Wednesday, November 27, 2024

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

This must be our Thanksgiving puzzle since the WSJ won’t publish on Turkey Day. Our theme answers are familiar phrases that start with the name of a place and end in word that could also be a playing card. The revealer is PLACE / CARD (63a, [With 64-Across, Thanksgiving table marker, and a clue to the two halves of each starred answer]).

Wall St Journal crossword solution · “Table Stakes” · Mike Shenk · Wed., 11.27.24

• 19a. [*Defendants in a 1969 trial] CHICAGO SEVEN.
• 26a. [*It has more than twice the area of a twin] CALIFORNIA KING.
• 44a. [*1984 #1 hit for Billy Ocean] CARIBBEAN QUEEN.
• 49a. [*Quesadilla cheese, often] MONTEREY JACK.

Nifty theme! I spotted the cards during the solve and thought that was the whole theme. It felt weird having a seven along with three face cards, so I was a little underwhelmed. Then I fully grokked the revealer and was more than satisfied by the double-layered theme. Very nice!

Let’s look at the construction for a second. The two-word revealer is nine letters long, so it could have gone in the center of the grid. But all the theme answers are 12 or 14 letters long which means they wouldn’t do well in the third or thirteenth row. So everything would be squeezed in the middle and a nine-letter central answer would just add to the difficulty.

The other option is to break the revealer in two and place it toward the bottom of the grid. Mike managed to get it in the 14th row, and that’s fine. However, it does mean there are added constraints down there, ergo we get AARAU, REEJECT, and ELOI. Not the greatest of fill, but it’s probably much better than if PLACECARD was in the center of the grid. And the rest of the grid was plenty smooth with highlight ROANOKE at 9d.

Clue of note: 37d. [Shilling, in slang]. BOB. Pretty easy to forget this since the Brits haven’t used the shilling since the 70s.

Enjoyable puzzle. Four stars. Thanks to editor Mike Shenk for this and all the WSJ puzzles that keep us entertained throughout the year. I hope everyone has a wonderful Thanksgiving holiday.

Jill Singer’s New York Times Crossword 11/2724 — Eric’s review

Jill Singer’s New York Times Crossword 11/27/24

It’s Family Night over at the Times this evening — or maybe it’s mud wrestling, with the Brontës versus the Kardashians:

• 5A, 17A and 18A [Member of an 1800s literary family] ANNE, CHARLOTTE and EMILY, respectively (the Brontë sisters)
• 45A, 50A and 61A [Member of a 2000s showbiz family] KOURTNEY, KIM and KHLOÉ, respectively (the Kardashian sisters)

I should have been able to remember the Brontës quicker than I did, but since no one came to mind, I moved on. Similarly, the Kardashian clues didn’t prompt me to think of that clan (who, it’s always seemed to me, is famous for being famous).

But when I got to the SW corner, 53D was obviously SKIT, and 54D was likely OH MY (or possibly OH ME). That KH_____ could only be the youngest (thanks, Wikipedia) of the Kardashian sisters.

At some point, I bounced back to the middle, where the revealer spans the grid: 39A [Corn, beans and squash, in Mesoamerican tradition … or a hint to six answers in this puzzle] THE THREE SISTERS I wasn’t familiar with that term, but it certainly makes sense.

It’s a tight theme, obviously; I doubt there are many other well-known families you could find to work with the revealer. (Joseph Kennedy, Sr. and Rose Fitzgerald, for example, had five daughters.)

The theme does mean that the theme entries are not symmetrically placed in the grid, but Ms Singer managed to place all the Brontës in the top half of the grid and all the Kardashians in the bottom. (High-brow culture vs. low-brow? You decide.)

There’s some nice stuff in the non-theme clue and answer pairs:

• 37A [Symbols of longevity in Chinese iconography] TORTOISES I’m not at all surprised to learn this.
• 42A [Home to horned vipers and deathstalker scorpions] THE SAHARA
• 66A [Clever person] BEL ESPRIT I never knew precisely what that word meant; it comes from the French meaning fine mind.
• 2D [Poet Leonard] COHEN I think of him as a songwriter, so this took more crosses than it should have.
• 3D [“Crying in ___,” best-selling memoir of 2021] H MART The book is by Michelle Zauner, a member of a musical project called Japanese Breakfast.
• 25D [Patisserie purchase] GÂTEAU Mmm, cake!
• 30D [Fake] ERSATZ I just like that word; after plugging in 49A ZEN, I immediately went to 30D because not many words end in Z.

Finally, a few more women showed up to keep the clans company:

• 59A [Singer known as the “Queen of Tejano Music”] SELENA Quintanilla-Pérez That’s a gimme if you lived in Texas in the 1980s and early 1990s, as I did.
• 15D [Composer Schumann] CLARA Fun fact: It was Clara’s earnings as a concert pianist that kept the Schumann family financially afloat, and she did it while rearing eight children.