Michael Lieberman’s New York Times crossword — Sophia’s write-up
Happy Monday folks, and happy World Series weekend to all baseball fans! Today’s theme is perfect for the season, coming up with a new twist on a nickname for the game:
New York Times, 10 28 2024, By Michael Lieberman
- 17a [Nursery rhyme about a disastrous trip up a hill] – JACK AND JILL
- 28a [Nursery rhyme about the perils of sitting on a wall] – HUMPTY DUMPTY
- 45a [Nursery rhyme about the hazards of decaying infrastructure] – LONDON BRIDGE
- 59a [Nickname for the World Series … or what you might call 17-, 28- or 45-Across?] – FALL CLASSIC
So, each of the three CLASSIC nursery rhymes involves a literal FALL. Clever! I didn’t realize how many different rhymes share this same theme…. “Ring around the Rosie” also has falling, are there others too? Anyways, all three of these rhymes are very familiar to me and as such the puzzle played pretty easily, so I am curious if that will be true for other folks as well.
Lots of great fill today that kept the puzzle from feeling boring. OCTOPUSES are my favorite animal so I was thrilled to see them make an appearance. DEADLINES, TESTAMENT, and LARGE COKE are all also fun (although I did have “large soda” before and had to change it). Some other quick hits:
- I had a weird amount of trouble with the clue of [One might be squeaky or shaped like a bone] for DOG TOY. It’s relatively straightforward and yet I just couldn’t see it. A good answer though!
- A slightly trickier (although still Monday appropriate!) clue/answer pair that I liked – [They brighten everyone’s days] for SUNRISES
- I liked the modern takes on the BOT and KILL clues, [Many a customer service assistant, nowadays] and [Pass idly, as time], respectively
- ANNA Kendrick has her directorial debut out on Netflix now! It’s called “The Woman of the Hour” and I’ve heard it’s good, so I’m planning to watch it soon.
Dylan Fugel’s Wall Street Journal crossword, “Squawk on the Wild Side”—Jim’s review
Debut puzzle alert! Congrats to our newest constructor!
Theme answers are familiar phrases with a word that’s been replaced by its homophone which is also a bird sound. The revealer is BIRDSONG (61a, [Notes from on high, and an alternative title for this puzzle]).
Wall St Journal crossword solution · “Squawk on the Wild Side” · Dylan Fugel · Mon., 10.28.24
- 17a. [Dove’s overthrow of a regime?] COO D’ETAT.
- 21a. [Crows’ shared purpose?] COMMON CAWS.
- 37a. [Robin’s assessment of an attractive mate?] GOOD ENOUGH TWEET.
- 54a. [Chick’s frugal friend?] CHEEPSKATE.
Cute enough, eh? These didn’t quite tickle my funny bone, but I liked them well enough. I think I liked the grid-spanning entry best of all even though its not quite a homophone like the others.
WATCHMEN and REAR ENDS top the fill. The latter gets the nice clue [Tailgates too much?]. That NE corner was especially meaty with fun entries like SCHISM, CRUNCH, HONCHO, and HOOCH.
Clues of note:
- 1a. [Hoover or Oroville, e.g.]. DAM. Tough clue to start a Monday grid, amirite?
- 42a. [Record label founded by Drake]. OVO. New-to-me cluing angle. I don’t recall seeing this in a puzzle.
- 9d. [Boss, from the Japanese for “group leader”]. HONCHO. Cool bit of etymology trivia.
Catherine Cetta’s Los Angeles Times crossword — Stella’s write-up
Los Angeles Times 10/28/24 by Catherine Cetta
First, the theme: The revealer at 57A [“Come back to that later,” and an apt title for this puzzle] is PUT A PIN IN IT. This is because you can put the word PIN after the first word in each theme entry:
- 18A [Cautious person’s motto] is SAFETY FIRST, leading to SAFETY PIN.
- 24A [Like many ignition switches] is PUSH-BUTTON, leading to PUSH PIN.
- 36A [Trios of goals] is HAT TRICKS, leading to HAT PIN.
- 51A [Anklets worn with a poodle skirt] is BOBBY SOCKS, leading to BOBBY PIN.
More interesting than the theme, IMO, is the unusual-for-a-Monday grid layout. The 9-letter theme entry in the middle forces groups of 7-letter entries on the sides of the puzzle, rather than the more common split into three sets of entries of 3 to 6 letters in length. This means you get fun stuff like SCRAPPY, TIME’S UP, MIRRORS, LET’S NOT, HABITAT, and the especially fun lower right corner, which has NICE JOB, ASK SIRI, and BEST BET in there. Very nice!
Zhouqin Burnikel’s Universal crossword, “In Costume” — pannonica’s write-up
Universal • 10/28/24 • Mon • “In Costume” • Burnikel • solution • 20241028
The circled letters at the edges of the theme answers spell classic Halloween costumes.
26d [10/31/2024, e.g.] DATE. 1a[Haunted house sounds] BOOS.
- 17a. [Hourly wage alternative] PIECE RATE (pirate).
- 25a. [Enforce something more strictly] CLAMP DOWN (clown).
- 50a. [Uncatchable throw from the mound] WILD PITCH (witch).
- 63a. [Substitute emcee] GUEST HOST (ghost).
Works.
- 5d [Watering holes] BARS. Idiomatically.
- 8d [“Laughing” scavenger] HYENA. They’re more than scavengers.
- 8d [Enters the big leagues] GOES PRO. This sort of framing reliably elicits comments.
- 14a [“Well, duh”] OBVI. My preferred abbrev. is obvs.
- 27a [Prairie wolf] COYOTE. Not sure that I’ve heard that term before.
- 46a [Large dispenser for hot cider] URN. Seasonal!
Brendan Emmett Quigley’s themeless crossword — Eric’s review
A nice, “hard” 68-word puzzle for Monday morning. The top half seemed more challenging than the bottom. I had to chip away to get SET SMILES (I would say “fixed”); FINAL BOSS ENERGY (I’m guessing this is a video-gaming reference); RORY MCCANN (my “Game of Thrones” knowledge is pretty limited); SWARMING (nice bit of misdirection there — I tried QUILTING and contemplated SPELLING before deciding I was thinking about the “wrong sort of bees”; SESSION IPA (I love beer, but I don’t care for the hoppy ones).
I’D BET seems a bit off for [“You don’t have to tell me twice”], but that sort of conversational clue often throws me because the answer is not what I would say in the place of the clue.
There’s a nice literary vibe here, with DORIS Lessing and ANTONIN Arnaud (too bad I misremembered his name as “Antoine”). Miles DAVIS was a bit of a lucky guess. I didn’t recognize the album title, but DAVIS made sense and it sounded more like one of his albums than, say, someone like Chet Baker.
One of the first cell phones I owned was a NOKIA, but I never knew about the company’s origins.
I have to give a side-eye to LOAFS. It’s a legit word, but it isn’t the plural of “loaf.”
Anna Shechtman’s New Yorker crossword—Amy’s recap
New Yorker crossword solution, 10/28/24 – Shechtman
Easier than I thought it’d be—I wasn’t really pushing for speed but was expecting a slower solving time.
Fave fill: FOREVER CHEMICAL, PRETTY PRIVILEGE, ABLEIST, BARBARELLA (nice clue, [1968 Jane Fonda film, which she later said “could have been a feminist movie—and just as sexy”]), BAD ADVICE, ART MAJORS, EYE CONTACT.
New to me: [Director of “Atlantics,” winner of the 2019 Grand Prix at Cannes], MATI DIOP. She’s French and Senegalese. Also didn’t know Atlanta’s COP CITY; Chicago recently had a No Cop Academy movement attempting to stop the city from spending $95 million building a new police academy. Sigh. And [“Late Autumn” director Kim ___-yong], TAE, also not something I knew.
Meh: SASES, CDT, CDRS, ERTE.
3.33 stars from me.
NYT: There’s a glitch in the link to the NYT at the top of this page. If you click on it, it takes you back to last week’s puzzle. Also it shows 44 ratings at 8pm Central time.
I enjoyed the puzzle and the revealer brought an unexpected twist.
I found this quite easy, maybe a minute longer than my Monday best. The theme was handled very well, and I didn’t see a lot of junk in the fill – even the 3s didn’t make me want to scream.
I was excited to see someone that I “knew” on Jeopardy last week – I’m sorry that you didn’t do better, Sophia. You probably did better than I would have, but I always root for people I know when they show up. Being chosen for the show is more than most of us can claim!
I thought that today’s NYT was as good a Monday puzzle as I have seen in a while. The theme was easy, cute, and well executed, and the fill was smooth.
One question: Is ITALICS a typeface?
I wish peace and good health to all.
I would call it type and reword the clue.
Yes, per Wikipedia: “For example, Times is a typeface family, whereas Times Roman, Times Italic and Times Bold are individual typefaces making up the Times family.”
I’m seeing that a typeface is an overarching term describing the style of the characters while a font is the actual execution of the typeface. Elements of a font can include height, weight, letterform width, and italics.
One place I looked was Wix – https://www.wix.com/studio/blog/typefaces-vs-fonts#:~:text=A%20typeface%20is%20a%20set,is%20part%20of%20the%20former.
I looked at others and they were generally in agreement.
So based on this source, italics is not a typeface.
I’d have used something like “type,” too, or perhaps “indicator of stress.” Back in the day in publishing, “font” pretty clearly meant a design creation such as Ariel or Comic Sans, while “typeface” was thrown around a bit loosely. Most often it was just a synonym for “font” but could now and then speak of roman vs italics, say. So I can’t quite call the clue wrong but maybe to be disfavored.
To get at what I mean, worth noting that in MS Word a choice of Times New Roman does not mean you have to stay roman. You can bold or italicize a word, too. So best to say you chose a typeface first and then italicize without changing font (or typeface). In that regard, Eric’s source doesn’t feel right.
I consider typeface to indicate a font plus particulars such as point size and qualities like weight (e.g., bold, semibold, black) and whether it’s italic or roman.
I can’t tell if you think the clue is good or not, but it’s how I use typeface. It’s easier to visualize in old-guard printing terms. You would have a Times cabinet and there would be trays of slugs for each typeface. Italic and bold 10-point weren’t “attributes.” They required slugs from the appropriate typeface trays. Things got fuzzy when computers got involved.
I should have done so right away, but I got around to checking the ultimate authority for copyediting and production, the Chicago Style Manual. Its definition of typeface has it as a design choice, a design that “may include” bold, roman italics, and so on. That would support skeptics about the clue. The entry on font says much the same, adding to look for cross referencing to these things as “type styles.”
The other key resource back then, Pocket Pal, doesn’t have a relevant discussion.
I do the puzzle in ACL whenever possible, so my answer for 56A was “Source Sans Pro Regular” but it didn’t fit, so I had to fill in with the crossings. The italics did not come across with Crossword Scraper
NYT: A cute theme, I just wish the clue for JACK AND JILL had been more parallel to the clues for the other two nursery rhymes. They had “the hazards of”, “the perils of”, so why not “the dangers of hill climbing”?
The labored WSJ jokes took longer for me to get than I’d expect for a Monday, but whatever. Puns are subjective . I do wish that the “tailgate joke” weren’t plausibly a themer as well from its length, position, and question mark.
The NYT was delightful for a mere Monday. I appreciate the honesty of BOT for customer service, especially as uninformed idiot didn’t fit. Come to think of it, I smiled at the dentist clue, too.
NYT: A+ Monday theme
Above triple-A (arguably)
Uni … again with this type of clue for GOES PRO? … “Enters the big leagues” … am I destined to die on this hill?
What do you mean?
I’ll hazard a guess, @Starfish. In baseball, minor leaguers are also professional athletes, just ones who make a lot less than the typical MLB player.
@Amy – ah, ok. “big leagues” is so often metaphorical… thnx!
1) Also, I thought all the cool kids called MLB just “the Show” (like in “Bull Durham” – right?) ;-) [language warning!]
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wDGQbLB-trM&t=17s
2) Relatedly, on xwordinfo, ML’s (related) NYT constructor pic here is so perfect for today!
https://www.xwordinfo.com/Crossword?date=10/28/2024
I’m clueless about on the reference here — by you and pannonica.
Can you point back to a relevant thread (or do I just not want to know)?
In American sports, “big leagues” generally refers to Major League Baseball. The vast majority of big league players spend at least a few years at the minor league level and therefore are already “pros” when they are promoted to the big leagues. So, they don’t “go pro” when they make it to the big leagues. In my experience (pretty vast when it comes to sports fandom), people generally use phrases like that with reference to football and basketball players leaving college and declaring themselves eligible for the NFL or NBA draft. But even that’s getting murkier in the age of NIL (name, image and likeness) since amateur athletes are compensated in various ways these days.
NYT: Timely and fun, but very, very easy (even for a Monday). Wondering how many people needed more than half the clues to finish this one?
Is Eric’s review of BEQ tk? Or mis-posted somehow?
And what’s with all the one-star ratings for it? Really?
There were several one-star ratings for the BEQ puzzle before it was up on his website. I don’t know what time he typically puts it up, but I looked before breakfast, and it wasn’t up yet.
Yes, Martin — really.
Hmm, you’d think some people were just posting one-star ratings b/c they have nothing better to do… \\(°^°)/
I see that every puzzle today has 4, 5, or 6 one star ratings as I type this.
I think people are spamming the site with one stars. Can it be determined if the same IPs are giving the ones on multiple puzzles?
I think Amy keeps track of that.
BEQ: I agree that loafs is just wrong for bread… works for when someone just goofs around and doesn’t work.
BEQ can leave off Harry Potter references for alla me… one on Thurs (which I didn’t get, I dunno Dumbledore) and one today which I’ve seen somewhere, but still. GOT references also go over my head but I got Rory with crosses and good guesses.
I’m glad you’re there reviewing BEQ, Eric… I do enjoy his puzzles and nice to see differing perspectives and write-ups.
Thanks, marciem! I’m happy to be here.
I’d be perfectly happy to never see another Harry Potter or “Game of Thrones” reference in *any* puzzle, but I recognize that those are gimmes for a lot of people. I know the name RON WEASLEY as a Potter character, but today’s clue meant nothing to me.
I thought Weasley was Beasley for a minute until it didn’t work, and wasn’t sure if Rory was male or female :D …
Did I miss a usual BEQ reference to pot smoking in these last two? (the first I’ve done for several months.)
I haven’t noticed any pot references in his puzzles lately, but I might have filled them in with crosses.
New Yorker: “Atlantics” is a good movie. I didn’t know much about it when I saw it and enjoyed the direction the plot went. It’s still on Netflix.
I thought the puzzle was a nice return to the more challenging New Yorker Mondays that we used to see. PRETTY PRIVILEGE is a new phrase to me, though I’m certainly familiar with the concept. I counted six movie references (plus [Movie ending]), which is fine by me, even though I don’t see as many movies these days as I used to.