great song!
Quite a challenge for me—I’ve never seen “Goonies” and tech terms such as “dongle” and “bit torrents” are simply not within this English teacher’s ken. I finished with a couple of errors but appreciated the challenge.
That said, I’m bothered by the answer to 18A: LOAN TO. “LEND” is the verb, whereas LOAN is the noun that names what is given. This is a distinction I prefer to keep.
Another observation: 39A: “Word in two African country names.” Right off the bat, I came up with “SUDAN,” as in Sudan and South Sudan. Then I dismissed that because to me, “word” rules out a proper noun; thus, I went with SOUTH, as in South Sudan and South Africa. Eventually, I got to CONGO, but I’m not sure about the clue. I suspect my doubt is the product of the exclusion of proper nouns in Wordle and Spelling Bee.
There’s the Republic of the Congo as well as the much larger Democratic Republic of the Congo (formerly Zaire). Crosswords are cool with including proper nouns, so “word” (especially in a tricky Stumper) can point to a name as well.
Re Stumper: I think according to crossword puzzle conventions, the clue for 6D should have been “O’Neal’s 2016 co-inductee” since YAO is Yao Ming’s surname. It might be that the clue written that way would have been even more Stumper-y.
Yes, I agree. Perhaps the puzzle’s creator was unaware that Yao was his last name and/or that he followed the Asian naming tradition of last name first? (Seems like someone — the creator or editor — SHOULD have known).
No – simply the names fans used most often to refer to them.
Ah! Not being a fan, I wouldn’t know. :)
Yeow, the Stumper was hard! The NW, especially. If I hadn’t finally figured out the SCANDINOIR portmanteau, I would have given up.
Nice job, Matthew Sewell.
NYT: Took longer than probably any puzzle I’ve solved in the past year or two .. and at one point I cheated (with respect to my own personal rules) and looked something up (the musical word for somewhat).
But I don’t mind this at all (except for the period of dread that I might not finish it), since a hard puzzle makes the fun last longer.
(I initially had COAST for the word in the names of two African countries: (Gold Coast and Ivory Coast). But I wondered if they’d clue out-of-date country names without specifying that fact.)
stumper: new records for me!… ok so those records are longest time (at 1’43”) and most checks (over 30% of the grid), but hey records are records, right??
complete disaster for me, just when i thought i was getting the hang of hard crosswords
Crosswords are always a learning experience! All I need is some of the latest slang or very recent TV shows, stars, etc. and I’m stumped. :)
Universal –
Department of Picked Nits:
14 down, CNMOE, but the last two have an extra “n” sound between them.
+1 – Good catch, unless “Sea Anemone” could be “CNMNE”…
Better catch by Seattle DB. CNMNE works for me (both pronunciations of anemone seem OK to me, but yours fits the puzzle better). Kudos!
Yuck. Not impressed generally with the direction the NYT is going under Fagliano
I never did see a twist and turn in the WSJ after the revealer and have no idea what that might be. Maybe if I’d read the book. I’m curious, though.
I think pannonica is reacting to these mostly innocuous idioms reimagined as literal, conjuring the work of cruel vivisectionists. I must admit I did not dwell on visions of dogs being tortured by mad dentists or apian microsurgery, but my insensitivity is probably nothing to be proud of.
I do feel a bit of sadness for the Fiend’s own Jim Peredo, and would like to take this opportunity to tell him that I enjoyed his puzzle and was not the least bummed by the solve.
Thank you. I surfed just now for the island, and maybe it works a little more now.
Haha! Thanks, Martin. Dark humor isn’t everyone’s cup of tea, but the thought of Dr. Moreau frankensteining a creature with a horse’s ass and bee’s knees gave me a chuckle. If I had my druthers, this puzzle would’ve run closer to Halloween due to its gruesome aspect.