Tuesday, November 26, 2024

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Matt Jones’s Jonesin’ Crossword, “Cast and Crew” — double examples. – Erin’s write-up

Hello lovelies! Welcome to the cast party! Each of the words in today’s theme entries can precede the word “cast” to make a new word or phrase.

• 17a. [Group of British whales covered in Band-Aids?] PLASTER POD (plaster cast, podcast)
• 58a. [What to do in the search bar to get the latest scores?] TYPE SPORTS (typecast, sportscast)
• 11d. [Nightmare that keeps you tossing and turning?] ROUGH DREAM (roughcast, Dreamcast)
• 27d. [Ballots using really wide sheets of paper?] BROAD VOTES (broadcast, votes cast)

Other things:

• 1a. [McEntire of “Happy’s Place”] REBA. This NBC sitcom premiered last month. I enjoyed watching Reba in her eponymous show in the 2000s.
• 60a. [One T of “ST:TNG”] TREK. “Star Trek: The Next Generation” is one of my favorite shows. Ask my oldest child to sing “My bat’leth brings all the threats to Picard” if you want evidence of its influence on my household.

Until next week!

David Stern & Ella Dershowitz’s Wall Street Journal crossword, “Square Shooting”—Jim’s review

This is a debut puzzle for David Stern. Congrats!

Groups of four circled squares form squares themselves, and each group has the same letter in each of the four squares. Collectively the four groupings spell out FILM. The revealer is LETTERBOXES (34a, [Adapts to fit a home screen, and a hint to this puzzle’s theme]). The entries associated with each box are as follows:

• F: COFFIN, HUFFPO, OFFSET, and AFFIX.
• I: ASCII ART, SKIING, SHIITE, WII.
• L: POLLEN, SOULLESS, BALLOT, LLC.
• M: COMMON, HOMMES, WHAMMY, SUMMA.

It’s a fine puzzle and the double letters sure made filling in those entries easier, which is a good thing in an early-in-the-week puzzle.

But I’m going to gripe a little bit about cluing the revealer as a verb since no one would ever use it this way. The only people who might use it as a verb are the people who record video in that format, and even then I suspect they use it more as an adjective to describe the format.

To me, a letterbox is Brit-speak for what we Yanks call a mail slot in a door. IMO, this would have been a better cluing angle for the revealer and then the four groupings could have spelled out MAIL (or POST to go along with a British theme).

It’s also a little strange to have things based on squares in this grid when the point of the letterbox format was to move away from the squarish format of regular TVs back in the olden days.

Fill highlights: WAR GODS, LAB MOUSE, “NOT A LOT,” FISH WRAP, BISCOTTI. Not so keen on ESC KEY.

Clues of note:

• 10d. [Cuts in front of, as a celestial body]. TRANSITS. An unexpected cluing angle for this word, but I like it.
• 55d. [Org. that aids mom-and-pop cos.]. SBA. I honestly don’t know what “cos.” is here. “Companies”? The “Org.” already hints at the abbreviation. Why not just say “mom-and-pop shops” since it’s what people say?

Three stars from me.

Killian Olson’s New York Times Crossword — Eric’s write-up

Congratulations to Killian Olson on an entertaining NYT debut!

As I often do, I noted the shaded squares before I started, then proceeded to ignore them as I solved. Sometimes, I need to slow down and think about these a little more.

The revealer at 58A [Completed without manual input, as an online form … or a description of this puzzle’s shaded squares] AUTO-FILLED explains what I didn’t see as I was bopping through the grid: The shaded squares all contain different brands of motor vehicles:

• 16A [Not currently functioning] OUT OF ORDER
• 22A [Section of a sidewalk] CONCRETE SLAB
• 35A [Participants in an endurance competition set to music] MARATHON DANCERS
• 46A [Sandwiches that kick-started the fast-food breakfast industry] EGG MCMUFFIN

I like that all the autos are split across two words. Except for OUT OF ORDER, all the theme answers are making their NYT debuts, which helps give this grid its fresh feel.

CONCRETE SLAB is a bit meh, though it’s cool that Mr. Olson found a credible-sounding phrase that incorporates TESLA. (On the other hand, the less I have to think about Elon Musk, the better my mental health is.)

Probably my favorite of the theme answers is MARATHON DANCERS, partly because it’s a fun phrase, but mostly because it reminds me of the 1988 Honda Accord coupe that was my first new car. It had a five-speed manual transmission and was just fun to drive. It was also the only car I’ll ever own on which I saw the odometer roll from 99999 to 00000. (I-70 in Utah, if you’re wondering.)

The long down slots are all winners:

• 4D [After-meal drowsiness known scientifically as postprandial somnolence] FOOD COMA For many Americans, that’s particularly timely this week .
• 10D [Western roller] TUMBLEWEEDS Last year driving through northeastern New Mexico, we saw some massive tumbleweeds blowing along and across the road. I’d forgotten, though, that they’re an invasive species.
• 26D [Bursting with anticipation] RARING TO GO To me, this only sounds right as RARIN’ TO GO, but since I had fun, I’ll ignore that.
• 38D [Like a bodybuilder’s physique] CHISELED There’s nothing wrong with a little titilation on Tuesday. (Or any other day.)

Bonus points for :

• 60A [Part of a ski that cuts into the snow] EDGE We’ve got our season passes and snow is on the way. Life is good.
• A nonjudgmental yet original clue for 65A ODORS [Things hidden by potpourri].

Elizabeth C. Gorski’s Cr♥ssw♥rd Nation puzzle (Week 704), “Thanksgiving with the Bard!”—Ade’s take

Good day, everybody! I hope all of you are doing very well getting ready for Turkey Day, and wishing all of your Black Friday and Cyber Monday shopping exploits allow you to get all the discounts on products that you desire to purchase!

Before the rush to the stores and/or laptops to order and pick up those goods, here’s a little bit of Thanksgiving humor in today’s grid, whose answer includes the side dish that is my all-time favorite during the holiday? Anyone else love themselves some stuffing? And how many of you call it dressing instead? (Not me, I’ll tell you that much.) 

• • • • WHAT’S THE TITLE OF A PLAY ABOUT A FOOD FIGHT WITH SHAKESPEARE? (15A: [Thanksgiving Riddle: PART I], 18A: [Riddle: PART II], 33A: [Riddle: PART III], 38A: [Riddle: PART IV])
      • MUCH ADO ABOUT STUFFING (54A: [Riddle’s Answer: PART I], 61A: [Riddle’s Answer: PART II]])

I’m thinking about a TORSO that’s often chiseled in art while juxtaposing what mine will look like upon the endless helpings of Thanksgiving dinner plates that I’ll be shoveling in my mouth soon (16A: [Upper body depicted in sculpture]). Seriously, I’m enamored with the obsession of torso and trunks that Renaissance artists had. Faces? Legs and arms? Who needs to see a LIMB (51A: [Tree branch])? Shoot, look at those abdomens and obliques I made of Roman soldiers and Greek and Roman heroes?!? So there’s a mention of Shakespeare in the grid, and given another entry in the grid, it allows me to be Hamlet for a second: Ay, there’s the RUB (22D: [Barbecue coating]). At least for today. Then the rub I’ll be thinking about is what I put on the raw bird late Wednesday night.

“Sports will make you smarter” moment of the day: TRIS (68A: [Baseball Hall-of-Famer ___ Speaker]) – Before the likes of Mays and Mantle and Griffey, the person who many had considered considered the greatest centerfielder of all-time was the “Gray Eagle,” Tris Speaker, who still ranks first all-time in doubles in MLB history (792) and fifth in hits (3,514). As much as the 1912 American League MVP is remembered for his exploits with the Boston Red Sox and Cleveland Indians, his role as a coaching consultant and mentor to Larry Doby, the first Black player ever to play in the American League (and second Black player in MLB history), also helped to start reshaping the game of baseball once Doby debuted in the majors just three months after Jackie Robinson’s debut in 1947.

Thank you so much for the time, everybody! Have a wonderful and safe rest of your day and, as always, keep solving!

Take care!

Ade/AOK

Erik Agard’s New Yorker crossword — pannonica’s write-up

Today’s grid features left-right symmetry and an unusual pattern. Reminds me of an orchid, or possibly an iris.

Despite being unfamiliar with a few entries—especially proper names, and especially near the center of the grid—this was an easier-than-mocha solve.

• 1a [Surname shared by two stars of 1978’s “The Wiz”] ROSS. Diana is one, and the other eludes me. … ah, it was Ted Ross as the Cowardly Lion.
• 11a [People from Port of Spain, familiarly] TRINIS, Trinidadians.
• 21a [Dutch city where Rembrandt was born] LEIDEN.
  
• 22a [“How to Be an Antiracist” author Ibram X. __] KENDI. 24a {Hip-hop journalist who hosted the Fox series “Pump It Up”] DEE BARNES. 29a [Tokyo-based design studio whose name means “clay” in Japanese] NENDO. All of these were new to me, though I definitely should have known the first, being marginally familiar with the title.
• 30a [“There’s the __”] RUB. Almost feels as if there should be an exclamation point there, aye. But one does not appear in Hamlet’s soliloquy, so I guess not.
• 38a [Sea creature in the first verse of “You’re a Mean One, Mr. Grinch”] EEL. “You’re as cuddly as a cactus, you’re as charming as an EEL, Mr. Grinch” (Sorry Tyler, The Creator)
• 41a [The __ Six (group of twentieth-century artists from Oklahoma)] KIOWA. Surprised myself by knowing this, albeit with the first three letters in place (was expecting the clue to be for KIOSK).
• 47a [Far from blah] SCINTILLATING. From Latin for ‘spark’. Discussion here. 39d [Language imitated by lorem ipsum] LATIN.
• 2d [Phrase coined by Kayla Lewis in a 2014 Vine to describe her eyebrows] ON FLEEK. Did not know the origin here. Wow, only ten years ago?
• 3d [Marked with grooves] STRIATED. “There are two types of STRIATED muscle tissue: cardiac and skeletal.”
• 8d [Beloved figure who’s a four on the Kinsey scale, say] BI ICON. Elided the ‘say’ qualifier in the clue so I was expecting a name, and that double-I looked weird.
• 10d [Infighting] DISSIDENCE.
  
• 11d [Phrase on a bottle of combination shampoo-conditioner-body wash] THREE-IN-ONE. Not to be confused with 3-in-One oil.
• 14d [Ideology that the historian Quinn Slobodian called “the ongoing effort to protect capitalism from democracy”] NEOLIBERALISM. So much damage caused by its adherents. And please never confuse it with liberalism or leftism.
• 28d [Move over] SCOOCH. Never know how this will be spelled. C or K? T or no T? One O or two?
• 31d [“Is it me or does it smell like __ in here?”] UPDOG. >groan<
• 37d [Word following red or giant] PANDA. Love this clue.
  
  (best I could do)
• 46d [Diplodocus or triceratops, for short] DINO. 5d [SO₃, for example] TRIOXIDE.

Enjoyed this one.

Sarah Sinclair + Amie Walker’s Universal Crossword, “Splitting Hairs” (ed. Taylor Johnson) — Matt F’s Review

I’ll be honest, I had a difficult time sorting out this theme while I was solving the puzzle. The theme clues seemed opaque in relation to their answers, so I needed to work the crossings and uncover the revealer to finally make sense of it all. When everything clicked, there was a nice “aha” moment. Here’s the big revealer:

• 56A – [Features of many Gen-Z hairstyles … and what the starred clues’ answers could be considered vis-a-vis their clues] = MIDDLE PARTS

The theme answers are the middle parts of the theme clues. Let’s run through them (with context):

• 18A – [*Choir] = the middle part of a choir is the ALTO SECTION
• 24A – [*Berliner doughnut] = the middle part of a Berlinger doughnut is the JELLY FILLING
• 37A – [*Human body] = the middle part of the human body is the NAVEL
• 49a – [*The Super Bowl] = the middle part of the Super Bowl is the HALFTIME SHOW

This is the type of puzzle where the revealer is the key for unlocking the theme answers. It really makes you work through the whole grid (or, jump straight to the revealer), and I appreciated that touch of extra difficulty. I wonder if the constructors initially tried to use BELLY BUTTON – an 11 that could technically fit in the middle row – instead of NAVEL, and fell back on the latter to make the grid easier to fill. In any case, this is a solid theme execution and I enjoyed how the revealer was used as a critical piece of information.

TIL that a jelly-filled doughnut is formally known as a Berliner doughnut. This grid felt wide open in every section, especially the top and bottom, so I can imagine solvers having a trickier time in these areas since there wasn’t much for short stuff to generate a toe-hold. 5-6-7D was my slow area, with UPLIFT, LETLIE, and KNOLL cutting through the first theme answer, and the 4- and 14-across clues were just obscure enough to slow me down. DREAMHOUSE, DEMILOVATO, MARIMBA, INEEDIT, and DIOSMIO added sparkle to the fill. I may or may not have been in a “marimba group” in 6th grade, performing in assisted living facilities around town. Fun puzzle all around!