Tuesday, December 10, 2024

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Matt Jones’s Jonesin’ Crossword, “Centers of Attention” — literally and figuratively. – Erin’s write-up

Hello lovelies! I try not to bust out the Gen Z slang unless I’m trying to embarrass my middle schooler, but the only way to describe this puzzle is MID:

• 16a. [NYC mayor Ed Koch’s greeting (or just a question of evaluation] HOW’M I DOIN’
• 20a. [Western Nevada body of water with distinctive rock structures sticking out] PYRAMID LAKE
• 36a. [CBS panel show hosted by Taylor Tomlinson] AFTER MIDNIGHT
• 52a. [Dale Earnhardt, Sr. nickname, with “The”] INTIMIDATOR
• 59a. [Centers represented by the circled letters] MIDPOINTS. In other words, the exacted center of each theme every is the letters MID.

Other things:

• 8d. [“___ 1/2” (classic manga)] RANMA. The ongoing tales of a male martial arts star who turns into a girl when exposed to cold water and to a boy when exposed to hot water were first written in the 1980s. Netflix started airing their adaptation this year.
• 55d. [Letters on a vaccine for whooping cough  (among other things)] TDAP. It stands for tetanus, diphtheria, and acellular pertussis. Whooping cough, or pertussis, is no joke.

Until next week!

Seth Bisen-Hersh’s Wall Street Journal crossword, “Being Real”—Jim’s review

Theme answers are phrases that describe a thing called LIFE. The revealer is “THAT’S LIFE!” (56a, [Sinatra song, and a possible exclamation on seeing 17-, 20-, 37- or 51-Across]).

• 17a. [Fun activity for a rainy day] BOARD GAME.
• 20a. [Informative reading] NEWSMAGAZINE.
• 37a. [It goes from box to bowl] BREAKFAST CEREAL.
• 51a. [Focus for philosophers] OUR EXISTENCE.

Nice theme. The last one feels a bit iffy since the others are solid in-the-language phrases, but after I finished and fully appreciated the theme, I feel it works as a pseud0-punchline since it really is what life is and the others are all simply manufactured products with that name.

In the fill we have some illicit activity livening things up: ACID TRIP and ADULTERY. Plus there’s NEGLECT, TRICYCLES, and PERENNIAL to sink our teeth into. Nothing really tripped me up too badly; smooth fill overall.

Clues of note:

• 29d. [“You ___ Beautiful” (Joe Cocker song)]. ARE SO. What do you think? Is this cluing angle better than [Playground retort]? It’s a change of pace at least.
• 49d. [Plant with leaves chewed as a stimulant]. BETEL. In Chamorro culture, the BETEL nut is what my parents’ generation sought, especially after a meal. The act is almost as much a social occasion as it is a stimulant.

Good puzzle. Four stars.

Brian Callahan and Geoffrey Schorkopf’s New York Times Crossword — Eric’s review

First off, congratulations to Geoffrey Schorkopf on making his NYT crossword debut!

Shaded squares in four Down answers tell us the theme answers will be vertical. I typically don’t like that sort of grid arrangement, because it’s much easier to read right to left left to right than top to bottom. I more or less ignored the shaded squares while solving. But it’s a nice theme, starting with the centrally-placed revealer:

• 14D [Some movie set workers … or what you do when filling in the shaded squares?] MAKEUP ARTISTS

Each remaining theme answer incorporates a well-known painter, reading up in the grid:

• 5D [Rich liquid added to curries] COCONUT MILK Gustav Klimt
• 10D [Taekwondo moves done with an outstretched leg] HEEL KICK Paul Klee I didn’t know HEEL KICK, but it was easy enough to get with a cross or two.
• 24D [Reflection] MIRROR IMAGE Joan Miró
• 33D [Fitness discipline for thousands of years] HATHA YOGA Francisco Goya

You don’t need to know all these painters (or even any of them) to solve this puzzle without much difficulty.

It would have been ideal if at least one of the artists had been a woman or a person from somewhere other than Europe. But I’m sure the constructors were limited to a fairly small set of artists whose backward surnames are in common phrases, much less in phrases as lively as the ones they chose.

The Across answers have some nice stuff, too:

• 14A [Period of accountability since 2017] METOO ERA I’m terrible with dates, so the clue didn’t mean much too me, though I assumed it ended in ERA.
• 16A [Hidden feature in a video game] EASTER EGG I first encountered this term in connection with DVDs. Remember those?
• 21A [Do some modeling for a figure drawing class, say] POSE NUDE That’s a nice echo of the theme answers.
• 49A [Teeth that are typically the first to grow in] INCISORS, which pairs nicely with
• 58A [“No need to fear me!”] I WON’T BITE

With all the visual art in this grid, there isn’t much room for music, but we do get 48D [Genre for SZA or H.E.R.] R AND B. No matter how many times I see that answer in a crossword, it will always throw me because I want an ampersand in the middle.

I’ve gone with SZA for tonight’s music, mainly because it seems like the ultimate 28A [“___ not you, ___ me”] IT’S. (When someone says that to you, odds are it is you.)

Zhoquin Burnikel’s Los Angeles Times crossword — Jenni’s write-up

Love a theme with subtle elegance that is still Tuesday-appropriate! I also enjoy it when I recognize the connecting elements in the theme answer and am still amused and surprised by the revealer. If I could think of an appropriate revealer, maybe I’d start trying to construct.

The theme answers:

• 17a [Film scene from a character’s perspective] is a POINT–OF–VIEW SHOT.
• 26a [Garment with patterned circles] is a POLKA–DOT DRESS.
• 46a [Lasting mere moments] is FOR A BRIEF PERIOD.

POINT, DOT, PERIOD. The revealer ties it all together: 62a [Break during a road trip, or what can be found in 17-, 26-, and 62-Across] is STOP ALONG THE WAY. The added subtlety is that the STOPs move ALONG the answers – beginning, middle, end. So smooth.

What I didn’t know before I did this puzzle: that Panic! at the Disco is an EMO band.

Elizabeth C. Gorski’s Cr♥ssw♥rd Nation puzzle (Week 706), “Colorful Pepper-Uppers”—Ade’s take

Hello there, everybody! I hope all of you are doing well to begin the week!

Today’s culinary theme touches on all of the different types of pepper there are, specifically using theme answers in which the first word of the answer is also a color associated with peppers. Give me green peppers all day, especially some cooked ones served as part of home fries! Delicious! 

• • • • BLACK FRIDAY SALE (3D: [Post-Thanksgiving retail enticement])
      • RED LEAF LETTUCES (5D: [Purplish salad ingredients])
      • WHITE RHINOCEROS (7D: [Horned pachyderm of Kenya and Zimbabwe])
      • GREEN EGGS AND HAM (9D: [Breakfast order for Dr. Seuss])
      • YELLOW LEGAL PADS (11D: [Tablets for attorneys])

Even with the five 15- letter theme answers, there was still enough room to sneak in a couple of nice long fills, and we have that with the entire name of LAKE ERIE (23A: [Cleveland’s waterfront]) and TRASH TALK, which might be the first time I’ve ever seen that in a grid before (57A: [Nasty exchange between athletes]). Of course, some trash talking could lead to an on-court/on-field/on-ice MELEE if the magic words are said (59A: [Bench-clearing brawl]). Great to see SAGAL in the grid given that she played an integral role in two of my all-time favorite shows growing up in Married … With Children and Futurama, the latter for which she’s still performing as the voice of Captain Leela (1D: [“Sons of Anarchy” actress Katey]). Didn’t know her godfather was Norman Lear until pretty recently.

“Sports will make you smarter” moment of the day: RATE (29A: [Velocity]) – It’s December, which means college football bowl season. You know, the time when a whole bunch of end-of-season college football games are played during all times of the day that are sponsored by a bunch of companies you’ve never heard of!! One of those games you might come across this month is the Rate Bowl, with this year’s game in Phoenix being Rutgers vs. Kansas State. Rate is the rebranded name of Guaranteed Rate, a mortgage company. The bowl itself began in 1989 as the Copper Bowl before becoming the Insight.com Bowl in 1997. Other sponsors of the game since then have included Domino’s Pizza, Motel 6, Cheez-It and Buffalo Wild Wings.

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

This mocha’s got some java in it! (Sorry but I’m going to flog that portmanteau for a long while.)

The 15×16 grid sports four stacked grid-spanning entries in the center, and as a lagniappe, a little triple-three stack at the bottom center that comprises a short question.

• 28a [“Actually …”] AS A MATTER OF FACT.
  36a [Split decision for a working group?] DIVISION OF LABOR.
  37a [“Makes little difference to me”] I DON’T REALLY CARE.
  38a [Approaches meant for the majority of cases] GENERAL MEASURES.

Wow!

• 51a, 55a, 58a [… “No obligation to answer this, but …”] IF I | CAN | ASK.

In addition to those goodies, there are two pairs of longish down answers—stacked of course—and all four fully intersect the the mega stack across the center:

• 7d [2017 visual novel about four queer Asian American girls shedding their metaphorical cocoons] BUTTERFLY SOUP.
  18d [Stevie Wonder song about Los Angeles] LAND OF LA-LA. (Crossing 18a [It runs between Brooklyn’s Rockaway Parkway and Manhattan’s Eighth Avenue] L TRAIN.)
• 20d [Go “K, bye”?] GET A STRIKEOUT. meh
  24d [Actively working to dismantle white supremacy] ANTIRACIST. yeh

And finally, the rest of the clues and fill, which is all quite good.

• 1a [Chi preceder] TAI, not PHI.
• 12a [“Who __?”] ISN’T. When I’d completed the grid, it wasn’t listed as correct because my answer here was IS IT. The crossing entry is 3d [App whose carousel limit was increased to twenty pics, in 2024] INSTA (not IISTA).
• 16a [Roundly criticize] BASH. 17a [Roundly criticize] PAN.
• 42a [Cooked pulau, perhaps] SAUTÉED. It’s a cognate to pilaf.
• 54a [“Without further __” (certain malapropism)] ADIEU, rather than ado. I have not encountered this, but I’m reminded of the concept of an “Irish goodbye” aka a “French leave”. And that in turn reminds me that people have always disparagingly referred to the same things (e.g. syphilis) by different demonymic outgroups.
• 56a [Person whose forte is foretelling] SEER. Just a touch of wordplay.
• 13d [“You can have one of the others”] THAT’S MINE.
  
• 22d [Position of seniority] TOP ROLE. >yawn<  Well, if this is the price we have to pay for all the other neat stuff in the grid, I can certainly live with it. Oh wait, there’s also 33d [Angela __ (Regina King’s character in “Watchmen”] ABAR. This would probably be more conventionally clued as a fill-in-the-blank of a well-known joke setup, but as those often truck in unsavory stereotypes, I can see why that avenue wasn’t taken.
• 42d [Living-room items that might be covered in plastic] SOFAS. As an antimacassar measure.
  
• 47d [“Bicycle Thieves” director Vittorio De __ ] SICA. A classic of Italian neorealism and one of my favorite films. Due for a rewatch.

Very impressive crossword.

Joe DiPietro’s Universal Crossword, “Forget It!” (ed. David Steinberg) — Matt F’s Review

Ah, a refreshing ‘trick-is-in-the-clues’ type puzzle today. If you were hoping to find sneaky wordplay in the grid answers, well you can (as the title says) forget it! Today’s revealer is spot on:

59A – [“Impossible!” … and what’s going on with each starred clue] = THERE’S NO WAY!

Get it? There’s no “way” in the starred clues! If you mentally add the “way” back, you’ll have a clue that better matches the answer in the grid.

• 17A – [Run(way)] = LANDING SITE
• 24A – [Under(way)] = IN PROGRESS
• 38A – [Broad(way)] = THEATER DISTRICT
• 47A – [High(way)] = INTERSTATE

All clues are in the format “___+ way,” and I wonder if the * should have been placed after the word in the clues. For the first answer, for example, the clue could have been [Run*]. Would this have dramatically altered the solving experience, or changed the difficulty of the puzzle? Probably not. All I’m saying is it might have been a nice way to present the theme.

I found the fill to be a touch less “automatic” than what I’m used to from Universal. With two long slots being movie titles (BAD SANTA, HE GOT GAME), MY GUESS IS which feels like an incomplete phrase, and RAM’S HORN which I guess is gettable if you know what a shofar is (apparently it’s a type of musical horn used in Jewish rituals), there was enough sticky stuff in here to slow me down a little more than usual. Oh, let’s not forget BAOBAB kicking things off at 1-Across! [“The Hobbit” hero] is BILBO, in case you conflated that with “The Lord of the Rings,” in which FRODO is the protagonist. DRYAD x TERESA and HEWED (uncommon word) made the lower right corner a bit more challenging. Oh, I almost forgot about MR DITHERS at 33-Down, a character from the comic strip, “Blondie,” which launched in 1930! I’m not saying any of this fill was bad by any stretch, just that it kept me on my toes and slowed me down. All in all, this was a solid puzzle with a cute clue-based theme. Nicely done!