Mike Shenk’s Wall Street Journal crossword, “Autoplay”—Jim’s review
Theme answers come in pairs straddling a black square. The second entry in each pair starts with a letter that really belongs at the end of the first word in order for both clues to be satisfied, yet each modified word is still a valid (though unclued) crossword entry. The shared letters collectively comprise the gears of a car: PRNDL (63a, [Letters marking a 54-Across]) with 54a revealing the why and wherefore: GEAR SHIFT [Auto part, and a clue to what’s going on in five rows of this puzzle].
Wall St Journal crossword solution · “Autoplay” · Mike Shenk · Thu., 1.9.25
- 17a. [Exhibit parsimony] / 18a. [Paper contents] SCRIM / PARTICLES –> scrimp / articles.
- 24a. [Mate of Harrison] / 25a. [Sushi bar selection] STAR / REEL –> Starr / eel.
- 26a. [Fabric design] / 29a. [Quiver fill] PATTER / NARROWS –> pattern / arrows.
- 42a. [Rob Gronkowski, e.g.] / 44a. [Vantage point] TIGHTEN / DANGLE –> tight end / angle.
- 45a. [Helvetica look-alike] / 46a. [Animal refuge of note] ARIA / LARK –> arial / ark.
Fun Thursday theme! I actually caught on pretty quickly with that first entry, but finding the other entries and figuring out the full scope of what was going on took longer than expected.
Looking at my screenshot and the highlighted letters makes the letter layout seem more random than it is. In fact however, we still have the usual rotational symmetry with PARTICLES in row 3 corresponding to the revealer in row 13 and all the other theme answers in rows 5/6 and 10/11. The only entries not having a symmetrical partner are SCRIM and the second revealer PRNDL. Overall, an impressive construction.
And that continues in the fill with FETISHES, TATTERED, HAMSTER, and CAR TRIP providing some sparkle.
Clues of note:
- Clues with unexpected usage: 20a [Retiring] for SHY, 47a [Ring components] for OPERAS, and 33a [Some get you checks] for MOVES. That second one looks like it’s about Wagner’s Ring Cycle, and I’m not totally sure about that last one, but I’m thinking it’s about chess.
- 41a. [Lock site]. CANAL. I went with CANOE at first and not knowing BOOG Powell above this entry made this section a smidge thorny. My other big error was PERIOD instead of PHRASE for 40d [It serves a sentence].
Very nice puzzle. Four stars.
David P. Williams’s New York Times crossword — Zachary David Levy’s write-up
Difficulty: Easy (9m45s)
David P. Williams’s New York Times crossword, 1/9/25, 0109
Today’s theme: NATO (Grp. whose alphabet is used eight times in this puzzle)
- CLYDESDALE (Charlie horse)
- PANDA (Papa bear)
- SERGIO (Sierra Leone)
- THIRTEEN (Tango number)
- GAZPACHO (Golf course)
- WELCHS (Whiskey soda)
- QUITO (Quebec city)
- ARTHUR ASHE (Alpha male (double))
No yankee, no hotel, no foxtrot. Sorry Jeff Tweedy. Consolation prize: still the greatest indie rock album of all time.
Cracking: ERSATZ, personal gold star vocabulary word, leave it on the fridge until the end of time. Maybe you think I should have picked BODHI TREE, but I don’t give a fig what you think.
Slacking: it’s HRE, DUH
Sidetracking: “Those aren’t BUOYS“
Marshal Hermann’s Fireball Crossword, “Shared Recipe” – Jenni’s write-up
You can bank on it! Each theme clue is a letter bank for the answer.
- 20a [Pancake made from cilantro?] is CORN TORTILLA.
- 26a [Sides made from hot sauce?] is SUCCOTASHES.
- 35a [Beverages made from sorbet?] are ROOT BEERS.
- 40a [Condiment made from lime soda?] is SESAME SEED OIL. Hmm. It’s always “sesame oil” in my house.
- 61a [Fish dish made from almonds?] is SALMON SALAD.
- 68a [British snacks made from almonds?] are POTATO CRISPS. Do they really say that in the UK? Or are they just “crisps?”
What I didn’t know before I did this puzzle: that CHAUCER was the first poet interred in Poet’s Corner in Westminster Abbbey.
Maddy Ziegler’s USA Today Crossword, “Incognito Tab” — Emily’s write-up
It’s a sneaky one today.
USA Today, January 09, 2025, “Incognito Tab” by Maddy Ziegler
Theme: each themer contains —TAB— (or hidden within a.k.a. “incognito”)
Themers:
- 20a. [“Ugh, never mind!”], FORGETABOUTIT
- 38a. [“Let’s try this instead…”], IGOTABETTERIDEA
- 53a. [Star and creator of “Abbott Elementary”], QUINTABRUNSON
A mix of themers with FORGETABOUTIT, IGOTABETTERIDEA, and QUINTABRUNSON. Each filled easily, especially the first for me today.
Favorite fill: GOOFTROOP, ODDMANOUT, and BARGAMES
Stumpers: PERT (“curt” came to mind first) and OOZE (needed crossings)
A quick solve today with great fill and nice cluing with a fun theme and themer set! Enjoyed the title clue as well. A fun Thursday puzzle indeed!
4.0 stars
~Emily
Brendan Emmett Quigley’s Crossword #1747 “Curling” — Eric’s review
Brendan Emmett Quigley’s Crossword #1747 — 1/9/25
Apologies for the late review. I’m still on a ski vacation and spent the day trying not to break my neck on very hard-packed snow.
On Brendan’s website, he included a link to a video of “The most impressive curling shots in Olympic . . . .” (I’m gonna go out on a limb and guess that ellipsis is standing in for “history.”) Two of the people my husband and I are skiing with enjoy watching curling, but I don’t get the appeal.
Anyway, I thought the video was misdirection, but no. The theme answers are all curling puns:
- 17A [Straddling a curler’s tool?] JUMPING THE BROOM
- 26A [Ruins a curling surface?] BREAKS THE ICE
- 43A [Leave no room to put a stone in curling?] PACK THE HOUSE I don’t know curling well enough to know what the “house” is.
- 57A [Is unable to get a stone where you want it in curling?] CAN’T STOP THE ROCK This was the only phrase that didn’t mean anything to me. There’s a 1999 hit single by that name by Apollo 440, but I’m not sure that’s what Brendan had in mind.
It’s a solid theme, though not one that appealed to me. (But our curling-watching ski buddy assures me it’s a real sport.)
Nonetheless, despite being a bit tired from the day’s activities, I breezed through this one without any slowdowns. I skipped a few answers that I didn’t know (for example, 50A [Soccer manager Mourinho] JOSÉ, but it was easy to fill them in with a few crosses.
Some nice stuff:
- 1A [Dig into] DELVE That’s just a neat word that I learned long ago from reading J.R.R. Tolkien.
- 22A [Veranda named after an island] LANAI The lodge where I’m staying names each room after the name of the stain on the room’s paneling. Our ski buddies are staying in the room called Lanai.
- 60A [Mini revelation?] KNEE I just now figured that “mini” is a skirt here.
- 62A [Craft similar to a pirogue] CANOE I’m not convinced. Both boats are flat-bottomed, but you propel a pirogue with a pole and a canoe with a paddle. On the other hand, “similar” is pretty loose.
- 39D [Genre for Gil Scott-Heron and the Last Poets] PROTO-RAP I don’t remember hearing this one before, but from what little I know of Gil Scott-Heron’s music, the name fits
- 46D [“A Love Supreme” saxophonist, to fans] TRANE My limited collection of jazz music includes John Coltrane’s classic suite in both the original version and a live performance from Montreux.
NYT Spelling Bee: A day or so ago they disallowed nimiety, and today they disallowed lamplit.
It is really a shame that such basic and/or interesting non-obscure words are disallowed.
And they accept almost no sailing terms, but any obscure food item or chemical compound is fair game. Go figure
I do only the Sunday one in the print magazine because, well, it’s there in front of me. It’s edited instead by Patrick Berry, but even with someone as reliable as he I’m always struggling to guess just what he’ll accept. I keep two lists, one for words I bet he’ll list and one for words he won’t. I’m almost always wrong about both. Puzzles with both E and R, leading to many possible -ER and RE- words, are particularly discouraging. He actually doesn’t like chemistry or physics, but he’s accepting of biology. He doesn’t take musical terms, presumably considering them Italian words.
In all fairness, I’ve never once heard of NIMIETY. As for lamplit, I assume the dictionary he uses hyphenates it. Or maybe it gives only lamplighted, although that’s not convincing. FWIW, MW has LAMPLIT. RHUD states explicitly only LAMPLIGHT, so it’s not clear. But its entry for LIGHT shows both LIGHTED and LIT, the first coming first.
I have not heard of NIMIETY, either.
I find the arbitrariness of what is accepted for Spelling Bee to be frustrating. It’s Sam Ezersky’s sole decision, which he never tries to justify in any objective way and is slanted towards some of his own interests. There’s very little scientific/medical terminology, for example. And some cuisines are overrepresented compared to others.
RATATAT and PITAPAT are included, which seems really bizarre to me, since hyphenated words are not included and I think the non-hyphenated versions are more obscure than many words that are not included. CONMAN, for example, is not included, although I think the one-word version of that is fairly common, at least more so than non-hyphenated RATATAT or PITAPAT. And which -ing or -ed or un- or non- words are included and not included seems random.
Someone said it’s almost a second game to learn Sam’s arbitrariness, which I surprisingly found helpful in terms of not finding it so frustrating. Many games have random rules, and this is Spelling Bee’s randomness. But I still find it annoying.
There’s a handful of words I’ve learned solely from the Spelling Bee. Callaloo and palapa are my choices for most absurd.
Ezersky used to allow ATTAINT, an archaic legal term, but that was taken off the list some while back.
We don’t get the print edition of the Times any longer nor do we do the Spelling Bee any more either, but the instructions in print used to say that other legitimate words beyond the answer list were just as valid as the answers listed. Has this part of the instructions disappeared? I accept that when people do the puzzle online, they like to have a good electronic record, but that shouldn’t matter in print.
The daily Spelling Bee is different from the Sunday print Spelling Bee. There are different editors, different rules (no four-letter words in the print version) and different instructions. But Sam decides what’s too obscure, and everyone knows (or should) that there is no “right” opinion on such a matter. Even Sam changes his mind, and words that were taken are refused later or vice versa. I have my list of rejected words that I think should be accepted. I’m sure most solvers do.
NYT: Somewhat ashamed to be a bit clueless about the (double) indication on the [Alpha male] clue–I get that ARTHUR ASHE is “A male” (alpha is a in the NATO alphabet), but does the double imply that he was an “alpha male” given his success in tennis?
I took it to mean that both names, ARTHUR and ASHE, start with A (Alpha).
I guess the trick is to ignore the impulse of thinking that the entire clue is meant to be a characteristic of the answer– Golf doesn’t characterize GAZPACHO, Tango doesn’t characterize THIRTEEN and in this case, Alpha doesn’t characterize ARTHUR ASHE. All simply indicate the starting letter of something defined by the second word of the clue.
I thought the concept of the theme was novel, but I struggled with some of the fill.
Oh, so he’s an alpha alpha male! Thanks for the clarification!
I’ve noticed that as well several times. And, if you go a page that shows the answers, there are plenty of words, especially those that are less 4 letters long that are VERY obscure.
Sorry, this reply was supposed to go somewhere else. I apparently can’t delete one that’s been posted.
NYT: 35A/25D crossing is a little ambiguous. Nowhere does it say that 35A is the feminine form, so I had COTTO/HIYO for a long time. HIYA obviously works better than HIYO, but HIYO was at least Ed McMahon’s catchphrase so it’s not completely implausible.
Or singular. I’m used to BISCOTTI ( twice baked). But I get the answer in the context of TERRA COTTA (baked earth, which I had never thought of before).
Same here (terra cotta).
I struggled with the NE corner of the NYT, even though LISA was a gimme. Is the PANDA a bear or not? I can never remember. For the ‘Knight’ clue I was trying to come with an actor with that last name (I will never understand crossword makers’ obsession with Star Wars). The Shelley quote could be any number of things. Eventually I came up JJWATT and figured out the rest.
Also ICERAIN? Really? Every place I’ve lived it’s called ‘freezing rain.’
Hand up on ICE RAIN. Snow, hail, sleet, freezing rain, the artful “wintery mix” – no ICE RAIN.
Yes, pandas are bears. They were for a while, quite some time ago, thought to be more closely related to raccoons. There’s very often a lag between accepted science and popular understanding, and persistence thereof. Even now, in our ‘information superhighway’ environment, such lags still occur, though perhaps they aren’t quite as long (and with many more spurious pushbacks).
Has Mark Trail weighed in? He’s my go-to authority on all zoological questions.
NYT has to be a record for proper names, foreign words, fictional characters… I got there eventually but wow that was a lot
Pretty easy to grasp the gimmick for the NYT. When I saw that SERGIO fit for Sierra Leone, I realized that the first word in the italicized clue was using the NATO Alphabet. Only stumbling block was when I was thinking of a school course for “Golf Course” instead of a meal.
NYT: Points for diversity in that central section. An Italian word, the name of an Indian tree of enlightenment, crossed by an Italian word, a French word and a Spanish soup. Even managed to work in a few English words.
Been trying to think of the last time I used the word TAUTEN and, strangely, I can’t recall.
Your assignment is to use it in a sentence today
I was TAUTEN school not to accept assignments from strangers.
NYT: This was decidedly not the kind of puzzle I hope for on a Thursday. The “trick” was a simple one; the only real difficulty I had was with the many names and foreign words, and that didn’t slow me down very much. A near-personal-best time for me (for a Thursday).
NYT: I’m a bit surprised that nobody has mentioned the error in 51-A: the NATO alphabet code word for “A” is Alfa, not Alpha. Seems like a serious lapse in fact-checking by both the constructor and the editors.
Good point – and we just had a little exchange about this a few days ago in the “PH” for “F” rebus puzzle!
They did something similar in a mini puzzle a few months ago – they referred to “Juliet” instead of “Juliett” as the NATO letter. The extra T is important! Otherwise it stops being a phonetic alphabet for native French speakers. The “F” instead of a “PH” in Alfa is I think for similar reasons. The takeaway here seems to be that no one in the NYT Games department actually knows the NATO alphabet, but they think they do so they don’t double check things like this.
They published this puzzle fully aware that the letter is alfa. And yes, alpha might be said “alp-ha” by a non-English speaker since many of the languages of NATO members don’t pronounce “ph” like “f.”
But there is no solution for this problem other than ditching the puzzle, and Will obviously felt that the it had enough merit to be published with this flaw. But I assure you, the decision was an informed one.
Passing along a message I just received…
Hi Solving Friends,
I wanted to share with you that our former solving buddy, Nate Cardin and his husband Ben, have lost their home and all of their belongings in the LA fires.
Nate is very active in the xword world; he is a cryptic crossword constructor and editor for the AVCX.
There is a GoFundMe established if you are interested in helping.
https://gofund.me/8c3f4cdd
Nate also reviews the Sunday NYT here
What a horrible situation – thanks for the link!
Nate and Ben – best wishes!