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 11/27/24 — 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.
Barbara Lin’s AVCX Crossword, “Elongated” (ed. Ben Tausig) — Matt F’s Review
AVCX Solution 11.27.2024
When I solved this puzzle last night I was utterly perplexed by the theme. The answers looked like gibberish! I jumped down to the revealer to get a hint, and still had a hard time grasping it in the moment. The phonetic contortions of the theme answers also made it difficult to parse out the base phrase for a couple of these. Once the dust settled, I got to sit with the grid and unpack the nuances of the theme, so allow me to break it down for you.
Here’s what the revealer tells us to do:
- 58A – [Start a new activity slowly, or a phonetic description of this puzzle’s theme] = EASE INTO IT
Fun phrase, and apt for this puzzle where we are squeezing “ease” (long E sounds) into common phrases. Here are the transformations:
- 17A – [Spirits feeling down about being cooped up?] = BLUE GENIES (blue jeans)
- 24A – [Green Florida fruit for the taking?] = FREE KEY LIME (free climb)
- 35A – [Choose flaky pastry?] = GO WITH THE PHYLLO (go with the flow)
- 49A – [Afraid of bees?] = BUZZ WORRIED (buzz word)
That 2nd one was really hard to unpack. I kept thinking, “I’ve never heard of a ‘freak lime’ before!” But then it dawned on me. Similarly, I did not know that ‘phyllo’ was pronounced ‘fee-low’ (one of those words that looks different than it sounds), but obviously it must have a long E in order to match up with the theme.
The MYNAH / ASTRAL area was a tricky section when I wanted the former to be MACAW for too long. Similarly, in the lower left I plopped down ISAID instead of IMALL at 54A. The clue for 66A was subtly genius – [Minor change] for CENTS. I also enjoyed [Goes green, in a way?] for ENVIES at 55A, and the fun fact at 43D – [Cars crashed during multiple takes in the filming of “Thelma and Louise”] = TBIRDS.
I’ve seen Barbara’s name in plenty of other outlets, so I was surprised to learn this was her AVCX debut. A solid offering for the indie giant. Nicely done!
Tarun Krishnamurthy’s Universal crossword, “Tainted Tints” — pannonica’s write-up
Universal • 11/27/24 • Wed • “Tainted Tints” • Krishnamurthy • solution • 20241127
I’m hoping there’s a double payoff with this theme, because I was a little disappointed that in addition to a grid-spanning revealer, there’s also an answer-key entry in the lower left.
- 37aR [What the letters affected by 37-Across aptly spell] COLOR CORRECTION. Oh good! It looks as if there will be a second payoff. Guess I didn’t even read the clue for this during the solve, as there were so many crossing letters already in place.
- 17a. [Silver’s rider, with “the”] LONE RANGER. The circled letters almost spell ‘orange’—one letter is incorrect.
- 25a. [“The Ice Cream of the Future”] DIPPIN’ DOTS (pin{k}).
- 47a. [It has strings attached] MARIONETTE (mar{o}on).
- 59a. [Get some heads-down work done] GRIND IT OUT (indi{g}o).
- 65a [What the letters affected by 37-Across aptly spell] EDIT. And now the moment of truth: what to the ‘correct’ letters spell? OKOG! Dammit.
Right. Not really my thing here, but hey this exists:
The puzzle itself, despite the thematic gears, was a smooth grid that was solved with EASE (15a).
3d {“Saint Mark” sculptor] DONATELLO. “This is the first time in the Renaissance that a statue like this is made where garments echo the body’s form like this. It signals a break from the International Gothic style that preceded it, and helps to usher in a new era of increasingly natural figures carved and cast in life size or larger.” (source)- 12d [Keep from happening] AVERT. 29d [Permanently] FOR GOOD.
- 32d [Caramel sauce, e.g.] GOO. 61d [Paving material] TAR.
- 34d [2018 Travis Scott hit] SICKO MODE.
- 45d [One may smoke a joint] STONER. I’ve been unpacking books lately (probably dissociative behavior) and discovered that I have two copies of this John Williams’ STONER, which I really need to read.
- 49d [Diameter halves] RADII. 50d [How many times a day a stopped clock is right] TWICE.
- 33a [Greasy] OILY.
- 45a [Ogre who asks, “What are you doing in my swamp?”] SHREK.
- 62a [Eye part] IRIS, though I hastily filled in LENS. Similarly, I had ROAM before ROVE at 16a [Wander].
An nigh-unprecedented four musical selections today, seeing as it’s a holiday tomorrow. (Though I’m pretty sure not many will enjoy or appreciate the ‘bonus’ fourth!)
Deanne Cliburn’s USA Today Crossword, “The Right Stuff” — Emily’s write-up
I’m sure it’ll fit!
USA Today, November 27, 2024, “The Right Stuff” by Deanne Cliburn
Theme: the last word of each themer is a synonym for the verb “stuff”
Themers:
- 17a. [“Turn it up! I love this song!”], THATMYJAM
- 36a. [Better half], MAINSQUEEZE
- 59a. [Oyster garnish], LEMONWEDGE
Other that the fact that I think another themer or two could have been stuffed in (j/k!), we have a fun set of: THATMYJAM, MAINSQUEEZE, and LEMONWEDGE. I needed a few crossings on each except more were needed for the last. For some reason, I keep thinking about mignonette but it should have been more apparent to me—it’s clearly been too long since I’ve had any.
Favorite fill: ICEE, ASSAM, DOONE, SELFCARE, and MAKEROOM (perfect fit for this theme too!)
Stumpers: ABLE (cluing didn’t get me there today), ARMOR (needed a couple crossings), and PRANCER (couldn’t remember this reindeer mainly because it’s November so next month it’d probably have been easier)
A great puzzle with excellent fill and a fun theme and themer set. Overall it was a smooth solve and some of the tricker themers for me today were likely easier for others. Nicely done!
4.0 stars
~Emily
Christina Iverson’s LA Times crossword – Gareth’s theme review
As revealed at the great final answer, UMBRELLATERM, this crossword asks us, do we know the words for the parts of an umbrella? In my case, no, at least not that the top was a canopy, though it’s perfectly inferrable. So:
- [Is treated unfairly], GETSTHESHAFT
- [Biodiverse ecological layer], RAINFORESTCANOPY
- [Lost control of one’s emotions], FLEWOFFTHEANDLE
Gareth
Well the obvious addition would be Chekhov’s Olga, Maria, and Irina. I bet you could have gotten them into the grid, too. The S and SE has very little thematic content. Put Olga at 57D and either Irina at 51D or Maria at 52D and you just need to find somewhere to fit in either Maria or Irina!
That’s where I thought it was going. I did not like BEL ESPRIT, not one tiny bit. Never heard it before and couldn’t parse it until I came here.
Same. I also had NESTLE as 46D for far too long, which made that corner take forever to come together
I didn’t approve of it but I enjoyed it.
Oh, no. My comment about disapproval and enjoyment applied to BEL ESPRIT. I had no problem with NESTLED in any way, because I knew what a “Flexible Flyer” was. That is, I got to the end without completing the puzzle, and never completed it because I had problems with SKIT and HAKA. I had thought I’d learned that there was a Kardashian sister who started her name with “C.”
Glad to see your comment Jenni. I had just assumed that not grokking BEL ESPRIT was another sign of my miseducation.
I would have much rather seen the Chekhov sisters than those “famous for being famous” children of one of OJ’s Dream Team lawyers. Call me a grinch, but that soured me on the puzzle. I was enjoying the puzzle a lot until I got there.
Somewhere during life I had heard the term “bel esprit” so it didn’t bother me. I had MesHed in place of nested for a while.
Leonard Cohen took me too long to get… In the back of my mind I knew it but resisted for some reason. I liked seeing Clara Schumann in the grid, and thanks for the info about her talent supporting the family while rearing 8 children… truly a Wonder Woman!
Plus, she raised them without any help from her husband after he committed suicide when they were ages 2 through 15. Through all of this, she lived in the shadow of her famous husband in spite of being a virtuoso pianist (she almost always played from memory, a rarity in that day and age), an in-demand piano teacher and a great composer (though sadly, not recognized as such during her lifetime). She was truly a remarkable person.
NYT:
The definition of Bel Esprit must have shifted when used in English. In French, it carries a negative connotation. A couple of examples of definition from French sources;
“Bel Esprit”-
Personne qui cherche avec affectation à se montrer spirituelle (Larousse)
(Person who tries to appear intellectual in an affected way)
Esprit pourvu de distinction, mais prétentieux (Linternaute)
(Mind endowed with distinction, but pretentious.)
So, the clue as given threw me.
And after I finished the top half, the contrast with the bottom half threw me. It was funny, but I would have liked the irony (?) to have been reflected somewhere…
Thanks, huda, for the background on BEL ESPRIT.
I guess I’d always assumed that “esprit” meant the same as it does in “esprit de corps,” making a BEL ESPRIT someone with a good attitude (or something like that).
Interesting, thanks! Looks like it has indeed shifted in English. Here’s MW: “a person with a fine and gifted mind
as a bel esprit she despised pedantry whether in a man or in a bluestocking—
Robert Halsband
I always imagine someone in Louis the XIV’s court with a powdered perruque, who’s smart, well cultured and trying to one up and outshine everyone else. Not sure that the term originated there, but that spirit was certainly part of that court’s vibe.
I once saw a GIF of Prince at some public performance very sassily telling Kim Kardashian, “Get off the stage!” Now, I did suffer from fanboy awe when it came to Prince, and I suffered from that Can Do No Wrong presumptiveness that so often attends fanperson awe. Because of that, I smiled when I saw the GIF; my thoughts were things like “That’s just Prince bein’ Prince” and “That’s so Prince” and ruminations on the “appropriateness”, to my mind, of a talent of Prince’s caliber having the right to say something like that to someone who, as far as I know, and as is mentioned above, is “famous for being famous”; so my takeaway was fanboy satisfaction. When I reviewed the moment later, however, I started feeling guilty and stuff because basically I’d been advocating bullying, I felt. And I hate bullying; it’s repulsive when I see it in myself and when I see it in others. So the question I had to ex post facto ask myself was, Why was this bullying comment something I found attractive? Just because it’s Prince? Should talent or status permit being a d*ck?–Stuff like that. And I was mad at myself for lumping Kim Kardashian into this bin in the warehouse of my head where I put most Influencers, people famous for being famous, profit-hungry charlatans, and just, in general, Fake. But how much do I really know about all these people in my Fake bin? Kim Kardashian may just be a lovely individual with really cool things to say, or something. Coincidentally (or maybe YouTube-algorithm-inducedly), I’d been making my way through Prince’s discography, and it’s, like, 40 albums or something; and the opinion I’d arrived at three quarters of the way through was that Prince is probably overrated: He’s got this rara avis, “Purple Rain”, and a few satellite songs from the albums before and after–“Raspberry Beret”, “Little Red Corvette”, etc.–that share, if not the vibe of the “Purple Rain” material, the *craftsmanship* of it; and it’s just High Art, it is; it’s what pop rock Should Be… but, man, other than that, his discography (so far) is unbearably mediocre. And now that my fanboy awe has dwindled down to gemologist’s appreciation, the lens through which I view that GIF is soooo different. I’m like, “Calm down, Prince, what’d she do to you? Don’t talk to her that way, dude.” And what was appealing sass is now unappealing rudeness. So, yeah. I do still avidly despise the vocation of Influencer, and I don’t see that changing.
NYT: I don’t find “Fake” to be a good clue for ERSATZ.
“Fake” tends to imply deception. ERSATZ items, on the other hand, are mainly replacements or substitutes for the genuine article, with no deception involved.
The clue works for me.
From the American Heritage Dictionary, see definition 2:
ersatz
er·satz (ĕr′zäts′, ĕr-zäts′)
adjective
1. Being a usually inferior imitation or substitute; artificial: ersatz coffee made of chicory.
2. Not genuine; fake: “Popularity was an intoxicant … reporters began to ask for interviews and I gave them in an ersatz accent” (Maya Angelou).
[German, replacement, from ersetzen, to replace, from Old High German irsezzan : ir-, out; see ud- in the Appendix of Indo-European roots + sezzan, to set; see sed- in the Appendix of Indo-European roots.]
Hey Eric, it’s me, Cat Lady Margaret. I hope this is the right place for you to get back to me…
Yep, this works!
New Yorker: Patrick Berry should have no complaints today about how easy his puzzles are to do. This one was supposed to be easy, and wasn’t hard, but it offered a bit of resistance. (I always either like or love his puzzles, no matter what.)
I wrote poorly again here. I meant Patrick Berry should get no complaints today.
Berry’s Saturday variety puzzles for the WSJ, where he mostly leaves it to you to place the answers, can be brutal, although fairly enjoyable.
I seem to be the minority, but I loved the NYT. Delightful pairing of the two sets of sisters. It helped that I was very familiar with th revealer’s meaning of three sisters.
All I could think of with the NYT was how bad things have got from the Bronte sisters to the Kardashians. Or, for that matter, from Clara and Robert to the Justice League of Americam, SELENA, Crying at the H Mart, and ENEWS. I was lucky to remember vaguely DOERR, whom I’ve never read, but HAKA / KOURTNEY was still a do not finish for me. Could HAKA, the sound of which I have come across before, I don’t know where, have been spelled Haca”? I didn’t know. I also know ACCRA mostly from crosswords.
I could see right off that they were looking for Leonard COHEN, who has lots of fans for his sophistication, but I take him as a poet and completed the fill only with reluctance myself. So overall a clever theme wasn’t as much fun in practice for me as for others. Oh, and THE before SAHARA and the repetition in OH MY and OH HI.
Amy — Please find a reliable substitute for Kyle’s New Yorker obligations.
Gerald Paul