Joanne Sullivan’s Wall Street Journal crossword, “Name Dropping”—Jim’s review
Theme answers are words and phrases that alternate the letters of a man’s name with other words or initialisms. Drop the name to satisfy the clue. The unified words and phrases are still valid (though unclued) crossword entries. The revealer is ODD MAN OUT (35a, [Method used to eliminate the parenthetical descriptions from the answers]).
Wall St Journal crossword solution · “Name Dropping” · Joanne Sullivan · Thu., 12.19.24
- 14a. 1986 horror novel (writer Tolstoy)] LIE TO. Remove LEO to get IT, the Stephen King book.
- 27a. Bank deposit (poker legend Ungar)] SO TRUE. Remove STU to get ORE.
- 28a. Jaguar, Ram or Charger (QB Manning)] ECLAIR. Remove ELI to get CAR.
- 48a. The hour after midnight (comedian Gaffigan)]. JOIN ME. Remove JIM to get ONE.
- 49a. Latest thing (media pro Fleischer)]. AFRAID. Remove ARI to get FAD.
- 62a. Health-care pro (actor Danson)]. TREND. Remove TED to get R.N.
- 6d. Commercial (director Ritchie)]. GAUDY. Remove GUY to get AD.
- 29d. Afterthought (Texas patriot Houston)]. SPASM. Remove SAM to get P.S.
- 51d. Meditation chant (singer Orbison)]. ROOMY. Remove ROY to get OM.
Great theme! As you’d expect, I was perplexed at first and floundered around in the top half for a while, until I manhandled (haha) LIE TO and broke it apart to get the two answers. Fun aha moment! It wasn’t until after that that I got to the revealer and appreciated the full theme with the names appearing in the odd letters. Nicely done!
I do wish there was at least one or two longer entries to enjoy and I’m not a huge fan of the ones that leave only two letters as the answer to the clue, especially the initialisms R.N. and P.S. But I realize that it must have been a chore to try and find even these entries, and that trying to find anything longer upped the difficulty for the constructor at an exponential rate. So overall, I’m quite satisfied with a beguiling theme even if some of the entries are shortish.
Fill highlights include “PLEASE DO,” DEAD HEAT, DARK DAY, CHIN-UPS, and CLAM DIP. There are a number of women’s name in the fill—ILSA, BEVERLY, ROSALIA, Mia HAMM, Jean AUEL—but I’m glad to see no other men’s names, given the theme. That can’t have been an accident.
Clues of note:
- 4d. [Stopped the bellyaching?]. ATE. Ha! Good clue.
- 12d. [Elbow-benders’ activity at bars]. CHIN-UPS. I thought this clue needed a question mark because it was about drinking, but now I realize it is in fact about exercise.
- 30d. [Resident of Equestria]. PONY. From My Little Pony in case you were wondering.
Good puzzle. 3.75 stars.
Brandon Koppy’s New York Times crossword — Zachary David Levy’s write-up
Difficulty: Average (9m36s)
Brandon Koppy’s New York Times crossword, 12/19/24, 1219
Today’s theme: SCREEN / SHARES (With 45-Down, displays during an online presentation … or a hint to three pairs of answers in this puzzle)
- TUNNEL / VISION
- TAYLORS / VERSION
- TERMINAL / VELOCITY
The diagonal march of the TV rebus squares has a pleasing symmetry to it (and in fact, the puzzle itself features diagonal symmetry, apropos of perpendicular theme pairs of equal length.) This type of symmetry also gives you a free pass vis-a-vis the cheater vignetting — don’t ask me why, but the visual just strikes me as a lot less obtrusive. Speaking of free passes, I also have no problem with GESTATE ESTATE.. something about the pairing goes beyond dupe territory, like breaking the fourth wall of fill, wink wink, here’s the same string twice, what are you going to do about it?
Cracking: SIN CITY, which is so close to being SimCity, and also its own thing. What a country!
Slacking: PRSTUNT, seven letters, one vowel, starting with PRST, really forces you to look twice at those crossings.
Sidetracking: ECHIDNAS
Brendan Emmett Quigley’s Crossword #1741 “Gift Boxes” — Eric’s review
Brendan Emmett Quigley’s Crossword #1741 “Gift Boxes”
We get a gentle, seasonally appropriate rebus today:
- 20A [“The Idiot” author] FYODOR DOS{TOY}EVSKY crossing 15D [I’m, in Oaxaca] ES{TOY} My Spanish is not great, so while it was obvious that DOSTOYEVSKY needed a rebus to fit, I wasn’t sure where it went. It didn’t help that English transliterations of Достоевский often omit the first Y.
- 35A [Seafood from Long Island] BLUEPOIN{T OY}STER crossing 29D [Singer Jackson] LA{TOY}A
- 50A [“I’m gonna have to think about this”] LET ME GET BACK {TO Y}OU crossing 54D [Mirai maker] {TOY}OTA I didn’t recognize that model; it’s the first mass-produced hydrogen fuel cell automobile.
As much as I love oysters, I’d forgotten what a bluepoint is and tried to get “crab” to fit in there. But by the time I reached LET ME GET BACK TO YOU, it was clear what the rebuses were and where they went.
The grid felt a bit segmented due to the large U-shaped groups of blocks (nine each) on either side, which isolates the entire center.
Some fill highlights:
- 4D [Divining rod, with an insect name] DOODLEBUG The “divining rod” meaning is new to me.
- 34D [Was a successful petroleum geologist] STRUCK OIL We’ve been watching the Taylor Sheridan series Landman, mostly because my sister-in-law has a small part in some episodes we haven’t yet reached. But it’s pretty good anyways.
- 42 [Agreement before the wedding] PRENUP
Boaz Moser’s LA Times crossword – Gareth’s summary
Boaz Moser’s extra-wide puzzle today feature three people whose jobs involve numbers, as, obliquely, explained at IVEGOTYOURNUMBER. ANESTHESIOLOGISTs numb you with anaesthetic; BINGOCALLERs work with numbered balls; COVERARTISTs perform musical numbers.
There is quite a lot of longer fill outside of the theme today. Highlights for me were the STEAMPUNK CURIOSHOP HOSANNA and TINYURL.
The olaf clue that meant the least to me was everything after [Tech review site…] for CNET. Apparently Ziff Davis is a company, not a person!
Gareth
Amie Walker & Amanda Rafkin’s USA Today Crossword, “Scramble Yards” — Emily’s write-up
Ready, get set, go!
USA Today, December 19, 2024, “Scramble Yards” by Amie Walker & Amanda Rafkin
Theme: each themer contains –YARDS– mixed up (aka “scramble”)
Themers:
- 16a. [“At least we don’t have humidity here!”], ITSADRYHEAT
- 35a. [Opportunities to build dream teams], FANTASYDRAFTS
- 58a. [Occassion to say “May the Fourth be with you”], STARWARSDAY
An intriguing themer set today with ITSADRYHEAT, FANTASYDRAFTS, and STARWARSDAY. The only insta-fill for me today was the third one, ironically, though I’m a bigger Trekkie than Star Wars fan. It’s become such an iconic phrase and day in the US that even public libraries often have themed crafts for that day!
Favorite fill: WANNASEE, ALTEREGO, NORAH, and COPARENT
Stumpers: SETSSAIL (needed crossings), FLETCHER (needed crossings), and AVA crossed with EVE (stumpiest stumper since I knew neither!)
Lots of fresh and lengthy fill. Loved the grid design! Overall a fairly smooth solve today though some of my knowledge was lacking so it still took me a bit longer but almost everything was crossed fairly (see above) which helped.
4.0 stars
~Emily
ZDL: What pray tell is “the cheater vignetting”? Is it where you place cheater squares in a puzzle?
I did ask google, and got this “A cheater vignette is a fictional scenario that can be used to study cheating behavior.”
“vignetting” is a term in photography where the corners of an image are turned dark/black/blurry in order to emphasize the center of the image. “cheater vignetting” is doing it in a crossword with cheater squares, mostly because (in this puzzle) filling the four corners with triple stack interlocking 7s is almost impossible.
Thank you! Interesting to learn.
Totally struggled with the SE corner of the NYT. I was trying to find another T—V— phrase like the other three areas, and that just threw me off. Didn’t help that I had SEE ALSO instead of SEE CITE and so I decided that Mount Vernon and Monticello must be not just presidential homes but also types of POTATO.
Also never heard of SCO-way or AND ONE.
I eventually figured it all out.
Never heard of SCO-Way either, and Googling didn’t help. “And One” I did know, but “ohfers” was new to me, although I’ve listened to and watched baseball since the Dodgers moved to Los Angeles.
Was SEE NOTE and SNO-WAY.
I’m presuming it’s OH-FER, as in zero hits/on bases per however many at bats.
In time, with SEE, I did think of SEE NOTE, and SNO made sense in light of the clue’s reference to salt. My real problem came in the top center and NE. I didn’t know JEONG and had trouble thinking of NERO as burning man crossing it. I didn’t know whether I wanted GRANDPA or “grandma.” I didn’t know RUMI, wasn’t sure about DIRT or maybe “deet” as illicit. (Get the dirt on is legit no?) It took me a while to think of Taylor, and ELSE as a “catchall” still sounds wrong to me.
Overall, a hard puzzle with a reasonably interesting theme. I, too, first wanted the crossings in the revealer to differ.
Same here
ditto that – didn’t know Jeong or Rumi
tough Thursday!
I got a little messed up with SAUTÉ PAN instead of SAUCE PAN…
DNF on the NYT, because of the SW section. I had OHFORS and didn’t imagine it might be spelled differently. The T in POSTSUP seems like the only possible letter, but the phrase means nothing to me. So I had to hit reveal to see where I was going wrong.
On top of that, I don’t know what a SCREENSHARE is, although it was easy enough to figure out. The TV rebuses were cute, but overall this puzzle had a lot of jargon that I just didn’t know. I’m showing my age, I guess.
Oh, and I don’t know how to make sense of the ‘baby bear’ clue. I know what GESTATE means, and I know you can bear a baby, but still…
Yah, that “baby bear” is a real stretch… it sounds like Yoda wrote the clue :D .
I enjoyed the puzzle, even though I didn’t know some of the things… Enjoyed finding the rebuses, but I did wish the revealer might have found a way to rebus the down and across.
Post up didn’t make a lot of sense to me, but I’m guessing if you post something like a “help wanted” or “lost cat” sign (hang it???) and then take it down, it works. PRstunt caught me, along with Ohfers.
NYT: that SE corner is kinda fun in a useless way: GESTATE is on top of ESTATE (as already pointed out), but also the last 6 letters of LETSEAT are an anagram of ESTATE. 3 estates in one corner!
Oh, cool. Didn’t notice that.
WSJ: Those who enjoyed yesterday’s NYT are treated to a second helping from today’s Journal. Similar concept and revealer, but in my opinion a smoother execution and more satisfying solve.
BEQ: I really enjoyed finding the rebus toys… a nice gift from Brendan!
Eric: We’ve been following Landman. Let us know who/when your sis-in-law will be on so we can BOLO! :) .
Boysohboy, Taylor Sheridan is everywhere! We just finished Yellowstone AND Lioness, in which he played parts as well as being the creative head. Haven’t seen him in Landman…YET.
He’s almost as ubiquitous as that other Taylor (kidding!) and maybe close to as rich. I just read he bought the 6666 Ranch in 2020, as well as owning another ranch in Texas.
As near as I can tell, the first episode my sister-in-law is in is Episode 7, which premieres on December 22. Her character is named Beverly, though I don’t know if that’s some other character’s wife or grandmother or if she’s a waitress or a lawyer. She’ll be in three episodes.
I found this article about Taylor Sheridan interesting: https://www.pastemagazine.com/tv/peak-tv/taylor-sheridan-tv-shows-yellowstone-special-ops-lioness-career-writers-strike