Natan Last’s New York Times crossword—Amy’s recap
NY Times crossword solution, 10/5/24 – no. 1005
5:25? Yeah, I’d expect that more on a Friday than a Saturday. Is it me (and my avowed fondness for Natan’s New Yorker puzzles) or does this one feel easier than you’d have expected?
I got off to a surprisingly quick start on this puzzle by having learned 1a earlier today in a Sporcle quiz. Newcastle-under-LYME was listed as a possible wrong answer for Shakespeare’s birthplace. Possibly the name refers to being “under” the Forest of Lyme? Seems like it would be hard for a castle to be under a brook.
Fave fill: GOOD KARMA, SUBWAY ADS, DREAM DATE, TOUCH-TONE phones, BLOOD TEST (it’s a lifestyle here), LIP-READER (ditto), SKOSH, “YOU FOOL!”, MOB BOSS, BAYARD RUSTIN (you should know him if you don’t), SAME OLD STORY.
New to me: 8d. [Seventh and final “Chronicles of Narnia” book, with “The”], LAST BATTLE. Have probably seen this listed before, but the Narnia stuff never appealed to me so *shrug*.
Fave clue: 33d. [Epitome of completeness], DOTTED “I.” Needed so many crossing letters here!
David P. Williams’s Los Angeles Times crossword — Stella’s write-up
Los Angeles Times 10/5/24 by David P. Williams
Apologies for not posting reviews of the last two Saturday puzzles — I did write them, but they were lost in a technical glitch. Anyway, after a pair of way-too-easy puzzles on the 14th and 21st, Saturday the 28th we were back in business with a more difficult offering and that’s where we’re at with this one too. Notables:
- 1A [Street in London home to many medical offices] is HARLEY. Didn’t love this one, as it felt like a bit of a YEKIOYD for the 1-Across slot, especially since there are other ways in that wouldn’t require a fair bit of across-the-pond knowledge.
- Three single-word clues at 18A, 19A, and 20A injected an extra bit of difficulty.
- 38A [A in Kindergarten] is EINE, with the capital K being your only clue that the source of the word “Kindergarten” in German (all nouns are capitalized in German) is meant here.
- 40A [Adidas rival] could easily lead one to NIKE or AVIA before you get to the correct FILA.
- 3D [Sandals, e.g.] refers not to shoes but to the RESORT chain.
- 4D [Mass medium] is LATIN, as in the language in which traditional Catholic masses are held. Loved this clue!
- 10D Wasn’t crazy about the plural GENTIANS, although I did like the evocative cluing with respect to Angostura bitters and Aperol.
- 21D [Do some sole searching] is a cute clue for PLAY FOOTSIE.
- 29D Loved the clue [Moon unit] for PHASE.
- 32D Likewise [Hair of the dog] is lovely for WHISKER, leading you down a path of idiomatic non-literality when in fact it’s a literal definition.
- 47D Didn’t even notice this clue while solving, but [Father figurer] is a very clever way to clue DNA.
Gary Larson’s Wall Street Journal crossword, “Gee Whiz!” — pannonica’s write-up
WSJ • 10/5/24 • Sat • “Gee Whiz!” • Larson • solution • 20241005
This week we’re simply prefixing a G to familiar words and phrases—adjusting spelling as necessary—to wackify them.
- 23a. [Serial dater, of a sort?] GUY DROPPER (eyedropper).
- 64a. [Kitchen spill?] GALLEY OOPS (alley-oops).
- 66a. [Cabinet for displaying lightning bugs?] GLOWER CASE (lower case).
- 107a. [Friars Club event honoring a curmudgeon?] GRUMP ROAST (rump roast).
- 10d. [Hymn?] GOD NUMBER (odd number).
- 16d. [Antithesis of an easy A?] GRUELING CLASS (ruling class). Some diphthong necessary.
- 55d. [Like the calf idol in Exodus?] GOLD-FASHIONED (old-fashioned).
- 75d. [Sole means of communication by the “Guardians of the Galaxy” tree creature?] GROOT WORD (root word).
Some of these are mildly amusing, okay.
- 10a [Oodles] GOBS. Neither TONS nor LOTS.
- 22a [When some rights are denied?] ON RED. My favorite clue of the crossword.
- 62a [Parsley family herb] CHERVIL. Looks good in a grid.
- 82a [Spoke like Sylvester] LISPED. 66d [Mexican mousers] GATOS.
- 90a [Vodka brand] SKÖL, not SKYY.
- 112a [Tiny amount] MITE, not MOTE.
- 115a [Drink] OCEAN. Clue would have been easier had it included the definite article.
- 17d [Tape, say] MEND. Little tricky.
- 31d [Passed-down stories] ORAL LORE. My biggest mis-fill, as this for sure seemed like FOLKLORE. ORAL LORE just seems … off.
- 42d [They might be checked at the door] EGOS. 46d {they might be checked at the door] COATS.
- 50d [Jacket parts] FLAPS. As in book jackets.
- 54d [“Sweet as apple cider” girl] IDA. It’s a rhyme, or close enough.
- 62d [Ready to submit to the puzzle editor, say] CLUED. A little inside baseball.
- 101d [Blow up] RAGE. I think this works as either nouns or verbs?
S.N.’s Newsday crossword, Saturday Stumper — pannonica’s write-up
Newsday • 10/5/24 • Saturday Stumper • S.N., Newman • solution • 20241005
Going to keep this very brief, as it’s already mid-afternoon. This is untimed because I inadvertently paused the timer and didn’t realize it until I was nearly done with the beast. I can reliably report that it was probably near the upper end of my Stumper solve times.
- Palindromes as the first and last across entries: 1a [Rulers from either end] SHAHS. 61a [Holds from either end] STETS. Once you get one of them, you’re inclined to see through the wordplay for the other.
- 17a [Temperature extremes] ANNUAL RANGE. Blah.
- 18a [Something stored by SpaceX] LOX, liquid oxygen.
- 25a [Great start] HARD-G. Despite potentially being primed by today’s WSJ, this clue fooled me.
- 30a [By way of] À LA, not VIA.
- 38a [Potable Poe wrote about] SHERRY, not BRANDY.
- 45a [Order to move] ASAP. 1d [A kin to 45-Across] STAT. Not SCAT and SHOO, as I’d tried for some time.
- 48a [Tossed, in two ways] THREW OUT. 53d [Brings up] SAYS.
- 57a [Endure, as Fleming’s diamonds] ARE. Is this simply a reference to the Bond title Diamonds are Forever? Wow.
- 2d [A question of comprehension] HUNH. A variant of huh that I sometimes use, but did not expect in a crossword.
- 11d [Where HP began (and still is)] PALO ALTO, CA. Tricky in grid.
- 37d [Superman: The Movie screenplay writer] PUZO. Is that why Brando was cast in it?
- 44d [Manufactured mouse manipulator] PET CAT. Hunh? Manufactured mice, as in cat toys? Seems far afield.
Okay, that’s all!
NYT: I found this easier than Friday’s NYT, possibly because this time, DREAM DATE was 100% correct instead of a bit better than half right. Things that I didn’t know, like the “Narnia” title and MARSEILLE, were easy to get with a few crosses.
It’s interesting to see that the debut entries include such familiar phrases as GOOD KARMA and TOUCH-TONE. Those, plus clever clues like the one for SUBWAY ADS, show that puzzles don’t have to be the SAME OLD STORY.
Same here; easier than yesterday’s puzzle. I tried to misspell VERSAILLES before realizing it was MARSEILLE; didn’t know plus ULTRA at first, but should’ve gotten it. SUBWAY ADS was a little tricky as I was looking at “pitch” to relate to sound instead.
Good Saturday; pretty enjoyable. And my 999th NYT puzzle… tomorrow will be a fun little milestone :-)
I’ve no doubt that you’ll get into triple digits tomorrow.
I hope it’s a memorable puzzle in and of itself. I’ve been underwhelmed by most Sunday NYT puzzles for the last few years, Most are just OK, but every few months, there’s a really good one.
Agreed that the NYT wasn’t hard, especially for a Saturday and for Last. It did get harder for me on the left, and I had trouble in the SW with SKOSH / BIALIK / MONSTRO and in the whole NW, especially LGS, which I still don’t understand, and LYME, which I didn’t know. (EDWINA was guessable.) I ended up with the meaningless GYME / GGS, having started with GE applicances and then A/C.
LG Electronics is a Korean company and one of the largest home appliance makers in the world. Second or third largest market share in the U.S., after Samsung and maybe GE (depending on how you measure market share).
They started as Goldstar Electronics, named for the planet Venus (which is still visible in their logo). They merged with Lak-Hui (pronounced “Lucky” in English) Chemical and became Lucky Goldstar Electronics. They finally simplified the name to LG Electronics.
Thanks. Of course, based on crosswordese I was hoping for Amana. My oven is Premier. I replaced it just this summer.
NYT felt quite hard but finished it in a Friday time. Maybe because the longer entries were often guessable. Good puzzle.
NYT: This was a difficult puzzle solely because of the NW and SE corners. Was I supposed to know EDWINA Mountbatten from something? Newcastle-under-LYME is completely new to me. I’ve never heard of Mercedes SOSA, and the clue for SUBWAYADS is Stumperish in how vague it is.
Not saying it’s a bad puzzle, but the confluence of “who?” moments made for a difficult solve.
Agree
Someone here mentioned XWStats.com as a site where all your NYT crossword statistics can be gathered and displayed— and it works! But… getting the login token from the NYT site so that XWstats can access the NYT data was, for me, a rather complicated process. That said, it -does- work.
I’ve had an account with xwstats.com for a few years now. Yes, it’s a hassle to get the token from the NYT site and give it to xwstats. But I really like getting a sense how my solving times compare to other people’s.
There seem to be a few glitches with their data. I think they have my slowest Monday puzzle at over an hour, which doesn’t seem possible to me. I can’t get data by constructor for certain constructors for whom I know I have at least three solved puzzles. And it would be nice to be able to quickly navigate to any puzzle in their database.
But despite its flaws, I love poking around there.
I have occasionally found those timing errors, too, but in my case I’m pretty sure the errors were in the original NYT data set rather than in xwstats.com’s process. Sometimes it happens because I have wandered away from a puzzle without turning the timer off. But at least as often it’s a software glitch that starts the timer running again after I’ve completed the puzzle.
When I have caught this happening and mentioned it to the NYTXW support team, they’ve corrected the data, and also advised me that such errors would happen less often if I used the NYT app, or a different browser. I don’t want to do that, so I just try to keep an eye out for possible problems in time to get them fixed.
But I agree that it’s interesting to compare my own stats to the so-called “global” stats. Today, for instance, (as of this writing) about 2/3 of users solved faster than average vs. 1/3 who solved slower. I was in the “much faster” camp today.
NYT was easier than I expected for a Natan Last puzzle (it helped that 1A was a gimme), but I can’t say I liked it, for all the usual reasons, which I won’t bother enumerating here. SAMEOLDSTORY.
Same, except that 1A was not a gimme for me. One of my faster Saturdays, in fact. Felt much harder than it really was, probably because I do not find the deep trivia and impenetrably vague clues enjoyable.
i am with you Amy—way easier than a typical Saturday for me but a fun puzzle nonetheless
Stumper: I finished, after a struggle, except that I ended up with an nonsensical answer at 43A — but all the crosses seem to correct.
It should be SPARS for “mixes it up”, as in fighting.
My confusion is 18A, why LOX is “something stored by SpaceX”.
Many (all?) SpaceX rocket engines use liquid oxygen as an oxidizer. It is often called LOX.
Learn sumpin new every day…And here I thought they might be carrying bagels and a little schmear, too.
Oh, thanks, and duh! I put the wrong letter where the S should be…
I’m dismayed by 49-Down, four letters, “They’re ‘made to make debt,’ per Pound.” Ezra Pound did say this about wars, at least three times, in his wartime radio speeches from fascist Italy. You can see all three instances at the Internet Archive, including one which is blatantly anti-Semitic:
https://archive.org/details/EzraPoundSpeaking-RadioSpeechesOfWorldWarIi/page/n141/mode/2up?q=%22wars+are+made+to+make+debt%22&view=theater
Given Pound’s anti-Semitism and general crackpottery, I’d have found another way — almost any other way — to clue the answer. I think this clue illustrates the problem of taking something from a list of quotations without looking at a statement in context.
Which puzzle are you referring to?
Oh, sorry: the Saturday Stumper.
stumper: not clean, but at just around 30′ i’ll take it… i got tripped up in the ne corner – i had a bunch of incorrect stabs, and i figured i wouldn’t know the rasta garb… if i had a bit more patience like i did with the rest of the grid, maybe i might have
– grokked the gimmick at 1a/61a right away, though it took me a bit to come up with the right words… i wasn’t so impressed
– happy to plonk 26d/38a – i can’t say i’m familiar with amontillado, but i wouldn’t refuse a glass, especially after this puzzle
– i’ve never had a spring roll with 14a… i guess im not so cultured
WSJ 54d Ida Sweet as Apple Cider is a song from 1939 sung by Bing Crosby.
Thanks for eyedropper, I didn’t get what UY was until I said it out loud. Guy, lose the G for “I” sound.