Mallory Knodel & Jeff Chen’s Wall Street Journal crossword, “Safe Prospects”—Jim’s review
Theme answers are familiar phrases that hide world currencies. However, the clues are written as if said currencies have been removed. As an added help, each currency is found elsewhere in the grid. The revealer is MONEY HEIST (55a, [Spanish Netflix hit, and a hint to figuring out the starred answers]).
Wall St Journal crossword solution · “Safe Prospects” · Mallory Knodel & Jeff Chen · Thu., 11.21.24
- 16a. [*Peninsula on the Black Sea] CRIME DRAMA minus 18a DRAM leaves CRIMEA.
- 24a. [*Word after boy or girl] SCOPES OUT minus 23a PESO leaves SCOUT.
- 34a. [*Planet orbited by Titan and Rhea] SKIP A TURN minus 40a KIP leaves SATURN.
- 46a. [*Haggard] GRAND AUNT minus 53a RAND leaves GAUNT.
Nice. It was obvious with the first entry that it was much too long, so it wasn’t much of an effort to sort it out and find the hidden word. But the money aspect really didn’t sink in until I hit the revealer. I appreciated having the currencies somewhere in the grid because I don’t recall knowing the currency of Laos (the KIP). I don’t think I’ve heard of the Netflix show either, but it was inferable. Overall, a good theme. And this is a debut for Jeff’s partner, so congratulations Mallory!
In the fill we have to be satisfied with corner stacks of sevens, but there are some nice ones in there: HAMSTER, DARK ART, KEURIGS, PUSH TOY, plus BOWSER, CATALAN, and SUDOKU. I needed all the crossings for IMPASTO [Thickly applied pigment] but now I know it’s Italian for “mixture.” EARBOBS did not come easily, either.
Clues of note:
- 36a. [Put in a good word?]. EDITED. Nice clue.
- 50a. [Tiresome after much repetition]. OLD. I like the cluing angle.
- 21d. [“So what will it be?”]. “YES OR NO?” In retrospect it works fine, but I sure thought this about ordering food at a restaurant. Maybe if the clue had “which” instead of “what”.
Good puzzle. 3.75 stars.
Will Pfadenhauer’s Fireball Crossword, “Shift Happens” – Jenni’s write-up
This is one of those puzzles that I recognize and admire as a feat of construction and did not enjoy at all. It’s a cipher puzzle. Here’s the grid and the theme answers and I will leave the de-ciphering to you. I simply don’t have the patience for it.
Fireball, November 20, 2024, Will Pfadenhauer, “Shift Happens,” solution grid
- 19a [Taking Big Coffee and Big Chocolate to court?[20] ] is SUING MOCHA.
- 24a [Low seat for horses?[1] ] is STEEDS TUFFET.
- 37a [Did one step in a fruit salad recipe?[10] ] is CUBED MELON.
- 52a [Plea to Bertie Wooster’s aunt?[22] ] is HELP ME DAHLIA.
- 63a [Part of a door in the vehicle driven by terrorists in “Back to the Future?” [12] ] is VW BUS HINGE.
And the revealer: 66a [___ shift (substitution cipher that when applied using the number in brackets to the first word in the answer to each starred clue will yield the second word of the answer] is CAESAR. So there isn’t actually any deciphering to be done, is there? It’s just – there. If you don’t know about the cipher, here’s the lowdown.
What I didn’t know before I did this puzzle: that RINA Sawayama had a 2022 album called “Hold the Girl.”
Bonus content: when I inserted the graphic of the grid, I noticed the picture joon used in yesterday’s write-up of the Gaffney meta. Take a look. The Great Crossword Conspiracy rides again.
Katie Hoody’s New York Times crossword — Zachary David Levy’s write-up
Difficulty: Easy (7m40s)
Katie Hoody’s New York Times crossword, 11/21/24, 1121
Today’s theme: TOO LONG DIDN’T READ (Cheeky review of 18-, 24- and 46-Across)
- DAVID COPPERFIELD (1850: 350,000+ words)
- LES MISERABLES (1862: 530,000+ words)
- ATLAS SHRUGGED (1957: 550,000+ words)
I also DIDN’T READ these three books, although not explicitly because they were TOO LONG. Interestingly, none of these titles even cracks the Top 5 English language novels (in order: Clarissa, Sir Charles Grandison, Poor Fellow My Country, Women and Sironia, Texas), although they are arguably far better known.
Cracking: KAPOW!!!
Slacking: It’s going to be a photo finish between LTCOLS and MMES, and the winner is.. nobody!
Sidetracking: MISS SCARLET
Brendan Emmett Quigley’s Crossword #1733: UGK — Eric’s review
Brendan Emmett Quigley’s Crossword #1733 11-21-24
Today, we get an old-school letter-swapping theme, in which common phrases with the letter pattern NG are reimagined as amusingly-clued NK phrases:
- 17A [Cowardly secret flirt?] CHICKEN WINK
- 30A [Establishment that holds very little of your money?] BANK FOR YOUR BUCK
- 50A [Follow the stoolie’s way of collapsing?] SINK LIKE A CANARY My favorite of the bunch.
- 67A [Where a skater might practice at home?] BATHTUB RINK OK, maybe that’s my favorite.
- 11D [Unwavering dimwit?] IRON LUNK We’ve all known some of those.
- 40D [Group judging studmuffins?] HUNK JURY I can’t hear the word “studmuffin” without think of Sam Beam’s Eyebeam comic. Sorry I couldn’t quickly find a strip in which the studmuffin Rod appears.
This one’s advertised as “Medium.” I enjoyed it, but I’d put it on the easy end of Medium.
I’m not sure I understand the UGK title beyond the G and K switch. All the internet tells me is that UGK is short for Underground Kingz, a hip-hop duo from Port Arthur, Texas, and Houston during the period 1987–2007. (Port Arthur, along with Beaumont and Orange, is part of the Golden Triangle, which happens to be where my husband grew up. Lots of refineries there; I don’t recommend it as a vacation destination.)
I belatedly noticed that BEQ inserted the video for UGK’s “International Player’s Anthem (I Choose You)” in his presentation of the puzzle (a song I know via the artist Girl Talk). I was on the right track, but that doesn’t really clarify things for me. If someone can explain of the title, please clue me in.
Some notable clue and answer pairs:
- 4A [Lululemon rival] ATHLETA I needed a few crosses for this one. My husband goes by “Les,” but his first name is “Leslie,” so we’ve received more than our share of catalogs that offer nothing but women’s clothing.
- 14A [Wine container] VAT/18D [Wine containers] CASKS
- 15A [Wu-Tang Clan’s martial arts-inspired nickname for Staten Island] SHAOLIN I know of the band and I’ve heard of the martial arts discipline, but I didn’t know the two together. But I didn’t know that the guys in Wu-Tang Clan were from Staten Island, either.
- 35A [Card in a phone] SIM I think this is becoming obsolete; it’s my understanding that most modern cell phones have a virtual SIM card.
- 71A [“So soon?”] ALREADY crossing 69D [“Until next time”] BYE The party’s over, folks.
- 64A [Boss of the valkyries] ODIN I need to up my knowledge of Norse mythology, because I needed a few letters for this one.
- 47D [Bookie swindler] WELSHER This could have been WELCHER, and some dictionaries mark WELSHER as offensive because it may have “originated in the 1860s in English horse racing slang and very likely is an insult geared towards Welsh people, which resulted from the xenophobic mistrust of the people-group by the English.” English xenophobes? Really?
- 68D [Hilton WorldWide brand] TRU I don’t know that brand, but it’s kind of nice to see TRU clued to anything other than Truman Capote.
Kareem Ayas’s USA Today Crossword, “I See You!” — Emily’s write-up
Why hello there!
USA Today, November 21, 2024, “I See You!” by Kareem Ayas
Theme: each themer contains —ICU—
Themers:
- 16a. [Samuel L. Jackson’s hairdo in “Pulp Fiction”], JHERICURL
- 36a. [Tom kha gai and massaman curry are a part of it], THAICUISINE
- 58a. [“Would you let me have this dance?”], MAYICUTIN
A variety of themers in today’s set with JHERICURL, THAICUISINE, and MAYICUTIN. A great theme today with a nice title hint to tie it all together.
Favorite fill: TUBETOPS, CHIAPET, NOTYET, and DUD
Stumpers: TOME (only “opus” came to mind), PLUMBERS (kept thinking “craft” or “art supplies”), and ANIMATED (needed crossings, kept thinking of “illustrated”, “inked”, or “drew”)
Overall a great grid design with excellent, fresh fill with fun cluing making it a smooth solve for me today. A wonderful puzzle for the end of the week!
4.5 stars
~Emily
Owen Bergstein & Shannon Rapp’s LA Times crossword – Gareth’s theme summary
LA Times
241121
Owen Bergstein & Shannon Rapp’s LA Times crossword features a simple enough theme, explained at BREAKUPSONG; the execution has a pleasing enough variation, where the songs are split across two entries. As highlighted in grey, the answers CAROL, DIRGE, ANTHEM & BALLAD are broken across two answers.
Gareth
I decided to look up *Sironia, Texas* out of curiosity, and even the Wikipedia entry is interminable
I’m curious about the source of that list of “top 5 English novels”. EDITED: I just realize that’s a list of *long* novels, not *good* novels… my mistake :-)
Anyway, a reasonable puzzle but not super tricky. I got hung up on the NE, in part because I had STOP STARING instead of QUIT STARING. I agree that it could’ve been a Wednesday with some slight clue tweaking.
I wonder how serious those five are. The only one I’ve heard of is Clarissa, which I did attempt. It defeated me. But then I could never finish Richardson’s other famous novel, his first, Pamela, either. Clarissa is said to be much better, so I was hopeful, but so it goes.
From Wikipedia, “Sironia is widely thought to be a thinly disguised version of [Madison] Cooper’s hometown of Waco, Texas.”
Nuff said.
WSJ: For answers we get ETRADE, SANYO, YUBAN, GTO, KEURIG, ALMAY, USA (network). For clues we get Prada, Armani, Dolce & Gabbana, KeyBank, Habitrail, Charles Schwab, Panasonic, Netflix, Pontiac, Revlon. (I probably missed some others.)
ALMAY crossing YUBAN was problematic indeed.
I wonder how many people understood the clue for STAN. It’s from a song from my generation, but non-millennials may be perplexed by that one.
That is a lot of brands, but to my eyes they provide some theme-adjacent color, and being familiar with Jeff Chen’s style I would guess he saw that as an equitable trade-off. I would tend to agree, given the context of their being in a puzzle about heists, and in the money-oriented WSJ for that matter.
STAN as presented has been around for a while now, and I feel like I’ve seen it enough that it’s practically crosswordese at this point, especially on a Thursday.
There were a few entries I could have done without: the archaic EARBOBS, the weirdly singular DARK ART, and the never-welcome SESH, e.g. But overall, a satisfyingly welcome challenge. Congrats to Mallory Knodel on a nice debut!
STAN as an über-fan has appeared in the NYT crossword at least half a dozen times. Anyone who’s done a lot of crosswords in the last 10 years, even someone who doesn’t know Eminem from Jay-Z, should recognize that.
YUBAN slowed me down a bit, too. I didn’t recognize the slogan, and the SUDOKU clue is vague enough that I couldn’t imagine what word might end in U until I had a few letters.
Sorry guys, I’m not as much of a crossword fiend as most of you are 😉
We won’t hold that against you.
I assumed you were the ZDL Zach who reviews the Thursday NYT. Was I mistaken?
Nope. more than one Zach on the site. I love ZDL’s work though, FWIW.
I found the puzzle a little off, too.
NYT: Spent 20 minutes only to have the middle rows filled. Decided to quit, looked at the answers, and thought the theme was really weak.
I think I got tricked into playing a Friday. Reasonable, as there was rebus yesterday.
Haha, though it would be hard for a Friday!
NYT: A decent puzzle, but not the Thursday twistie I was looking forward to. They could have switched yesterday’s lovely rebus puzzle and this one and I’d have been happier with this one. Like I said, its a nice puzzle, and the titles came with the crosses, having no idea on the book lengths (tldr!), just not a usual Thursday. That’s on the editor not the constructor, I presume.
NYT: I liked the theme, but was confused because I thought the D meant DON’T, as a warning. That was easily worked out.
ABFAB and the context of BRAKE both new to me. Lucky guess there.
Could have worked MOBY DICK into the center with the 16 width, but didn’t. A book I read 25 years after college and finally enjoyed it.
Talk about long books! That one takes the cake. :-)
NYT was an extremely stupid puzzle. Yes, those are very long books. That is NO reason not to read them. Good God, what is the world coming to when NYT publishes c*** like this?
NYT – This was at best a Weds. Essentially a themeless, unless for some reason you know the number of words in these great novels. I know the titles. Never read a single one. As a longtime constructor, if I had submitted this to the NYT, I’d be willing to bet it would have been rejected.
Wednesday’s RAY rebus would have been more appropriate for a Thursday.
I actually found it harder than a typical Thursday, things like BRAVA, RV LOT (and I do realize it must be a lot for RVs), the take a picture clue, BALE farming, and so on.
BEQ: Without giving anything away before the write-up, I really enjoyed this puzzle.
BUT, for some reason one of the themer’s just seems ‘off’ to me (50a) and I’m not even sure why. Maybe because all the other theme answers, even wackified, COULD be real things, but 50a theme phrase seems to make no sense.
Looking forward to Eric’s take on it.
I don’t know. It would be easier to make a canary sink than freeze a bathtub full of water.
My review just went up. The best I can come up with for SINK LIKE A CANARY is the stereotypical mob murder/body disposal technique of embedding a stool pigeon’s feet in concrete and throwing them into the nearest body of water.
Maybe I’m just unfamiliar with the term “Canary” to mean a stool pigeon. Once I wrap my head around that, it works fine. I just couldn’t figure out how those cute little yellow birds would sink.
My favorite was “hunk jury”. I never really got the puzzle title.
“Sing like a canary” is a pretty common trope in crime fiction.
https://getyarn.io/yarn-clip/022c49d4-0650-43b0-a2a8-68ea72cb614f
“Hunk jury” is also pretty good; I meant to say in my review that it wasn’t until I got there that I saw what the theme was. I wouldn’t mind serving on a hunk jury. I’ve never served on a real jury because one of the perks of holding a law degree is that the lawyers on either side don’t want you.
>>>“Sing like a canary” is a pretty common trope in crime fiction.<<<
DOH! Of course it is :-D!!… where was my head? :-D
And thanks in your write-up for the explanation about Staten Island. That filled in with crosses but I had no clue what it meant.
Also “Ask” took me a long time. “hit me” seemed like a blackjack term and I couldn’t let go of that.
USAT: I rated this puzzle 4.5 stars simply because of “Jheri Curl”!