August Miller’s New York Times crossword—Amy’s recap
NY Times crossword solution, 10/19/24 – no. 1019
Markedly harder than usual, or just me having an off evening?
Favorite clue, in retrospect: 1a. [Lab evidence, perhaps], PAW PRINTS. Labrador retriever, not laboratory. Yes, it fooled me.
Fave fill: Hollywood’s PRE-CODE ERA, SWEETIE, PBS KIDS (programming block, not the block of a street), PEABODY Awards, GETAWAY CAR, PBS star RICK STEVES, “THAT’S NEAT,” BUS DRIVERS (mildly tricky clue, [They may open doors for you]), IPAD MINI, kid-lit’s ADA TWIST (hey, she’s useful for ADA clue variety when you’ve used Lovelace or the American Dental Association, or the Americans with Disabilities Act recently), MACBETH, PICTIONARY. Didn’t realize that about-face was also a verb so ABOUT-FACED surprised me.
I feel like there’s a wrong nuance, a misplaced focus, in the clue for CLASS ACTS. [Impressively respectful types] wants to have respectable instead of respectful, if you ask me. The class act doesn’t need to be overly deferential. Respect is accorded to them, not just from them.
Erica Hsiung Wojcik’s Los Angeles Times crossword — Stella’s write-up
Los Angeles Times 10/19/24 by Erica Hsiung Wojcik
Here’s a puzzle where being a STEM nerd could help you out…except when it doesn’t. High- and lowlights:
- 1A [Portmanteau for Disney World’s wintery mix] is SNOAP. This coinage was new and interesting to me.
- 26A [Key compound in a cell’s energy cycle: Abbr.] is ADP, short for adenosine diphosphate. I didn’t like this one because ATP (adenosine triphosphate) is equally plausible (and in fact, if you know the cell cycle I’d argue that it comes to mind ahead of ADP). I know I like difficult Saturdays, but this bit of ambiguity felt like it should have been resolved in the clue. (Or just clue ADP as the payroll company, which I bet more solvers are familiar with.)
- 29A [Product with a Frosted Chocolatey Chip Pancake variety] is a POP-TART. Erica, I believe you that these exist, I just don’t understand why they exist…
- 30A [Animal control?] is a cute clue for REIN.
- 41A [Treadmill-like playground structure] is a LOG ROLL. Do playgrounds in the U.S. have these nowadays? I’m asking. I suspect these are like SEESAWs in that few Americans younger than about 25 years old have actually been on one.
- 29A [Kingdom divisions] is PHYLA; that is, taxonomic kingdoms are divided into PHYLA (singular PHYLUM). STEM knowledge does help here.
- 47A [__ phase: post-ovulation stage] is LUTEAL; more STEM knowledge helpful.
This didn’t feel like a typical Friday or Saturday puzzle: No entry is longer than 9 letters, and there’s a lot in the 6-8 range. I was hoping for at least a couple firecracker clues or entries and this felt more like an even ride.
Kelly Clark and David Alfred Bywaters’ Wall Street Journal crossword, “Reductio Ad Absurdum” — pannonica’s write-up
WSJ • 10/19/24 • Sat • “Reductio Ad Absurdum” • Clark, Bywaters •solution • 20241019
It’s a phonetic theme, which is often a crapshoot due to regional variations in pronunciation or other factors.
- 68aR [What you find in eight of this puzzle’s answers … or what you do when you say them aloud?] UTTER NONSENSE. Nifty double entendre on ‘utter’. The nonsense concoctions of the theme answers are meant to sound like synonyms for inanity.
- 22a. [What to wear when Donald Duck’s nephew is trending?] FAD HUEY TEE (fatuity). Unfortunate that the least successful of these appears first in the grid. The D/T differential is significant, to my ears.
- 24a. [Showy bird that stoops to entertain the masses?] POP PEACOCK (poppycock).
- 49a. [Confused waterfowl?] LOON ASEA (lunacy).
- 51a. [Song to sing while slow-cooking dinner in a hole in the ground?] STEW PIT DITTY (stupidity).
- 86a. [Stampede of newly sheared sheep?] BALD HERD DASH (balderdash).
- 91a. [Hem?] GARB EDGE (garbage). I suspect this one might be divisive too, but it works well enough for me.
- 117a. [Lead in a film about the wonders of origami] FOLDER ROLE (folderol).
- 119a. [Hip-hop performance earning polite applause?] CLAPPED TRAP (claptrap). Trap is a subgenre of hip-hop.
I feel these are uneven and rather silly, but then again that’s kind of the point here. The title even says so. It’s a moderately ambitious theme that was worth exploring.
- 1d [Some jabs] LEFTS. 5a [Dukes] FISTS. Whoa, whoa, whoa! What a way to start.
- 4d [Spotted] BEHELD. 57a [Spotted] ESPIED.
- 13d [Coinage] SPECIE crossing 20a [Philatelist’s find] STAMP. Could’ve clued the former by invoking a numismatist.
- 16d [Icy street application] ROCK SALT, not ROAD SALT.
- 20d [Poet’s two-syllable foot] SPONDEE. Etymology (from m-w.com): “Middle English sponde, from Middle French or Latin; Middle French spondee, from Latin spondeum, from Greek spondeios, from spondeios of a libation, from spondē libation, from spendein to make a libation; from its use in music accompanying libations — more at spouse”. Quite the convoluted journey!
- 70d [Takes turns] TWIRLS. Nicely subtle clue.
- 84d [“The Other” author Thomas] TRYON. Unfamiliar to me, and not to be confused with a certain 17th century English author.
- 88d [Exchanges favors for votes, in Congress] LOGROLLS. Also unfamiliar to me.
- 77a [Rival of Paris] ROMEO. That’s Count Paris, in the Shakespeare play.
- 100a [Leaves home?] TREE. 126a [Egg setting] NEST.
- 107a [Bee keeper] APIARY. Maybe a question mark for this one?
- 109a [Performed a canticle, e.g.] INTONED.
Frank Longo’s Newsday crossword, Saturday Stumper — pannonica’s write-up
Newsday • 10/19/24 • Saturday Stumper • Longo • solution • 20241019
This week’s solve was a principally story of correcting answers I was relatively certain of (even if I preemptively didn’t like them and planned to badmouth them here!).
The grid filled this way: center, downward to lower left corner, most of lower right corner, about half of top right corner, roughly a quarter of the top left corner. Then: finishing up lower right corner, same for upper right, and finally powering through the upper left.
The most troublesome, hold-up entries:
- Lower right: 50a [Not chilling] TENSE, not TEPID.
- Upper right: 14d [Snap on a football field, perhaps] TEAM PHOTO, not TELEPHOTO. This is the one I was intending to be upset about.
- Upper left: 7d [Heads of des moines] ABBÉS, not TÊTES.
- And to a markedly lesser extent, lower left: 47a [Works with minimal weight] OPERETTAS, not OMELETTES (ha ha?).
Back to the final area, the northwest. Felt strongly that I was correct for both 9d [L-shaped key] HEX WRENCH and 8d [Anteater relative] SLOTH (they’re both Xenarthrans), but began to question the latter, thinking I was misled by having too much knowledge here. Once I considered abandoning TÊTES, I was able to see how 1a [Left-leaning member of the board?] BACKSLASH worked. From there it was child’s play to wrap things up. (Oh, that reminds me: I also for a time had ENROBE for 55a [Surround closely] ENLACE. And somehow I was confounded between -LACE and the crossing 49d [Trimming favored by Marie Antoinette] SABLE.)
Over in the southwest, 58a [Eldest of a literary trio] immediately had me thinking of the the Brontë sisters so I put in EMILY (who turns out to be younger than Charlotte). When that wasn’t working out, I recalibrated and ATHOS from the Three Musketeers became obvious. Also in this are, a very helpful entry that I got from just a crossing or two was 43a [Spanish fish dish] BACALAO.
- 18a [Metropolis on the Ganges] PATNA. I didn’t know this. Should I have? Probably.
- 27a [Inflation indication: Abbr.] PSI. Nothing to do with economics!
- 33a [Table-turning occasion] SÉANCE. really?
- 6d [Manicuring target] LAWN. I for sure was thinking about hands and the various anatomical parts of human nails. How come LAWNs are never pedicured anyway?
- 11d [Premier, e.g.] LEADER. Oh right, I had LEAGUE here for a hot minute.
12d [Pair on Namibia’s coat of arms] ANTELOPE. Specifically, gemsbok, a species of Oryx.- 28d [Shut off] ISOLATE. I was primed for this by APART at 2-down in today’s Wall Street Journal crossword.
- 31d [$50 bill depiction] US CAPITOL. The US— seemed okay, but GRANT was never going to fill up all those squares. TREASURY didn’t fit either, so I had to think a little harder.
- 34d [1930s Safety Director of Cleveland] ELIOT NESS. One of those mystery clues that required a few crossings before the familiar name became evident.
- 48d [Word that Christian Malaysians don’t use] ALLAH. Who’s to say?
- 61d [Prep for dragging] REV. Crossings, please!
NYT: My slowest NYT Saturday since the end of August. When I started, I failed to see the clue for PRE-CODE ERA (a gimme), so I moved over to the NE. The combo of MAPS, MACBETH and THANE made me think I would breeze through this. Such hubris! Despite having spent almost 30 years working for STATE REPS, I interpreted the “local” as “municipal” and had a hard time finishing the NE corner.
The SW corner was little better. I learned the term AAVE from a New Yorker puzzle about a year or more back. I plugged it in quickly, but took it out when the V seemed to make the crosses unworkable. Then I misinterpreted the “Indie” of 55A as “india.arie,” a singer whose music I don’t know and whose exact name I can never remember.
I know the difference between AUGUR and AUGeR, so it’s a mystery why I chose the wrong word. But that made it hard to see the cleverly clued URANIUM ORE.
I thought the URANIUM ORE clue was a bit too clever, in the Stumper style. Uranium ore is processed into yellowcake at a uranium mill. The yellowcake is converted into uranium hexafluoride at another facility, and then enriched by centrifuge, “reconverted” into uranium dioxide, pelletized and assembled into fuel rods. None of these steps happen in a nuclear power plant, which I presume the clue is alluding to. Fuel rods are the plant matter.
But I didn’t comment on it, because Saturday.
I had the same thought; the ore isn’t anywhere near the plant…
Anyway, a tricky (and slow) Saturday for me too.
Definitely veering into stumper territory. Tangential clues, wide-ranging trivia, and too many names.
To the aforementioned URANIUM ORE I’ll add the questionable verb ABOUT FACED and the Latinized-plural PLANETARIA, both usages I’ve never encountered IRL.
Chewed me up and spit me out! Even after I finished and had AcrossLite reveal my *eight* incorrect letters, it took a while.
ANDRA, AAVE, Indie CRED, ADA TWIST all new to me (I’m thinking I’ve probably run across AAVE in a puzzle before). “Blasts” and “boasts” before BEAUTS.
Agree with Amy on CLASS ACTS and with others here on URANIUM ORE.
Rough start to my weekend!
NYT: A good Saturday workout.
The NE felt easy, the SW felt impossible. Agree with Amy that the cluing of CLASS ACTS is off. It sounded like it was an ironic cluing for “obsequious”.
I clearly don’t have Indie CRED, since I just learned its meaning, and the abbreviation AAVE was new to me, but I’m glad to learn it.
So, to quote my seven yo grandson: Very educational!
Very tough NYT for me, and a DNF because I had BEASTS for ‘real wowers.’ That gave me the nonsensical URANISMORE, which was obviously wrong, but despite looking at all the crosses and running the alphabet in several places, I couldn’t come up with the correct answer. The clue for URANIUMORE is misleading to the point of being wrong, as others have said.
I also had BEASTS initially, but recovered.
WSJ: STALAGS? Really? Ugh. I quit right then and there.
Why is this clue/answer offensive? (Just curious.)
NYT: Yikes, one of the toughest (and longest) solves in recent memory.
By complete coincidence, I had just tackled the Joe Krozel Saturday, September 28, 2013 NYT puzzle earlier this morning, and had a similar experience to solving today’s puzzle.
Very tricky clues but 100% fair in every way.
Aha — African American Vernacular English … what was at one time called “ebonics”.
PS If you liked today’s puzzle (as I did), I highly recommend the one mentioned above by Joe Krozel.
That last line followed a sentence that disappeared mysteriously from my post (I had mentioned being completely unfamiliar with the answer AAVE).
NYT – agree with others. One of the toughest in a while. Definitely my slowest time. Trivia and difficult cluing. I don’t know if any single piece was a problem, but together, in one puzzle was too much.
amy: def more challenging than the latest offerings
Stumper — not too bad. The right side was the hardest for me. I don’t like “imagine” for deem” — “deem” seems more definitive than “imagine.” I’m also going to quibble about calling “bacalao” Spanish — I don’t think I’ve ever seen it on the menu of a Spanish restaurant. It’s Portuguese to me.
Bacalao is Spanish. Bacalhau is the Portuguese spelling.
True. But I’ve still never seen it on a Spanish restaurant’s menu.
I’ve had many bacalao tapas. It’s just the Spanish word for cod, and fresh cod is popular as well as dried cod in Spanish cuisine. Croquetas de bacalao, made with dried cod, is a very common dish at tapas bars. And rightfully so.
Obviously, you’ve eaten at different restaurants than I have.
NYT – I enjoyed it. Tough, but enough entry points for an uphill solve. BEASTS for me. Google Ngram Viewer strongly favors planetariums but it’s Saturday.
WSJ – I usually don’t like mid-grid revealers. Today, if the revealer had been at the bottom I wouldn’t have seen it. Turned an unenjoyable solve into fun
Disagree about CLASSACTS. Those kinds of folks never disrespect you.
agree with Amy re the clue for “CLASS ACTS” –
respectful really changed the cluing. should have been respectable.
Big difference!
LAT: The write-up didn’t mention the biggest blunder of all: EGO crossing EGOTRIPS. That one should have never made it past the editor.
Good catch! But the editors have been getting in the last few months and their errors are dropping.
LAT: I’ve never heard of LOG ROLLS playground equipment and the pictures on the internet confirm I’ve never seen one, so this was a nice learning experience for me today! Made more amusing by the fact that the WSJ also had LOGROLLS today with an entirely different meaning.
Also thanks to Franck for pointing out EGO crossing EGOTRIPS, that dupe was very noticeable to me.
+1
stumper: about 30′ with one square keeping me from a clean solve – i had misspelled arioso and i had never heard of bacalao anyway… otherwise i found it a very nice puzzle, with 11d, 12d, 58a, 64a, and particularly 34d being satisfying plonks – cleveland ftw for once!
WSJ: 84d [“The Other” author Thomas] TRYON — His novels were big in the 1970s and as I remember them, pretty good if you like creepy tales. I’d forgotten that he died of “stomach cancer” in 1991.
NYT: I think saying a CLASS ACT is “impressively respectful” is fine. One type of CLASS ACT is someone who responds to someone else with respect – say, giving a waitress who’s having a bad day a large tip, or overlooking somebody wearing the wrong clothes to a formal event so that the other person feels comfortable. Not every CLASS ACT is of this type, but I think it’s a legit Saturday clue.