Note: While the NYT Tech Guild is on strike, we will not be covering their crossword puzzles. Here are some other ways to pass the time.
Hanh Huynh’s Universal crossword, “Good One!”—Jim’s review
Theme answers are familiar words, names, or phrases with an indicated letter that is sandwiched between two Ys. The revealer is WISECRACK (64a, [Make a witty comment, or a phonetic hint to what the indicated letters do (Bonus: Note what these letters spell)]). The letters in question collectively spell out BON MOT.
Universal crossword solution · “Good One!” · Hanh Huynh · Fri., 11.8.24
- 17a. [Perform music without reading it (In this answer, note letter 5)] PLAY BY EAR.
- 24a. [“Silicon Valley” actor who wrote “How To American: An Immigrant’s Guide To Disappointing Your Parents” (… letter 6)] JIMMY O. YANG.
- 27a. [Manhattan address abbr. (… letter 3)] NY, NY.
- 38a. [Destiny’s Child hit whose title is sung after “let me hear you” (… letter 4)] SAY MY NAME.
- 54a. [Go up and down (… letter 2)] YO-YO.
- 55a. [Job similar to transcription (… letter 5)] COPY TYPING.
Very unusual to see four-letter theme answers, but if that’s what works, fine by me. However, I get turned off the moment I see the “In this answer…” parenthetical tip in the first clue, so I solved this as a themeless while primarily scanning many of the theme clues. Post solve, I needed a few moments to figure out what was going on, but then I had my aha moment. I’m not sure that a letter sandwiched between Ys is “cracking Ys”, but it’s a crossword puzzle and I don’t need to overthink it.
Nothing especially long in the fill, but the stacks of 7s in the corners are quite nice. Highlights: SLAMMER, “SILLY ME!,” COLONEL, MAYBACH, “I GOTCHA,” and ORIGAMI.
Clues of note:
- 59a. [V’s K-pop band]. BTS. I saw “K-pop” and knew the answer, but had to look up that V is one of the members of the band.
- 12d. [“Full bird” military rank]. COLONEL. The emblem for a COLONEL is an eagle. The emblem for a lieutenant COLONEL is a silver oak leaf. So why “full bird”? It’s not like a LtC is a “half bird”.
- 31d. [Boat people’s home country, for short]. NAM. Isn’t “boat people” a derogatory term? There are better ways to clue this.
3.25 stars.
David Alfred Bywaters’ Los Angels Times crossword — pannonica’s write-up
LAT • 11/8/24 • Fri • Bywaters • solution • 20241108
Some locational wordplay today. All of the theme answers share the same prepositional phrase structure.
- 17a. [Where to find a dogcatcher at the end the end of the working day?] BY THE POUND.
- 31a. [Where to find a Tyrolean shepherd?] ABOVE THE FOLD. I guess the Tyrolean bit is signaling ‘above’ because it’s a mountainous region?
- 38a. [Where to find an Iowa farmer in late summer?] BEHIND THE EARS. The corn crop, that is.
- 46a. [Where to find a Chicago suburbanite?] OUT OF THE LOOP.
- 63a. [Where to find a lumberjack at lunchtime?] ON THE STUMP.
These are all fine. Not super-exciting, but engaging enough.
- 1d [Enthusiastic or impatient cry] OH BOY. It can also signal disappointment or worry, but wouldn’t likely be described as a ‘cry’ (outburst) in those contexts.
- 11d [Lingerie array] PEIGNOIRS. etymology (from m-w.com): French, literally, garment worn while combing the hair, from Middle French, from peigner to comb the hair, from Latin pectinare, from pectin-, pecten comb — more at pectinate
- 33d [Little snicker] HEE. 4d [“Caught you!”] HAH.
- 49d [ __ out at] LASHED. When the grid was completely filled in, I needed to find an incorrect letter, which turned out to be here, where I entered LASHES. Crossing entry, which I never looked at until that search: 71a [Roe source] SHAD.
- 50d [Slender woodwind] OBOE. 21a [Slender fish] EEL.
- 10a [Org. concerned with lab safety?] SPCA. My reflex was to enter OSHA, but I caught the wordplay, and myself, just in time.
- 15a [Potential London flat] TYRE. On the other hand, immediately saw through this one.
- 20a [Brief indication of flexibility] OBO, or best offer.
- 72a [Down-at-the-heels] SEEDY, not NEEDY.
From what I read at Rex Parker’s blog, if you use Crossword Scraper for Across Lite or other third party app, you are not crossing the picket line. So I did today’s puzzle guilt-free, as that is my usual mode. I hope this blog will consider that.
A partial quote from https://rexwordpuzzle.blogspot.com/
“Since the picket line is “digital,” it would appear to apply only to Games solved in the NYT digital environment—basically anything you solve on your phone or on the NYT website per se. If you get the puzzle in an actual dead-tree newspaper, or if you solve it outside the NYT’s proprietary environment (via a third-party app, as I do), then technically you’re not crossing the picket line by solving. You can honor the digital picket line by not using the Games app (or the Cooking app) at all until the strike is resolved.”
I’ve never used Crossword Scraper, so I don’t really know how it accesses the puzzle, but wouldn’t it need to cross the picket line to get to the .pdf to scrape?
I’d have said that Crossword Scraper works from a digital, fully interactive Web page and converts the clues and grid into the format of your choice apart from the original. It thus produces not the NYT digital interface, but pdf, puz, and so on, whichever you pick. But again I’d have said it has to start from the online edition.
I just don’t know where the pdf that the NYT itself makes available (from the print icon) comes from. I’m hoping some expert can let us know. Perhaps the crossword editor and his constructors share software that also has a print to pdf option, so that Guild members are not required to create the pdf. They may still have been the ones placing it online, although that could take only seconds. The Guild may still ask that you not access it. But I just don’t know. I also don’t now where Rex Parker’s app gets its data.
OTOH, I’ve said that it’s not an ordinary picket line, in that the NYT doesn’t lose money if you respect it, since you’ve already subscribed, no? But you can still decide that respecting the picket line means holding off.
It would seem to me that any third party app that Michael speaks of would have to access the online puzzle, but I don’t know. I do not know what third party app he speaks of that he uses. He speaks of solving it in the “nyt website per se” as being the line, which across lite does not do. It is pretty much beyond my tech skills to know exactly where the digital picket line is.
When I wrote “Wordplay” for the NYT years ago, I lobbied the powers that be to make a pdf of the print version available each day, and they finally did when Will Shortz endorsed the idea. Since one of Will’s tasks (or Joel’s these days, I assume) is to put together the final print-version layout of the puzzle in InDesign, a pdf can easily be generated from that file by anyone.
According to this reddit post, which appears to have been written by a NYT Tech Guild member, opening the Games page or the app is what’s referred to as a “start”. The Times looks at “starts” because it gives an indication of how much engagement they have with the community. Simply opening the Games page (or the app) is a “start” and that’s what the Guild is asking for us to refrain from doing. That means downloading a pdf or using Scraper will hinder the cause because you’ve still gone to the page in question. According to the post, “They know your streaks are important to you, and when you deny them their starts by forgoing something important to you, the analytics show that and leadership notices.”
All that is dependent on how much credence you give to the reddit post. But it sounds legit.
Dead tree versions are fair game, but I don’t know that any of us bloggers get the actual paper.
Just want you to know that some of us do the NYT in the dead tree paper, so we’d still like your commentary, while we support the strikers.
I think the problem is that the reviewers might not have physical newspapers.
I get it on weekends (too long and too many sections to click through), so I’ll do the puzzles then.
Jim, thanks for the review. With respect to referencing boat people in the NAM clue, that was my clue as written and not anything the editors chose. So if it’s a derogatory term, that’s on me and not the editors. My family are Vietnamese refugees (we fled by boat to Hong Kong), and boat people has always just been a term that has been used (and that we use) to describe people like us.
I remember it as anything but derogatory, and Wiki’s article doesn’t have an obvious hint that it might be. Of course, Europe’s fears of immigrants arriving by sea may have changed that, but then again maybe not.
My online research seems to indicate that “boat people” can be derogatory or not. In most cases it refers to refugees. Boat people escaping Viet Nam is a derogatory term in most respects, especially in Australia, but not so in regard to the refugees escaping Cuba. Of course, yacht owners as boat people are in a class of their own.
I appreciate your stopping by. I know when I see your byline I’m in for a quality puzzle.
As to the term, of course you know better than most of us; I can only go by what I read on the internet. But from someone outside your demographic, it seems like an easy way to group Vietnamese people together (usually in a negative light), and that’s not something I’d be willing to do, especially in the current (and future) climate of xenophobia.
It seems to me that in most cases of labor strikes it’s the customer or, in this case, the user is the one who pays the most.
WSJ — If like me you often struggle to get the meta answer, give today’s a shot! It’s fairly straightforward. (Of course, I’m assuming that the answer I submitted is correct.)
Good luck!
True. This is one of the easier metas, I guess.
Universal –
I’ve heard the emblem for full Colonel referred to as “the whole chicken” by a holder of said rank (who also held a sense of humor ;) ).