Zhouqin Burnikel’s New York Times crossword—Amy’s recap
NY Times crossword solution, 10/4/24 – no. 1004
Is it me or is it editor Joel? Because I used to solve Friday NYTs in the neighborhood of 4 1/2 to 5 minutes, and there sure have been a lot of 7+-minute Friday solves for me this year. I love tough themelesses, but it helps to sync up expectations and reality. I wonder if the NYT’s data shows that fewer people are finishing Friday puzzles and that the average solving times are longer.
At any rate, I was pleased to see Zhouqin’s byline! Fave fill: PINOT NOIR, HIDEY-HOLE, ENIGMAS, LGBTQIA, GEN Y (aka Millennials), “INITIAL HERE,” HITS A SNAG, DREAM GIRL, BONUS ISSUES. And POORI, it’s delicious! And AESOP, I love their spendy hand soap.
New to me:
- 56d. [Liu regarded as China’s first supermodel], WEN. Here’s her Wiki. Her Instagram’s got 6 million followers.
- 15d. [So-called “explosion shot” from a sand trap], BLAST. I’m not up on my golf terminology but I think Zhouqin golfs? There’s also some baseball in the mix.
- 11d. [Long lunch?], ITALIAN HERO. The sandwiches aren’t called heros here. “Italian sub” sounds perfectly normal to me, though.
This week I watched the Netflix 6-episode show The Perfect Couple, and indeed, an HEIR is a [Common suspect in a murder mystery]. This story centered on a wealthy Nantucket family with plenty of heirs, and it’s a murder mystery. Entertaining show, and you can knock it out in 6 hours.
3.75 stars from me.
Frederick Lavoie’s Universal crossword, “Out of …”—Jim’s review
Theme answers are two-word phrases where each half can follow the title to make other phrases. There’s no revealer, but the first theme clue spells it out.
Universal crossword solution · “Out of …” · Frederick Lavoie · Fri., 10.4.24
- 16a. [*Turkey’s body in a kid’s art project, maybe (Theme hint: What can precede both words in each starred clue’s answer?)] HANDPRINT. Out of hand, out of print.
- 29a. [*Concern in a crowded stadium] SIGHTLINE. Out of sight, out of line. Too bad “sight mind” isn’t a phrase.
- 45a. [*What might go clockwise in board games] TURN ORDER. Out of turn, out of order. Interesting that both “out of” phrases can be synonymous.
- 60a. [*Home office, for some] WORKPLACE. Out of work, out of place.
Nice. I enjoy this type of theme as long as each of the bases phrases are legit, and in this case they are. Usually this type of theme has a revealer, and it would certainly need one if it was to run in the New York Times, for example, but here with the title and extra help in the first clue, I think it’s fine. This is also a debut, so congrats to our newest constructor!
Fill is solid though maybe not especially sparkly. Highlights include SIDECAR, AMNESIA, INKBLOT, and LARPS [Participates in an outdoor fantasy game, briefly]. (In case you didn’t know, that stands for live action role playing.) Otherwise, the fill was quite smooth and contributed to (for me) a speedy solve time.
Good puzzle. 3.75 stars.
Gary Larson and Amy Ensz’s Los Angeles Times crossword — pannonica’s write-up
LAT • 10/4/24 • Fri • Larson, Ensz • solution • 20241004
Today we’re just appending ERs to the ends of words/phrases, wackifying them.
- 17a. [Die-hard independent?] PARTY HATER (party hat).
- 28a. [Baked potato?] HOT TUB (hot tub). (6d Upscale bathroom installation] SPA.)
- 48a. [Diamond heist?] ICE CAPER (ice cap).
- 63a. [Problematic dental patient?] DRILL BITER (drill bit).
- 11d. [Gauge on an oil rig?] WELL METER (well-met).
- 35d. [Quality-control inspector at a knapsack factory?] PACK RATER (packrat).
The two across theme entries near the center are rather short, allowing for the pair of down themers. Despite the large amount of theme entries, the quality of the overall fill doesn’t suffer.
- 1d [Mid-Mar. figure] ST PAT. 32d [Grammy winner from Donegal] ENYA. 67a [Country whose name comes from a Gaelic goddess] EIRE.
- 4d [Blues guitarist Baker] ETTA. A different ETTA, not James nor Jones nor Place!
- 10d [Lose] SHAKE. 40d [Take in] TRICK. 69a [Shredded] TORE. For some reason I feel the need to collect these together.
- 38d [Amphoralike vessel] EWER. I guess so?
- 45d [Part of the upper deck?] ACE. Or lower deck, but mentioning that as well would ruin the clue.
- 41a [Facility that’s in a constant state of ferment] BREWERY. Pun on foment.
- 53a [Henry VI’s school] ETON. I suspect the reason 37a [Place atop] SET ON wasn’t clued as either early American Elizabeth Ann SETON or SETON Hall University is because it sounds a lot like ETON. On the other hand, the grid has both EWE (30a) and EWER (38d), so perhaps I’m reading too much into an arbitrary decision.
- 54a [Apollo vehicle, briefly] LEM. Lunar Excursion Module. Also happens to be the surname of influential science fiction author Stanislaw Lem. Coincidence?
Great to see a CC puzzle. Liked it a lot. I thought pretty easy for a Friday until the SE corner. Had GENY but because of the clue read it not as Gen Y but Genie. Am not one of WEN’s 6 million followers (shame on me) and spelled AU NATUREL with an A rather than an E. On balance quite a mess. Loved LQBTQIA crossing with the slightly quainter DREAMGIRL.
Fun Friday despite my mishaps.
Can you explain the clue to Gen y? I don’t understand the word demo here.
It means ‘demographic group’. Common among watchers of political polls.
I was puzzled by “Demo,” too, but got WEN ok from crossings. A nice Friday. But what’s CC in the comments?
CC is the constructor’s online nickname. It may be offline, too but I wouldn’t know that
Zhouqin sounds sort of like “Joe-cheen,” which became “CC.” It was her byline for a while until editors started insisting on no aliases or nicknames. Because journalistic integrity.
Uh, I’m pretty sure “CC” derives from her blog, Crossword Corner, where she dove into the crossword world.
Several readers asked about my name last time. “C.C.” is short for Chou Chin, the Cantonese spelling of Zhouqin (Mandarin). Shortly after I arrived in the United States, I found out that Zhouqin was hard for others to pronounce. I was also surprised to receive a green card with a misspelled name: an extra U after the Q. So I decided to just use C.C. instead.
Oh! That’s neat, Martin.
There was a period not long ago when Ms Burnikel was Zhouqin in the NYT and CC in other publications.
I notice recently that she’s now going by Zhouqin in the Los Angeles Times and possibly other places. I don’t know if that was her choice, though.
I haven’t found every Joel Friday to be more difficult, but rather less consistent. Sometimes too easy, sometimes normal, sometimes too hard. I imagine getting something like that dialed in takes a lot of practice and experience.
Gauging difficulty is probably very challenging when the puzzle is not ridiculously easy or crazy hard. It can be done by having a panel of ‘experts’ review the puzzle or having a sample that is representative of the target audience solve it. I seem to recall Matt Gaffney, a very skilled, very experienced constructor having difficulty with targeting Week 2 meta puzzles. If someone like him has problems, it’s a tough task.
I really enjoyed this NYT. It was challenging yet doable for me. That difficulty paired with Zhouqin’s smoothness made it my favorite Friday in a while.
I think it’s also just a fact of life that different segments of the audience are going to have different experiences of any given puzzle, especially with an audience as broad as the NYT has.
This puzzle is a good example: XWStats.com says that while the median solve time of all solvers was typical for a Friday, about 1/5 of all solvers had times that were at least 20% faster than their own usual Friday times, and another 1/5 had times that were 20% slower. A quick look through the recent data suggests that’s a pretty common occurrence. Anyone can find a given puzzle easier or harder on a given day. The “all solvers” median solve time is a better indicator of a puzzle’s innate difficulty.
I would have been firmly in the “much faster” camp today, had it not been for the time it took me to find my error at the AU NATUREL/WEN crossing, but I still came in slightly under my average time.
NYT: I fell for the WAN/WEN trap since my French is rather poor.
I think Joel is doing a fine job. I think early on his Saturdays were brutally rough, but lately difficulty seems right on par, at least for me.
I enjoyed “The Perfect Couple” too, but thought the final episode got needlessly complicated. Overall though, thumbs up.
Don’t remind me about those early Joel Saturdays! Perfectly fine puzzles, but way too hard for me.
I love a CC puzzle, and this was another great one! I also found this to be much harder than a typical Friday. My solving experience here (having very little on first pass, then having several missteps while circling around and around before getting to the end) was much more like a Saturday puzzle than a Friday one, as was my final time.
I forgot to mention I really like the “Once, for one” clue for NUMERO.
That was a tough spot for me because — wait for it — my Spanish doesn’t go all the way to eleven.
I fell for the A/E. Personally I don’t think crosswords should ever cross two foreign languages like Chinese and French but that’s just my opinion
Yeah, we don’t want to cry foul for non-English words or names in general, but crossing them drifts into Natick territory.
Nice NYT. Not too hard, a couple of misspellings slowed the end.
Martin, thank you so much for the post last night alerting us to the linked article about Will Shortz! I would have missed that article otherwise, so I really appreciate it! I’m including the link here in case people missed it yesterday: https://www.brainandlife.org/articles/crossword-editor-will-shortz-says
I’m very happy to hear that Will’s recovery is going in the right direction, although it sounds like a long road ahead. He’s very lucky that he was able to get to the phone in time, especially because that second stroke could have been very, very bad if he hadn’t already made that phone call and been in the hands of medical professionals when it happened. I appreciate Will’s sharing his story with us, and it’s a good reminder that, if something medical is happening and you’re by yourself, call someone sooner than later because you don’t know if it’s going to get worse.
Good article about Will. Glad to hear he is doing so well. Thanks for posting.
He is wrong about aspirin lowering your blood pressure. It is given to prevent clots and thin the blood. https://health.clevelandclinic.org/does-aspirin-lower-blood-pressure. So, hopefully he is taking other meds to lower his BP.
Enjoyed todays puzzle from CC!
I emailed Will about that aspirin quote. He’s good, no need to worry on that front.
NYT: Super fine Friday puzzle from Zhouquin Burnikel. The solve was a complete pleasure, even when I got stuck with the last few letters in the very tricky SE corner. But that didn’t last long.
Especially enjoyable were the very clever clues like “Cleared up after waiting, perhaps” for BUSED and “Things that might get broken at a raucous party” for NOISE LAWS.
Can anyone explain the “fee” theme in the Newsday (Stan’s Daily Crossword) puzzle?
Oh, never mind, I just saw it. TO-LL, PRI-CE, CO-ST.
There was a wild variation in my Friday times during the first few week’s of Joel’s editing but I’ve now stabilized around my regular times (9-11 mins), and it’s been quite consistent for me.
NYT was a very delightful Friday! A Burnikel puzzle never disappoints anyways but this was one of the funnest ones in recent memory for sure. Loved the entries and the cluing.
LAT: No theme or revealer led to a nonsensical puzzle. What’s the cleverness about appending “er” to the end of the long answers? This puzzle was not fun or funny.