Monday, November 18, 2024

Rajeswari Rajamani’s New York Times crossword— Sophia’s write-up

Theme: Each theme answer is a phrase of the form _ _CK AND _ _LL

New York Times, 11 18 2024, By Rajeswari Rajamani

• 17a [Personal bidding, in an idiom] – BECK AND CALL
• 28a [Who went “up the hill” in a nursery rhyme] – JACK AND JILL
• 44a [Two-player offensive sequence in basketball] – PICK AND ROLL
• 59a [Like a hard-to-believe story] – COCK AND BULL

Interesting find that so many common phrases have this same structure! All of these phrases came to me pretty quickly and felt Monday appropriate – I’m a basketball fan so I especially liked PICK AND ROLL, but I am not sure if that’s a phrase known by other folks. This is the second NYT Monday puzzle this fall to have the answer JACK AND JILL, which is wild since prior to this it had only been used once at all in the Shortz/Fagliano era. I was hoping for some kind of revealer/hidden to tie all the answers together, but instead it’s just the shared format of the answers as the connection between them, which is fine too.

There’s some fun stuff in the rest of this puzzle! EL  CAPITAN, SNO CONE, ANECDOTES, and SKATERS were standouts to me. Everything was pretty Monday smooth, although I didn’t love the partial A NAP. It’s been a hot second since we’ve seen Mel OTT in a puzzle, hasn’t it? He used to show up all the time! My favorite clue in the puzzle was the one for ROCKET – [What goes up after a countdown?]. I also liked the back to back of [On which croquet and cornhole are played] for LAWN and [On which Ping-Pong and air hockey are played] for TABLE.

Happy Monday all!

Mike Shenk’s Wall Street Journal crossword, “Dismissive”—Jim’s review

Theme answers are familiar two-word phrases where the first words can also mean “dismiss” (as from a job).

Wall St Journal crossword solution · “Dismissive” · Mike Shenk · Mon., 11.18.24

• 16a. [Dismiss some restaurant critics?] FIRE EATERS. I can’t imagine any restaurant critic would like to be referred to as an “eater.”
• 29a. [Dismiss some football players?] BOUNCE BACKS. This usage of “bounce” is new to me.
• 44a. [Dismiss some mob hit men?] AX MURDERERS. This one’s pretty grim, no matter how you slice (or chop) it.
• 60a. [Dismiss some baseball pitchers?] CAN OPENERS.

This is a classic changed-meanings theme that works fine for a Monday. Pretty straightforward to suss out after the first entry, but still enough variety to keep it interesting.

I liked seeing the fully fleshed-out “ET TU, BRUTE“. Also good: HOME GAMES, and ON ALERT.

Clues of note:

• 65a. [“Somebody needs ___!” (comment from Mom)]. A NAP. I’m not sure what it says about me, but I went with A HUG.
• 23d. [Mess up]. RUFFLE. I’m not sure what it says about me, but my brain was stuck on the “make a mistake” definition of this clue.

Solid puzzle. 3.25 stars.

Amy Johnson & Katie Hale’s Los Angeles Times crossword — Stella’s write-up

Los Angeles Times 11/18/24 by Amy Johnson & Katie Hale

The revealer at 60A [Right-click result, often, and where the starts of 18-, 24-, 38-, and 49-Across can be found?] is POP-UP MENU, because the first word in each theme entry is something that can POP UP. (That is, we’ve got a MENU of things that can POP UP.)

• 18A [Long garment with no waistline] is a TENT DRESS. A POP-UP TENT is a low-effort camping shelter.
• 24A [“These aren’t the droids we’re looking for” speaker] is a STORMTROOPER. A POP-UP STORM is a thunderstorm that comes up seemingly randomly.
• 38A [Activity for a green-thumbed apartment dweller] is WINDOW GARDENING. POP-UP WINDOWs are fairly obsolete these days, given that most web browsers default to refusing to allow them to open, so we get all kinds of other invasive ad experiences instead!
• 49A [Aftereffects of a great read] is BOOK HANGOVER, leading to POP-UP BOOK.

In this case I would say the parts are greater than the whole. I think the theme entries themselves are all very lively, but the POP-UP tying them together was something I had to think about a lot (POP-UP STORM, in quotation marks, gets only about 25K hits on Google). Plus, a POP-UP WINDOW is very close in literal meaning to the POP-UP MENU revealer.

Drew Schmenner’s Universal crossword, “Walk This Way” — pannonica’s write-up

Universal • 11/18/24 • Mon • “Walk This Way” • Schmenner • solution • 20241118

For once I looked at the puzzle’s title before finishing the grid and, with the first and third long across answers filled in, discerned the theme. I also knew that it would require a revealer.

• 61a^R [Airport reassignment … or a phonetic hint to the rearranged first word of 17-, 29- or 45-Across] GATE CHANGE, to be interpreted as gait change. I did not foresee the revealer taking this form, though! I suspect, because the path is rather twisty, that this entry came first and the idea for the theme followed therefrom.
• 17a. [Effort to limit the right to sue] TORT REFORM (trot). On the other hand (38a [“Then again,” in a text] OTOH), this may have been the seed, as the phrase also contains a cryptic-style anagram signal: reform.
• 29a. [Hypnotic electronic songs] TRANCE MUSIC (canter).
• 45a. [Athlete who tries to clear a high bar] POLE VAULTER (lope).

Nicely turned.

• • 3d [Blue Angels’ daring maneuver] BARREL ROLL. Probably quite routine for them.
  • 24d [Letters on a smartphone screen] LTE, which I’ve just learned stands for long-term evolution.
  • 34a [Less good] WORSE.
    
    
    
• That’s all I’ve got for the ballast. The clues and fill are solid but not particularly remarkable.

Kameron Austin Collins’s New Yorker crossword — Eric’s review

Kameron Austin Collins’s New Yorker crossword 11-18-24

It always makes me happy to see Kameron Austin Collins’s byline — I know I’m in for a fun, smooth solving experience from which I will learn a few things. Today’s puzzle, though a little on the easy side for a New Yorker Monday, is no exception.

I got off on the wrong foot with 1A [Make out, crudely] — SUCK FACE fits perfectly (and to my sensibility is much cruder than SWAP SPIT, which is just descriptive of a nice French kiss). But 2D [Craven man of horror?] had to be WES, so SUCK FACE had to go.

Nice stuff:

• 9A [Variety of domesticated cat] BENGAL/16A [Variety of wild cat] OCELOT
• 29A [Evidence of an underground network] GOPHER HOLE
• 53A [Rock-paper-scissors, by another name] ROSHAMBO I learned that name from some other crossword and was happy to remember it.
• 3D [Hypocorism for Thaddeus] TED “Hypocorism” is new to me; it means “pet name.”
• 5D [The Titanic and the Carpathia, for two] STEAMERS The Carpathia (pictured below) was one of the ships that picked up survivors from the Titanic.
• 12D [Feature of “Hawaiʻi”] GLOTTAL STOP I recently learned that the diacritic between the two I’s — the mark that looks like an apostrophe — is called an okina.
• 20D [Snoozefest] COLOSSAL BORE
• 27D [They’re seasoned] OLD PROS 

Brendan Emmett Quigley’s Crossword #1732 (themeless) — Eric’s review

Brendan Emmett Quigley’s Crossword #1732 — 11-18-24

I’m feeling quite cranky today. The site that Team Fiend uses for composing reviews was acting up all morning, when I was trying to write up the New Yorker puzzle. That left me frustrated even before I set out to solve this puzzle.

The puzzle seemed to have more clue and answer pairs that I needed a lot of crosses for than I typically find in one of BEQ’s puzzles:

• 10A [The USMCA replaced it] NAFTA The clue refers to the Agreement between the United States of America, Mexico, and Canada, which took effect in 2020. (My first thought on the clue was “The Marine Corps had its own academy?”) My memories of NAFTA are not particularly pleasant.
• 17A [Site used by educators] GOOGLE CLASSROOM That’s new to me. According to Google, “it empowers educators to enhance their impact and prepare students for the future.” I respect teachers and I know that’s a tough job for relatively little pay.
• 21A [22-Across’s team] SKY/22A [Clark’s WNBA rival] REESE, as in Angel
• 28A [“The Muses Are Heard” author] CAPOTE I didn’t recognize the title; Wikipedia describes it as a journalistic account of the cultural mission by The Everyman’s Opera to stage Porgy and Bess in the U.S.S.R. in the mid-1950s.
• 58A [Club from a chain] WENDY’S BACONATOR I must have heard this somewhere, because once I decided that 54D [To the point] was in fact TERSE, I got the last part of the sandwich name. But I haven’t eaten at Wendy’s in about 40 years.
• 63A [1995 movie that won seven of it’s (sic) record-setting 13 nominations for Golden Raspberries] SHOWGIRLS I saw a lot of movies in the 1990s, but not that one.
• 1D Van ___ (“Why Can’t This Be Love” band, to fans) HAGAR I was never a fan of either Van Halen or Sammy Hagar and don’t recognize that particular title.
• 12D [Ice up] FROST OVER I recently moved to a colder climate than I’d spent the rest of my adult life in, but doesn’t “freeze over” sound more natural?
• 33D [1976 hit that begins “In this life I’ve seen everything I can see, woman”] DO YA That’s by the crossword staple the Electric Light Orchestra, for all y’all who weren’t around then. I remember the song but not the lyrics.

Some stuff I liked:

• 23A [Some nerve!] MOXIE It’s a fun word. A few years ago, I was looking for a word to replace “Balls” in the sense of “force of character or determination.” I landed on MOXIE as the best non-sexist synonym.
• 23D [Food processor?] MOLAR That was probably my first entry and I worked my way out of the middle.
• 24D [Folding business?] ORIGAMI Nice little misdirection there.
• 30D [Beasts “let slip” by Mark Antony] DOGS OF WAR The line is from Julius Caesar, which I read in high school, but I mostly remembered it from Frederick Forsyth’s novel about 20th-century mercenaries (which I probably read in junior high).