Ryan Patrick Smith’s New York Times crossword—Amy’s recap
NY Times crossword solution, 12/13/24 – no. 1213
Fave clue: 3d. [Garden-variety poker?], THORN. Roses, not card games.
Interesting grid design, sort of five interlocking crosswords. Fave fill: “LET’S GET IT ON,” AAA CARD, TEEN LIT (I do like to read YA fiction!), E-SCOOTERS, “ALONE AGAIN,” “UNDER WHERE?” (“Ha ha, you said ‘underwear’!”), RIHANNA, BAKED ZITI, and (what I did today) OVERDID IT.
Meh: ESTER, fictional Princess IDA, SEALANE. Do any of you make PONE?
47d. [Count ___, a.k.a. Nosferatu], ORLOK. Coming to theaters on Christmas Day, a new Nosferatu movie! What better movie to see with family? Bring the kids!
How did I overdo things today? By going to a book launch party after a doctor’s appointment. The book is called Don’t Go: Stories of Segregation and How to Disrupt It. An artist and a sociologist interviewed a couple dozen of us who’ve been told “Don’t go to the South Side,” or “Don’t go past X or Y Street,” but figured out there wasn’t anything rational behind those warnings, just racial fears. You can order the book here or wherever you buy your books. I shared my experience in the book, which was blurbed by Henry Louis Gates so I feel like he and I are practically friends now.
3.75 stars from me.
Rebecca Goldstein’s Los Angeles Times crossword — pannonica’s write-up
LAT • 12/13/24 • Fri • Goldstein • solution • 20241213
Does the revealer work?
- 36aR [Form of downsizing, and what has affected 18-, 29-, 45-, and 57-Across?] SHRINKFLATION.
- 18a. [Flat sea urchin] SAND QUARTER (dollar ⇒ quarter).
- 29a. [Period covered in a midterm exam, maybe] ACADEMIC DIME (quarter ⇒ dime).
- 45a. [Tattles (on)] DROPS A NICKEL (dime ⇒ nickel).
- 57a. [Dense, dark rye bread] PUMPERPENNY (nickel ⇒ penny).
So. Let’s work this out. The inflation part is responsible for the individual denominations being reduced per each entry. And … the shrink part is describing the descending sequence from dollar to nickel? Is that the correct interpretation? It’s the best I can come up with, anyway.
- 2d [Pulitzer category since 1970] CRITICISM. You’d think it would have been around earlier than that, but also CRITICISM was really riding a wave through the 1960s and after.
- 3d [Muslim festival that precedes the Tashreeq days] EID AL-ADHA. New one on me.
- 4d [“There’s no other explanation”] MUST BE.
- 11d [Hit the deck] EAT IT. I don’t feel these are quite equivalent. 17a [Ducked, maybe] HID.
- 12d [Para ice hockey gear] SLEDS. Paralympics, or maybe just para sports? That MUST BE a thing, right?
- 30d [Results of rolling up ones sleeves?] CUFFS. Obvs.
- 34d [“Great job, friend!”] LOOK AT YOU.
- 35d [Private parts?] INNER SELF. Nice.
- 39d [Bill Withers hit that begins, “Sometimes in our lives / We all have pain”] LEAN ON ME. Not often we see this whole title in a crossword grid.
- 40d [Civilization-building video game series set in various years] ANNO. Unknown to me, but the “set in various years” bit helped.
- 44d [Half of roll call] ELS. Four of the eight letters.
- 46d [Range whose highest point is Wahzhazhe Summit] OZARKS. Sometimes I suspect certain clues are part of a long-game setup to acclimatize solvers for new unusual words that might make their way into grids.
- 1a [Makeup of an oyster bed?] ICE. Not in the wild, or even a farm, but in a restaurant. 4a [Ordering aid] MENU.
- 22a [Mate mate?] SOUL, as in the compound word soulmate.
- 52a [“Maybe I’ll give it a pass”] NO STARS. The statement in the clue seems as if it would be a response to another’s assessment, whereas the entry would be something said by whoever had experienced whatever is at issue. No?
- 63a [Wet weather wear] ANORAK. I would’ve said it was more of a cold-weather garment, but Wikipedia provides pertinent evidence: “The words anorak and parka have been used interchangeably, but they are somewhat different garments. Strictly speaking, an anorak is a waterproof, hooded, pull-over jacket without a front opening, and sometimes drawstrings at the waist and cuffs, and a parka is a hip-length cold-weather coat, typically stuffed with down or very warm synthetic fiber, and with a fur-lined hood.”
Freddie Cheng’s Universal crossword, “Mark Your Calendars”—Jim’s review
Theme answers are familiar phrases that feature two instances of a three-letter abbreviation of a single day of the week. The revealer is DOUBLEDAY (50a, [Big name in book publishing … and what each starred clue’s answer contains?]).
Universal crossword solution · “Mark Your Calendars” · Freddie Cheng · Fri., 12.13.24
- 16a. [*Period from dawn until dusk, roughly] SUNRISE TO SUNSET. Sunday.
- 26a. [*Play bills?] MONOPOLY MONEY. Monday.
- 37a. [*Contact through a mutual connection] FRIEND OF A FRIEND. Friday.
A fine theme although the first and third theme entries featured repetition not found in the second entry. And starting off with Sunday and Monday made me expect to see each day of the week represented. But I searched around for any Tuesday phrase that might fit the bill, but none did. Not even when I paired TUE with any other day of the week. So this is probably the best that there is and it works well enough.
I loved IT’S BEEN REAL in the fill. AIN’T NOTHING (clued [“Age ___ but a Number” (1994 Aaliyah album)]) feels like a long partial, and being my age, I’m more familiar with the Marvin Gaye/Tammi Terrell song (below).
The rest of the fill is solid and smooth with nothing too off-the-wall. 3.25 stars.
NYT was good — it seemed a tad tougher than usual to me. No idea about ORLOK, but the crosses were reasonable. The clue for SNEAKER seems iffy – Air Jordans are made by Nike, so it’s the name of a style of shoe, not the manufacturer.
… or you can take “of Jordan” to mean being associated with Michael Jordan, which is significantly less iffy.
I also thought this was a tough puzzle for a Friday. I think there’s a potential Natick for the M crossing SAM and MSTEAMS. Unfortunately, I have to use Teams for work and I hate it. I’ve never seen it referred to as “MS Teams” until today, though.
I agree, good puzzle. Southwest was hardest for me but finished in decent time.
BAKED ZITI! never made that, but good entry.
I wouldn’t call that crossing a Natick, though the M was my last letter and I was surprised that it was correct.
SAM Altman was frequently mentioned in the news in 2023 when he was ousted at OpenAI, though I haven’t heard much about him in the last year.
And it took me a few seconds after finishing to correctly parse MS TEAMS. I’m glad I retired before the pandemic and never had to use those kinds of “team collaboration applications” for anything important.
That was my last letter, too. But I agree about that not really being a Natick – seems like the only choices for 53-D would be SAM and SAL, and the latter seems unlikely. And though I’ve never used MS TEAMS, I guess it’s pretty widely used.
I breezed through the NE, NW, and center, but then the bottom half was significantly harder, though still a good puzzle. It did help that I recalled, after a while, SAM Altman. He’s been in the news a lot, including in fact the NYT online for tomorrow’s print paper. I’d never heard of either MS TEAM or Slacker and hadn’t kept up with Nosferatu.
LAT – I found the revealer a little off, too. I think of shrinkflation as less of something for the same price. Like I’ve seen with Honey Maid Graham Crackers. But I enjoyed the puzzle and the theme provided a genuine aha moment so I got over it pretty quickly
Without pannonica’s write-up, I’d never have remembered how easy Eric Idle and the bunch made it seem to churn out Beatles songs. (And till I looked it up, I didn’t know that Paul McCartney produced I’m the Urban Spaceman for Neil Innes and the Bonzo Dog Band.)
What’s always impressed me about the Rutles’ music is that none of their songs (at least the ones I know from the original show) are a parody of a specific Beatles song. Instead, they’re wonderful amalgamations of musical bits from various Beatles songs combined with lyrics that are in themselves very funny.
Amazing, too, though, also how close they can be. I read in Wiki that John Lennon loved it but advised them that they might want to make the take on “Bet Back” a little more oblique to avoid getting into trouble for copyright infringement. But then he’d also said George Harrison was foolish not to have made small tinkering with “My Sweet Lord” that, he said, would have been enough to avoid a suit.
To my ear, the bit on “Get Back” was protected satire, and they did get away with it. Ironically, to my poor ear Lennon’s own “Starting Over,” a nice enough song, is awfully close to ripping off a melody from the Beach Boys.
NYT: I enjoyed this Friday puzzle, especially the two references to two songs that transported me back to my youth. I always thought the name of the song was “Alone Again (Naturally)”, but not a big deal. Boy, did that guy have a bad day 🥲
I smiled that, although perhaps not an intended irony, Gilbert O’Sullivan is diagonally across from Gilbert and Sullivan.
Can someone please explain the answer for 1 down? W for one? answer hotel
W is an upscale hotel chain currently run by Marriot I think. They might’ve used to be Westins but I haven’t followed the evolution.
Thanks for the explanation.