Cheryl Liu’s Wall Street Journal crossword, “What the What?”—Jim’s review
Debut grid today. Congratulations to our newest constructor!
Theme answers are phrases of the form A THE B, and they’re all stacked and crossing in the center of the grid.
Wall St Journal crossword solution · “What the What?” · Cheryl Liu · Thu., 11.14.24
- 28a. [Joined a union?] TIED THE KNOT.
- 31a. [Be disruptively noisy] WAKE THE DEAD.
- 32a. [Act on an implicit suggestion] TAKE THE HINT.
- 14d. [Do some culling] THIN THE HERD.
- 16d. [Does what’s expected] TOES THE LINE.
- 19d. [Stack some boxes?] LOAD THE DICE.
Novel theme! I don’t think I’ve seen a theme like this before with six theme answers stacked and crossing in the middle. It wasn’t until late in myself that I figured it out; mostly I was working in the corners, I guess. But it was a nice aha moment to see the theme revealed. A lot of repetition, sure, and there’s not really a why or wherefore, but those center stacks impress me enough to give it a thumbs up.
If I want to be picky I’d ask for all the phrases to be in the first person present tense, and INTAKES crossing TAKE isn’t great, but a unique theme earns some leeway.
Fill highlights: CUBIC FEET, FIREWOOD, ANNE RICE, TITANIC, STAND FAST. Really those corner sections almost as nice as the center of the grid. BLIND AS is less nice, but I’ll close my eyes to it.
Clues of note:
- 40a. [“And Then There Were None” director Clair]. RENE. Going back to 1945 for this clue. I thought maybe there was a recent remake, but nope.
- 46a. [Author born Howard Allen Frances O’Brien]. ANNE RICE. Wow. Didn’t know this factoid. You’d think Irish Catholic parents would name her after a saint. She took it upon herself to adopt the name Anne on the first day of school and it stuck.
- 43d. [Wagons-___ (sleeping cars, abroad)]. LITS. Whoa. Never knew this one despite traveling around Europe for a bit.
Unique theme impressively constructed. Four stars.
Elly Zupko’s Fireball Crossword, “Excalibur” – Jenni’s write-up
Don’t let it be forgot/that once there was a spot/for one brief shining moment….
While the solve wasn’t all that challenging, it took me a while to figure out the complexity of the theme. Here’s Peter’s grid to make it clear.
Fireball, November 13, 2024, Elly Zupko, “Excalibur,” solution grid
- 17a [Creator of Patrick Bateman] is BRET EASTON ELLIS.
- 31a [Piper power source] is a PISTON ENGINE. Piper as the plane, I guess.
- 48a [Succeed in an act of deception] is PULL A FAST ONE.
And the revealer: 65a [Arthurian theme of this puzzle] is SWORD IN THE STONE. Each of the long theme answers contains STONE and a type of SWORD crosses each STONE. Tricky and fun.
What I didn’t know before I solved this puzzle: never heard of the book “The Catalyst” by Chemistry Nobelist Thomas Cech and so did not know it was about RNA.
And of course
Matthew Faiella’s New York Times crossword — Zachary David Levy’s write-up
Difficulty: Easy (9m47s)
Matthew Faiella’s New York Times crossword, 11/14/24, 1114
Today’s theme: BACK IN BLACK (Hit rock album of 1980 depicted three times by this puzzle)
- SET / OUT / KICK / DIDN’T HOLD / STAND / FULL (BACK)
- (BACK) SEAT DRIVERS / PEDAL / BONE / TRACK / LESS DRESS / FLIP
Saw SET / OUT (BACK) right away, jumped to the revealer, and was off to the races. Would have finished in the 7s but it took me absolutely forever to notice that I had SANK instead of TANK.
Cracking: Tim TEBOWs game-winning 80-yard OT touchdown pass to lead the Broncos over the Steelers in the 2011 AFC Wild Card game. He is about as diametrically opposed to me in every social-political-religious-etc context as a person could be, but he always seemed like a nice guy, and his funky delivery (part of the reason why his NFL career was so short) was fun to watch.
Slacking: VEAU, which is veal, you’re eating a baby animal, everything about this entry makes me angry and sad.
Sidetracking: MANIaC Mansion
NYT: That was a Thursday whose theme was pretty easy to grok, once hitting the second instance of a missing “back”.
But what I liked most about it is the clues were just a little short of Friday level trickiness, but they slowed me way the heck down, leading to a distinctly above-average number of minutes it took to finish this. To my delight, because I really enjoy solving a good puzzle like this, and the longer it lasts, the more fun it is.
And plenty of the clues were tricky in a very fun way.
Favorite clue/answer combo: “Motor coach?” for backSEAT DRIVER. It deserves an award.
I was asking myself, Why would you put HEME in your grid when you didn’t have to (HEME –> SEMI and OUT –> CUT, e.g.)? But then it gets 25 million hits on Google, the first page of 100 hits not even mentioning crosswords, which, if it had (and the total had been under 1 or 2 million), would have validated my snobbish assertion that it’s unnecessary crosswordese. So, huh.
But far more important than the number of Google hits is the question of whether Sam will accept HEME for the Spelling Bee.
LOL!!! (According to this site,https://www.sbsolver.com/h/heme it has been allowed in 25 solution sets beginning in April of 2020. Prior to that it wasn’t allowed in seven sets.)
Over at the Other Place, Rex complained at great length (he doesn’t complain any other way) about HEME and KRYPTON, but they were gimmes for me.
What the heck is going on with the WSJ? Yesterday’s themed puzzle had 68 words and today’s had only 62!!! That’s nuts!
NYT: I just really clicked with this puzzle. I figured out the theme fairly quickly, and I was also on the constructor’s wavelength in terms of the cluing. It helped me in solving that there were 13(!) theme answers once I figured out the “BACK” gimmick. I actually had a Thursday PB by 2 seconds today! It’s been a while since I’ve had a PB on any day, and this was a nice thing to have happen. My OCD side also liked that my Thursday PB is now the same as my Friday PB, while before it was 2 seconds longer so I did not have an ascending PB over the week.