Frank Longo’s Fireball crossword, “Vwllss Crsswrd 13″—Amy’s recap
Fireball crossword solution, 9/26/24 – “Vwllss Crsswrd 13”
It’s Amy subbing for Jenni.
Ah! I always enjoy a good vowelless crossword, and Frank Longo may well be the best in the business at making these. I opted for the harder version, with no multi-word tags or enumerations.
There isn’t a whole to discuss in these, since the clues are pretty straightforward and Peter Gordon includes the answers with the puzzle email. A ton of the expanded answers are terrific, though. PUFFER JACKETS, FUZZBALL, EQUAL FOOTING, MINNESOTA TWINS, CHELSEA CLINTON, INQUISITIVE MIND, TATTOO ARTISTS, FATHER FIGURE, LEFT OUT IN THE COLD, RUMPLING—these would all be welcome in a regular crossword grid. A themeless or a Sunday-size, something that could accommodate the longer phrases.
Thanks for the mndbndng treat, Frank and Peter!
Karen Steinberg’s Wall Street Journal crossword, “Interplay”—Jim’s review
Theme answers are familiar phrases that hide a game title and the clues ignore the letters in said titles. The revealer is GAMIFICATION (55a, [What’s caused a mismatch between the starred clues and their answers]).
Wall St Journal crossword solution · “Interplay” · Karen Steinberg · Thu., 9.26.24
- 20a. [*Distributed appropriately]
PROLIFERATED. Pro-rated. - 30a. [*Social stratum]
CASSETTE. Caste. - 38a. [*Stake]
BRISKET. Bet. - 40a. [*Airstream occupant, in brief]
RUN OVER. RVer. - 46a. [*Depressing person, slangily]
DOG OWNER. Downer.
I enjoyed this. I struggled at first, as one should with a tricky theme. I spotted the hidden words in the first two entries but didn’t see the game angle until the third one. I’m not so keen on a term like “RVer” being part of the theme, but there’s almost nothing else that could be done with UNO (I looked).
My solve proceeded fairly smoothly (for a Thursday) in the top half, but things slowed down quite a bit at the bottom, despite grokking the theme. That SE corner messed me up when I put in AMPED [Keyed up] at 54d and TOLD [Ordered] at 69a. This made it impossible to get the revealer. It didn’t help that I had NUEVo España instead of NUEVA and next to nothing for the stacked proper names at 62a and 65a (OZUNA and POSEY). Eventually I deleted AMPED and got back on track.
Note that the revealer is 12 letters long which causes all the theme entries (six of them!) to be scrunched together in the nine central rows. Despite this, the fill is mostly smooth, some proper names notwithstanding. NEEDLE NOSE and “IT’S NOT GOOD” were fun to uncover, as were the symmetrically paired entries ATTRACT and “I REFUSE.”
Clues of note:
- 33a. [Pump up]. ADD TO. Hmm. Not quite synonymous in my mind. I suppose it’s technically okay, but I don’t have to like it.
- 67a. [Like many U.S. senators]. AGED. And presidential candidates, too?
- 33d. [Uriah Heep claimed his was “‘umble”]. ABODE. I was misled into thinking the answer would start with a silent H. Anyone else?
Four stars.
Jesse Guzman’s New York Times crossword — Zachary David Levy’s write-up
Difficulty: Average (11m10s)
Jesse Guzman’s New York Times crossword, 9/26/24, 0926
Today’s theme: DOUBLE / REVERSE (With 63-Across, tricky football play … as represented by this puzzle’s shaded squares?)
- CRUELLA (Cure all)
- GLOATS (Go last)
- SET POINT (Step on it)
- TARNATION (Tarantino)
- LAS VEGAS (Salvages)
Very unique architecture. Long theme entries on the margin are tricky, forcing you to stack at least two more lines of fill (of equal length!) before you get any black square reprieve. And a stagger-stack of three more theme entries in the center of the grid to boot.
Cracking: LEVY, perfection
Slacking: Bell jar, sure; BELL LAP, surely not
Sidetracking: Maya ANGELOU for Froot Loops!, the greatest thing SNL ever did that got exactly zero laughs, so funny that it transcends the guffaw
Sam Cordes’ USA Today Crossword, “Showerheads” — Emily’s write-up
Be sure to grab a towel for this one!
USA Today, September 26, 2024, “Showerheads” by Sam Cordes
Theme: each themer begins with a word that can prepend “showers” to make a new phrase
Themers:
- 20a. [Banknotes and coins, idiomatically], COLDHARDCASH
- 36a. [Crustaceans native to frigid northern oceans], SNOWCRABS
- 54a. [Chili’s meal with an iconic jingle], BABYBACKRIBS
A fun themer set today with COLDHARDCASH, SNOWCRABS, BABYBACKRIBS. Each filled easily, especilly the third which was hard not to get the jingle stuck in my head. With the theme, we get: COLD SHOWER, SNOW SHOWER, and BABY SHOWER. Funny enough, the –Y– in the third themer crosses with YMCA which is also another easy ear worm.
Favorite fill: LEGOSETS, DRAGONS, NOUGAT, ASANA, and TOEBEAN
Stumpers: CONGEST (needed crossings), IMTOAST (also needed crossings), and IDA (new to me)
Smooth solve and flow for me today. Cluing seemed easier and clicked for me today, which is always enjoyable. Lots of great entries and lengthy bonus fill as well!
4.5 stars
~Emily
Amie Walker & Wendy L. Brandes’ LA Times crossword – Gareth’s summary
LA Times
240926
A slightly off-beat trick theme is provided by Amie Walker & Wendy L. Brandes. The revealer is VANILLA/EXTRACT. And the seven letters of VANILLA are spelt out in circles. These letters are ignored by the across clues, but not the down ones. The squares are still double checked due to VANILLA.
Gareth
NYT: I’m in a slightly introspective mood, so this may not be the run of the mill puzzle reaction. That was pretty darn tough for me, especially being hung up on the NW quarter for a disproportionate amount of time. I mean, very disproportionate.
But a very fine puzzle, with a theme that was up my alley: anagrams. (Started doing them in college and never really stopped.) And a clever use of anagrams that I’m not sure has been done before. In any case it felt very fresh. Combined with some more-difficult-than-average clues, it made for a longer-than-average solve time, and so the fun was both enhanced and prolonged. (Thought of panacea early on and even after that was impossible, could not see its synonym until after completing the solve and seeing the letters of Ms. De Ville’s name. Which reminds me: I love that melody, “Cruella de Ville” from 101 Dalmatians, the Disney flick I saw when it came out in my early teens. (As for formatting, I just found out the only place I’ve ever seen that film title fullly spelled out (instead of using “101”) is Wikipedia.))
I’m quite bad at anagrams… perhaps I should practice them more. Anyway, I got very lucky and saw the trick almost immediately, though I wasn’t sure if the three letter grays were reversed, or just mixed, until I got to the very bottom revealer. Ended up being a fast puzzle, finishing in half my average time. Really nice theme; it’s just difficult to see the gray squares in the app when filling in the entry; for some, I had to move to a different entry to see it clearly.
They’re fun, I think, no matter what your level may be. I remember the thrill at discovering the pairs GNASH-HANGS, or POSTAGE -GESTAPO, or AQUILINE-QUINIELA, or DELUSIONAL-ANDOUILLES.
Bell lap works for me. Not sure why you consider it slacking? I hear the term used in track and field all the time
I agree, this is a commonly used term in track events, common enough that it is used metaphorically in the same way “home stretch” is. I don’t get the objection.
I never heard it before, but I’m happy to learn something new (humblebragging/virtue-signalling).
I haven’t been to a track meet in many years, but at one time, they actually rang a bell when the lead runners were starting on the final lap of a multiple-lap race – to let the runners know they were starting on the last leg of the race.
NYT: I agree on the difficult NW. I had to look up Kruger’s name to get that corner done. I always complain about sports references in crosswords: I never heard of DOUBLE REVERSE or BELL LAP (or Lon Kruger).
I don’t get 25a [Something found near a trap.] How is that LAT? Could someone please explain?
Referring to back muscles. Trapezius (TRAP) and latissimus dorsi (LAT)
“Trap” is gym rat shorthand for the trapezius muscle, and “lat” is short for the latissimus muscle, and they’re both back muscles.
Thanks, stmv and PJ.
TRAP for trapezius (and BELL LAP) was new to me, too. Lat I know. I’ve always been poor at building that muscle.
As usual, shading didn’t come out visible in my print from pdf. I figured, also as usual, that, whatever, I’d just worry about it after I was otherwise done, maybe coming here to see how the theme played out. But no. I was so stuck, so I opened another copy to see which squares were shaded and got it instantly. Liked it. (I wouldn’t call it an anagram theme.) I don’t know the football term, but of course you don’t need to know.
Thursday is off t a good start. I always enjoy FB’s vowelless puzzles. I didn’t pay attention when I opened the puzzle and didn’t realize it was vowelless. I was baffled thinking it was some sort of variable rebus something or other that I would never be able to solve. Finally realized what was going on and worked through the puzzle. The straightforward cluing Amy notes makes solving easier. Or even possible for me.
I really liked the NYT. Very clever theme. I didn’t pick it up right away and the first couple of themers had to come from crossings. I decided GLOATS must have some last laugh meaning that made final turn work. My inability to make the crossing of SALVAGE and DISS work and then seeing the revealers did the trick. My favorite Thursday in a good while.
Amazing NYTs’s puzzle. Not fun for me, but hats off.
I thought it was very clever, especially for a debut constructor. Doing the double reverses in my head and keeping them straight was a challenge. His Wordplay comments made it sound like he has already had a Friday and a Saturday puzzle accepted, though, so he may just be a newbie to the NYT but not to the constructing world.
Diary of a Crossword Fiend helpfully indexes all the puzzles by a constructor who has had a puzzle that they’ve reviewed.
The only puzzle by Jesse Guzman with a Fiend review is today’s NYT. But maybe he’s been published in a publication that isn’t reviewed here.
NYT: I thought this was an excellent puzzle! Kudos to the instructor.
PECs and LATs I’ve heard of but never TRAPs. I’ll file that away.
I too had trouble in NW. Finally got CRAZIES and the rest fell.
Same with the NW. For 1A, I was thinking of aspirin or panacea before I hit on the right answer.
NYT: a good debut puzzle, but definitely on the easy side for a Thursday.
NYT: Loved it. I tumbled to the trick in the NW and had such a fun time with the rest!
And good to see Hoda* KOTB in the puzzle on the day she announced she will be stepping down from the Today Show GIG. What will puzzle constructors do?
* PS- In Arabic Hoda is exactly the same word as Huda. The difference in vowels reflects the slightly different accent in Egypt (where Hoda) from and the rest of the Arabic-speaking world.
wsj, i agree with your assessment, thought this was a very good puzzle
wondered why the ratings were so low, was it the difficulty?
that is why i enjoyed it
southeast got me after i was sure amped was right
It took me a bit to make sense of the WSJ theme. Throw in a few baseball players who I’d never heard of and I was a little slower than I might have expected. (I don’t often do the Thursday WSJ, so I don’t really have an average time for comparisons.)
But I thought it was a fun puzzle.
Why are the ratings low? Because that’s the norm here. I don’t know what people who give one or two stars want from a crossword puzzle.
In my case it’s more a matter of what I don’t want from a puzzle. I don’t much like the oddball Thursday puzzles, especially ones with circled boxes and weird solving requirements. like reversing entries across black squares, or whatever it is that’s required for this puzzle. I managed to solve it without ever understanding the theme. That extra stuff is merely a distraction for me.
I’m sure you understand, Eric, other solvers will not always agree with your assessment. It’s not easy to please everyone.
If I do rate a puzzle, I judge it entirely on my enjoyment in its solving.
Thanks. I don’t expect everyone to like the puzzles I like anymore than I expect them to like the moves or music I like.
It’s just depressing to me to see how many people give puzzles one or two stars. If I felt most puzzles were that bad, I’d find another pastime.
For what it’s worth, the puzzle just didn’t speak to me because I’m not a gamer. I recognized a couple of the games from when I was 8 years old, but nothing rang true with me, and SET is too recent for my childhood game years. I also didn’t know the RV and tried to make sense of the only container (as cryptics put it), with ROVER surrounding, well, never mind.
The revealer was itself, I assumed (wrongly), a constructor’s nonce word to tie into the theme, which didn’t make it any more fun. I kept looking to find a place for a “real word,” perhaps “purification.” And no, I didn’t know OZUNA. So let’s jsut say that the puzzle wasn’t made for the likes of me.
BTW, it’s false that ratings are mostly negative, although they do favor the NYT. But it very much is true that the hardcore that posts comments here is invariably positive and finds the crossings always fair. They know the cultural reference points, so why don’t I?
WSJ: It’s good to see Karen Steinberg’s name on a puzzle again, and I hope her family is doing well.
WSJ: Crossing IZOD with OZUNA is pretty unfair, and it obstructs the theme reveal. Clueing RVER as “Airstream occupant” is tricky enough, and making it into theme entry is… ugh.
NYT: Thankfully the SE is easy enough. Everything fell into place once I got REVERSE.