Alex Murphy’s New York Times crossword—Amy’s recap
NY Times crossword solution, 10/25/24 – no. 1025
Hey! A Friday NYT that strikes me as having the modest difficulty level I’ve long expected from Friday NYTs. And it’s got lots of fun entries in the grid, to boot.
Fave fill: The 1a/1d combo of flavorful ROBUST and RIBALD, MASTER CLASS, CONE OF SHAME, BRAIN FREEZE, Lily TOMLIN, GRANITE, SEX TOY, BRO CODE, BESTIE, a rating of TEN OUT OF TEN, etymological FALSE FRIEND ([Misleading cognate, like the German “Gift” which actually means “poison”]), OVERSELLING, DRAMEDY (I deplore Wikipedia’s eschewal of this descriptor!), and “OH, PLEASE.”
I cast a jaundiced eye at TUNA OIL. Apparently this [Canned liquid rich in essential fatty acids] is sold as a dietary supplement?
Messed with my head: 52a. [Another name for C##], which I misinterpreted as the programming language C++, and the answer was starting with DNA … but no, it’s musical terminology, D NATURAL. (See also: 16a. [Cello parts are written in it], BASS CLEF.) One of my least favorite categories of fill! Your mileage may vary wildly.
Four stars from me.
Hoang-Kim Vu’s Universal crossword, “Sound Check”—Jim’s review
Sight rhymes (or eye rhymes) are on order today. Each theme answer is a made-up phrase consisting of three words that look like they should rhyme, but don’t.
Universal crossword solution · “Sound Check” · Hoang-Kim Vu · Fri., 10.25.24
- 17a. [*Danger of an extremely hot day?] GREAT HEAT THREAT
- 24d. [*”Which person gave you that gift, Mr. Hanks?”] “FROM WHOM TOM?”
- 26d. [*Result of a slow day at the pet store?] ONE BONE GONE
- 32d. [*Question for a hitting coach?] “SWAT AT WHAT?”
The phrases are a little tortured, but I found this kind of cute. The first one felt the most natural to me so I liked that one best, but the bone one is pretty good too. Nice theme.
Impressive stacks down the middle of the grid, too. We have POWER SEATS and UNSANITARY sandwiching a theme answer, plus CHEW TOY as a crossing entry. Very nice. Other goodies: TRICKSY, HIDEOUT, and “NO FAIR!”. Did not know sculptor Ruth ASAWA, but that was about the only hangup I had.
Clues of note:
- 1a. [Org. concerned with NIL policies for student athletes]. NCAA. NIL is in the clue mainly to indicate that the answer is an initialism, but I looked it up and it stands for Name, Image, and Likeness.
- 35a. [Surprised, slangily]. SHOOK. I like this modern usage.
- 60a. [Knot again?]. RETIE. Cute way to redeem a blah entry.
3.5 stars.
Patti Varol’s Los Angeles Times crossword — pannonica’s write-up
LAT • 10/25/24 • Fri • Varol • solution • 20241025
It’s a ‘before and after’ type theme, with the first parts the names of musical instruments.
- 16a. [Publications dedicated to the history of a jazz instrument?] SAXOPHONE BOOKS (saxophone, phone books).
- 22a. [Particles from a percussion instrument that may start a sneezing fit?] COWBELL PEPPER (cowbell, bell pepper).
- 34a. [Windfall from the sale of wind instruments?] CLARINET PROFITS (clarinet, net profits).
- 48a. [Fantasies about being the best player of a Scottish instrument?] BAGPIPE DREAMS (bagpipe, pipe dreams).
- 54a. [Endeavor to improve a brass instrument?] TRUMPET PROJECT (trumpet, pet project). Originally I went down the wrong path with TROMBONE.
Note that the second parts, in their combined form, are not referenced in the clues. It’s just the wacky surface meaning.
- 2d [Tower of note] AAA. Some homonymic misdirection, but not too tricky because, e.g., PISA and BABEL are too long.
- 7d [Creation by a locks smith?] CANAL. Definitely assumed this would be about hair styling.
- 18d [Not against entertaining] OPEN TO. As an idea or notion.
- 26d [Jazz home, initially] SLC. The “initially” removed any ambiguity as to what the answer would be.
- 33d [Violinist Zimbalist] EFREM. Some old-school crosswordese, as is 62a [Hockey Hall of Famer Willie] O’REE.
- 49d [“Into the Water” novelist Hawkins] PAULA. Her first novel, probably more well known, is The Girl on the Train.
- 56d [Indoor rower, for short] ERG. I’ve finally internalized this information.
- 59d [Local source of produce: Abbr.] CSA, community-supported agriculture.
- 1a [Exhaust] EAT UP. 51d [Get ready to eat] RIPEN.
- 52a [Thorny shrub] BRIAR. Needed to hunt this up to finish the crossword correctly; I’d had BRIER (PEULA at 49-down was obviously incorrect).
Some pockets of the grid were a little tough, but there were enough easy-mode clues to pull everything together.
Nipples! Breasts! Sex Toys! Raunchy NYT today.
The SW corner was toughest for me. BROCODE and CREPEMIX (like pancake mix, only more lah-di-dah, I guess) took me a while to figure out. C## was a mystery to me too, though I made sense of it eventually. Solid Friday puzzle overall.
The NW and SE corners were fast for me (BASS CLEF and D NATURAL helped a lot), and that SW corner was the last. After SEX TOY it all worked out pretty well. I also blanched at TUNA OIL. Quite the RIBALD NYT…
BRO CODE came surprisingly easily, but SEX TOY was a major hesitation given the clue.
TUNA OIL! Had to swallow cod liver oil as a kid. Torture! And I have no clue how that was a thing in Syria in the middle of the 20th century!?
SW and NE were both tough for me.
Up top, I was taken in by the trickiness in the clues for BREAST and NIPPLE. Wanted “nonsense” before OH PLEASE! and while I came up with the right California governor, the only nickname that came to mind was The Governator.
Then in the SW, “to date” before AS IT IS, was pretty sure it was BRO-something, but I’ve never watched the show, and CREPE pan before CREPE MIX (though I was wondering why a crepe pan would be a “shortcut”). I was suspicious about the meaning of “congress” in the clue for 56-A (especially with no capital “C”). But even after figuring out CREPE MIX, I still tried to come up with “tax – something” instead of SEX TOY.
Overall, I’m with Amy – a “just right” Friday challenge with a lot of fun fill.
“Nipples! Breasts! …raunchy…”
Really David? I find them to be quite lovely.
NYT: Semi-tough for me. Feeling stuck at the end, I looked up the Mozart opera, which did the trick.
I was certainly disappointed with the completely sex-free SE corner of the puzzle (:-))>.
The clue 4D is “Sunni or Shia” for SECT.
Sunni and Shia are the two major branches of Islam, so I don’t think SECT is an appropriate description of either one.
I had a similar thought.
LAT – Bruce Dickinson and Gene Frenkle are pleased
LAT … The clues do hint at the second parts of the “after” theme phrases. PHONE BOOKS are “publications”, NET PROFITS are “windfalls”, PIPE DREAMS are “fantasies” and a PET PROJECT is an “endeavor”. But I don’t quite get how COW BELL PEPPERS {22A: Particles from a percussion instrument that may start a sneezing fit?} works. BELL PEPPERS have “particles … that may start a sneezing fit”? I guess some folks might be allergic to them. Maybe the seeds are the particles?
In fact, the COWBELL PEPPERS entry is the one that led me to decide that none of the clues are referencing the combined forms. Yes, for 80% of the answers they can, with varying degrees of credulity, be thought of as answering the clues’ prompts, but it’s much more reasonable and acceptable to say that books are publications, profits are windfalls, dreams are fantasies, and a project is an endeavor.
In the combined form COWBELL PEPPER (no S), PEPPER should be thought of as ground black pepper (not bell pepper, which is the after of the before and after). So this grid entry, just like the others, does fit its clue.
I think you just demonstrated that it doesn’t work. You can’t just insert “black” pepper to make it work – it’s BELL PEPPER. And in my experience, BELL PEPPERs don’t produce any particles that would cause many of us to sneeze.
I still disagree. The answer that’s being clued is COWBELL PEPPER, not COWBELL BELL PEPPER or COW BELL PEPPER. So it’s perfectly reasonable for PEPPER to mean ground black peppercorns, which can make you sneeze. BELL PEPPER, like PHONE BOOKS, NET PROFITS, PIPE DREAMS, and PET PROJECTS, is the amusing unclued bonus, and the best of the lot, too, if you ask me, because of the greater change in meaning. (Bell peppers and chili peppers, both in genus Capsicum, are botanically unrelated to black pepper, but got their name from chilis’ similar pungency.)
LAT, re: “old-school crosswordese” – i know there’s some debate as to whether crosswordese means “answers that come up way more in crosswords than in real life” or just “answers that come up a lot in crosswords”; i can see how one of those might apply to 33d, but not sure how 62a meets either definition?
*in my experience, which apparently is not universal
¯\_(ツ)_/¯
77 Sunset Strip forever immunizes EFREM, whether father or son.