Lynn Lempel’s Wall Street Journal crossword, “So I See!”—Jim’s review
Theme answers are familiar phrases except the letters IC have been added to certain words.
Wall St Journal crossword solution · “So I See!” · Lynn Lempel · Wed., 12.11.24
- 17a. [“Beetle Bailey” subject?] ARMY ANTICS.
- 25a. [Rationale for Christmas doings?] YULE LOGIC.
- 36a. [Got some invigorating libations in a raffle?] WON TONICS.
- 50a. [Dessert chef’s reaction to a fire in the oven?] CAKE PANIC. We also would have accepted [Tense moment on “The Great British Baking Show”?].
- 60a. [Tough issue for a debater?] ROCKY TOPIC.
Nice to see Lynn’s byline here, and true to form this grid was light but enjoyable. I especially liked the Christmas cluing angles since we here are deep into house preparation for a Christmas party this weekend.
Nothing longer than 7 in the fill (thanks to that middle theme answer bisecting the grid), but there are definitely highlights: SAMURAI, “I FORGOT“, BAKLAVA, and SCORPIO.
Clues of note:
- 63a. [Ramble]. ROVE. Was not expecting “Ramble” in its “traveling around” sense, but it certainly works. And it made me think of The Dubliners’ song below (though it never mentions rambling).
- 24d. [A heap]. SLEWS. Couldn’t get past the thought this was about a clunker of a car. Needed every crossing.
- 38d. [Bit of breathtaking attire?]. CORSET. Cute. Also: [Hits the bar?] for SPACES.
- 53d. [Mary Martha Corinne Morrison Claiborne Boggs Roberts, familiarly]. COKIE. Oy. Glad she went with a nickname.
Good puzzle. 3.5 stars.
Kathy Bloomer & Jeff Chen’s New York Times crossword–Amy’s recap
NY Times crossword solution, 12/11/24 – no. 1211
The shaded squares in the long Downs spell out HEARING, TASTE, FEEL, SIGHT, and SMELL. The circled letters spell out SORTA, and the IN ONE SENSE revealer hints that each circled letter is “in” one of the senses. Solid theme.
A little surprised to find ERTE and EDO in a Tuesday puzzle, but then again, it’s a Wednesday puzzle.
Time for an early bedtime. Good night!
Caitlin Reid’s New Yorker crossword – Kyle’s write-up
The New Yorker solution grid – Caitlin Reid – Wednesday 12/11/2024
The crossword page on the New Yorker’s website features a clue from each puzzle as a teaser. Today’s teaser for Caitlin Reid’s puzzle is [Seasonal song such as “Deck the Halls”] CAROL, so I was in a festive mood even before starting to solve.
Right off the bat I got 1D BEIGNET [Square-shaped New Orleans doughnut], followed by 1A “BREATHE” [Instruction to someone who’s nervous or afraid]. That’s a really nice combination to start off a themeless. It set the tone for the rest of the solve, with ART HISTORY, DEATH STAR, BLANKET HOG and POKER FACE standing out, all crossing the eye-catching 6D HEIR TO THE THRONE [Next in line?]. That question mark feels a little superfluous, but it’s not too troublesome.
Interesting bit of trivia on national personifications at 15A [Lady Liberty : United States :: ___ : United Kingdom] BRITANNIA. Did you know that Lady Liberty only became the main personification of the US in the 20th century? Before that, it was Columbia.
Ending on a musical note with Scott Joplin’s “Maple Leaf RAG“:
Thanks Caitlin!
Catherine Cetta’s Universal crossword, “Running Tab” — pannonica’s write-up
Universal • 12/11/24 • Wed • “Running Tab” • Cetta • solution • 20241211
The theme entries contain the trigram T-A-B across multiple words. In each successive answer, the sequence moves further right.
- 17a. [IT manager’s nightmare] DATA BREACH.
- 27a. [Mets slogan] YA GOTTA BELIEVE. My first attempt, before I appreciated the theme, was I WANT TO BELIEVE. I think that’s the tagline from The X-Files?
- 46a. [“Unquestionable”] NO DOUBT ABOUT IT.
- 60a. [Fell ill, or did an entomologist’s task] CAUGHT A BUG, which could, if pressed, also be a revealer.
Works well enough as a theme.
- 1d [“Is there more?”] AND. Nope.
- 7d [Common ancestor?] ADAM. Really? Even with the question mark this is poor. 24d [Addams family cousin] ITT. 34a [Perfect place] EDEN. >sigh< Maybe I’m paranoid but it feels as if this crossword’s fill has an agenda, or maybe just a strong bias that irks me (see next).
- 18d [Ernie’s buddy] BERT. Reminds me somewhat of the contortions, distortions, and outright suppression some archaeologists and historians have engaged in while describing ancient homosexual relationships. Then again, this is just a clue in a crossword, not a manifesto. 63d [Merry] GAY.
- 52d [“The Cow” by Ogden Nash, for one] POEM.
The cow is of the bovine ilk;
One end is moo, the other, milk - 21d [Chilled (out)] MELLOWED.
- 23a [Drab’s counterpart] DRIB. 47d [Like ice cream on a hot day] DRIPPY.
- 1d [“Is there more?”] AND. Yep.
The captions in this video are incorrect. Rune Arnesen (not Arnesend) is the principal drummer, not the turntablist. Also many of the song titles are incorrect. Great concert performance though.
Karen Lurie’s AVXC Crossword “Brass Finish” — Eric’s review
Karen Lurie’s AVXC Crossword 12/11/24
The cover email from AVXC touted this as “an (ultrarare) 1/5 difficulty puzzle.” I solved it under the unusual circumstances of being wired up for a sleep study (after a day of skiing), so I found it a bit more challenging than advertised.
I know a guy who likes to try and guess the revealer in an easy crossword after he’s gotten a few theme answers. I’d have failed miserably if I had tried to do that here: While the theme obviously had something to do with the circled letters (which are shaded in the PDF version), the revealer phrase is one I’ve only come across in crossword puzzles.
- 21A [Wax target, perhaps] PUBIC HAIR (I tried PUBIC AREA first, not noticing that the circled letters didn’t spell anything.)
- 33A [Group with the hip hop classic “93 ’til Infinity”] SOULS OF MISCHIEF I don’t recognize the song title or the artist; 1993 was a long time ago.
- 44A [Way, way, WAY more advanced] LIGHT YEARS AHEAD Nice answer to see in a grid.
- 59A [Last obstacle to victory in many a video game, or a hint to the shaded words in this puzzle] FINAL BOSS
It’s certainly a serviceable theme, though one that didn’t do much for me, either because I don’t play video games or because I had crap pasted all over me.
The grid allows for two eight-letter Down answers and four seven-letter Down answers, but few of them have much sparkle:
- 5D [“D’oh!” inducers] MISHAPS I do kinda like the Homer Simpson clue, though; see also 32D [Vessels often seen on “Treehouse of Horrors” episodes of “The Simpsons”] UFOS.
- 6D [Easternmost Great Lake] ONTARIO Back in 2007, my husband and I drove to Canada to ride a bike trail and went home to Texas via Niagara Falls. We drove about ⅔ of the way around Lake Ontario; going through the Toronto urban area seemed to take forever.
- 41D [Ghost costume necessities] EYEHOLES Has any kid since Charlie Brown dressed like that for Halloween? This was probably the most interesting of the longer Down answers.
- 46D [First available] SOONEST
- 47D [Show featuring Brian Tyree Henry as Paper Boi] ATLANTA I haven’t seen this, but it was easy enough to get with a few crosses.
A few other things:
- 20A [FML, quaintly] ALAS The phrase in the clue wasn’t familiar, though I could guess the first word without much trouble.
- 23A [Cheeky feature?] DIMPLE You won’t see them below, but yes, both my cheeks have dimples.
- 51D [Intense, powdery liner] KOHL I didn’t know that stuff was powdery.
Not the Ideal Puzzle-Solving Set-up
Maddy Ziegler’s LA Times crossword – Gareth’s summary
A simple enough theme concept by Maddie Ziegler today. As explained at DRESSINGDOWN, each of four long down answers has a second component that is a dressing flavour: hauntedHOUSE, tanaFRENCH (new person to me, but the clue does say who they are,) and dudeRANCH.
Not too much more that I’d like to note; there were five blank/word clues, which felt a few more than ideal…
Gareth
NYT: This type of theme — where special letters spell some related words once the clue answers are entered — leaves me cold as far as themes go.
(But without a doubt, this is the quickest I’ve ever solved a Wednesday NYT puzzle.)
NYT: I liked the theme, it made me smile and I appreciated the ease, I needed that after a long day/week. I would have thought TOUCH rather than FEEL?
I love MAE WEST sayings. Did she actually say all that stuff?
It looks like she did. And I enjoy them, too – https://www.imdb.com/name/nm0922213/quotes/
“I wrote the story myself. “
What a smart woman. Thanks for the link.
An amazing feat of construction which had nothing to do with the solving experience for those like me who completed it like an easy Tuesday and then got the theme as an anti-climax. Did any of you deal with the theme at all while solving the puzzle?
I think Rex will have a field day with this one.
NYT: I solved in AcrossLite, and there were no shaded squares. AL usually turns shaded squares into circles, but with circles in the grid already, I guess that wouldn’t have worked.
So when I got the revealer, I could see that the circled letters spelled SORTA, which worked with IN A SENSE, but I couldn’t make sense of the “Description” part of the revealer. Seemed like a pretty thin theme until I read Amy’s writeup.
Nice puzzle – I usually enjoy puzzles Jeff Chen has a hand in.
Same here re: AcrossLite.
I enjoyed the puzzle but the theme didn’t work much without the shaded squares. After reading the write up I appreciate the wordplay in the theme answers.
Lots of fresh and lively fill, so it was a fun Wednesday even without doing it in the app. Maewest (full name), Britannia, blanket hog (I think I remeber seeing this one). Wanted Minivan instead of minisuv.
NYT: I think the theme works really well. It’s nice to see a Birnholzian-level effort in what is Supposed To Be the premier crossword venue. I’m not often a solver, so the user experience of puzzles I look at on Fiend is usually lost on me; so I guess I’m coming from more of a construction enthusiast’s appreciation here, but, wow, way to stick the landing: You take the five senses, insert a particular letter (decided by a meta entry) into each sense, and then you hide each sense+letter in a longer entry–and all that stuff has to be symmetrical. Not to be critical, just nostalgically analytical, but how long ago would today’s taciturn blogospheric peanut gallery have been wowed by such a feat? Five or ten years? Twenty, at most, for sure. I don’t care what kind of coding algorithm GPT software spit out the theme set in 20 seconds; it’s a pretty, well-executed grid. As noted above and elsewhere, FEEL not being TOUCH would be my major, critical nit–and it’s just interesting to me, in my current fit of Golden Age Syndrome, that once upon a recent time the complexity of the endeavor would have rendered the blemish much less noticeable.
Hard to get much enthusiasm, as usual, for TNY beginner puzzles. They take no thought whatsoever and don’t depend on the setter’s wit, ingenuity, or ability to work with original and long entries.
I want to say that they really could use something intermediate between these and the impossible nature of yesterday’s. But early-week TNY puzzles don’t require thought either (although I liked Gorski’s on Monday and even more Berry’s the Monday before). No amount of thinking will make me a follower of queer social media, say, much as I support gay rights, or of trash TV. As I keep saying, you know it or you don’t. I should say instead, then, that the editor is, plain and simple, averse to thinking. It risks ruining for me my favorite magazine for decades.
Pretty much every time Monday through Wednesday you come on here bemoaning the New Yorker crossword, about how it has too much pop culture you don’t know, too many names you’re unable to figure out or have no interest in learning, or how on Wednesday’s it’s too easy. And yet for some reason you keep solving it. At some point you should probably just accept this puzzle isn’t for you and find another one instead.
(Also I find it funny that you’d accuse the editor of being averse to thinking when you’re the one openly declaring topics like “queer social media” to be not worth thinking about like it’s beneath you.)