Monday, January 20, 2025

Note: No WSJ puzzle due to the holiday.

Katie Byl and Jeff Chen’s New York Times crossword— Sophia’s write-up

Theme: WORK LIKE A DOG – each theme answer ends with an action a working dog could do

New York Times, Monday Jan 20, By Katie Byl and Jeff Chen

• 20a [Path of advancement for a lawyer] – PARTNER TRACK
• 27a [Position for Steph Curry or Caitlin Clark] – POINT GUARD
• 36a [Go along with prevailing wisdom] – FOLLOW THE HERD
• 49a [Manual for consistency in writing] – STYLE GUIDE
• 56a [Do one’s job to the point of exhaustion … or a hint to the ends of 20-, 27-, 36- and 49-Across] – WORK LIKE A DOG

My family and I watch the national dog show every year on Thanksgiving, and this puzzle made me think fondly about the dogs there in the working group. There’s a great variety of dog actions here, and I’m glad the constructors chose to include four theme answers plus a revealer to get more in there! As a basketball fan, POINT GUARD was my favorite answer and required no crosses for me. FIDO also feels theme adjacent in the middle.

The only problem with having this particular set of theme answers is that the necessary placement of the 12-letter WORK LIKE A DOG leads to the puzzle feeling very segmented – for example, look at how LLAMAS is the only down entry into the bottom left corner – which can make the puzzle tougher at times because solvers can’t use as much of their progress in one area of the puzzle to get into another. But again, a potential necessary trade-off to work with the highest quality theme set.

Another issue segmented puzzles can sometimes have is a lack of longer answers that aren’t thematic, but that certainly isn’t the case here! We have the lovely NO-GO AREAS, FRACTALS, CHIGNONS, and BRITICISM (I had trouble spelling the last two). I also liked G FORCE and the aforementioned LLAMAS. Trouble spots for me included the very first entry of the puzzle – I had “spam” for [Unwanted piece of mail] instead of BILL, and I could only remember Barbie relatives Skipper, Kelly, and Midge, not STACIE.

Congrats to Katie on a great NYT debut!

Susan Gelfand’s Los Angeles Times crossword — Stella’s write-up

Los Angeles Times 1/20/25 by Susan Gelfand

This theme is of a type that I think Gen Z editors don’t like: There is a revealer, but the revealer alone doesn’t do the work of explaining how the theme works. I’m glad Patti, who I think is around my age, is helping keep this kind of theme alive, because I hate the idea of all the fun themes that might not see the light of day if we start insisting that every revealer not only has to hint at what the theme word is, but also where it goes in the theme phrase.

Let’s get to this particular theme: The revealer at 59A [Good gift for a handy homeowner, and what the ends of 17-, 23-, 35-, and 49-Across are?] is WRENCH SET. Take the revealer and the clue together, and you see that at the end of every theme answer is a type of WRENCH:

• 17A [Ocular opening] is an EYE SOCKET, leading to SOCKET WRENCH.
• 23A [Rum and vodka cocktail] is a BRASS MONKEY, leading to MONKEY WRENCH.
• 35A [Actress who played dance teacher Lydia Grant on “Fame”] is DEBBIE ALLEN, leading to ALLEN WRENCH.
• 49A [Muffler attachment on a car] is an EXHAUST PIPE, leading to PIPE WRENCH.

Love this set of very evocative theme answers, especially BRASS MONKEY and the fricking legend DEBBIE ALLEN. (Seriously, she’s so fun to watch. Le. Gend.) I’ll forgive STOA in the upper middle given the quality of the rest of the puzzle. I also liked the Easter egg of the rhyming states ALASKA and NEBRASKA in the Downs.

CJ Tan’s Universal crossword, “Long Division” — pannonica’s write-up

Universal • 1/20/25 • Mon • “Long Division” • Tan • solution • 20250120

I saw the circled elements as I was solving, but ignored them until now. Let’s see what the theme turns out to be.

• 17a. [“Just when I thought I’d seen everything!”] THAT’S A FIRST (thirst). To thirst for something is to long for it. Now it remains to be seen if the other themers reference the same sense of ‘long’ or if we’re dealing with homonyms.
• 26a. [Perfect partner] IDEAL MATCH (itch). Looks as if we’re sticking with the one definition.
• 40a. [2024 or 2036, in the Chinese zodiac] YEAR OF THE DRAGON (yearn).
• 49a. [Baking apparatus for crispier crust] PIZZA STONE (pine).
• 63a. [Musical about aspiring Broadway dancers] A CHORUS LINE (pine).

So, synonyms for “long” and they’re divided on either side of the theme answers.

• 1d [Didn’t just sit by] ACTED. 32a [Chose] OPTED.
• 7d [Knight’s title] SIR. 69a [“My __” (feudal address)] LIEGE.
• 28d [ __ an egg (flopped)] LAID. 14a [Does perfectly] NAILS.
• 34d [Game plan, in esports lingo] STRATegy,
• 37d [Posts viewable for only a day, familiarly] IG STORIES. I’m presuming that’s Instagram, which I’ve never used.
• 47d [The “K” in 24K] KARAT. 12a [^] CARET.
• 46a [Store where you can get STUK] IKEA. They are, as you might guess, for storage.

Not super-exciting, but does the job.

Natan Last’s New Yorker crossword–Amy’s recap

New Yorker crossword solution, 1/20/25 – Natan Last

This one felt tougher than usual for a Natan TNY themeless. The unknown-to-me FRED MOTEN being a wall between the puzzle’s halves (20d. [Theorist and poet who wrote “In the Break” and “The Feel Trio”]). Wikipedia tells us he received a MacArthur genius grant in 2020 for “[c]reating new conceptual spaces to accommodate emerging forms of Black aesthetics, cultural production, and social life.”

Also didn’t know [Belgian tennis pro Mertens], ELISE. Looks like she’s more successful playing doubles rather than singles.

Fave fill: PALE HORSE, “THE DEAD,” THREADBARE, social-media plural MUTUALS (meaning a pair of people who follow each other on social media). Felt like there was a surprising amount of “really?” fill in this grid: DIAL ONE, BALD PATE, ON POST, BLANCS, “ONE, PLEASE.” BALD PATE feels a bit green-paintish but maybe it’s a solid idiom after all? Unpleasantnesses: BEDSORES and ZITS (the latter clued as a comic strip, thankfully).

3.5 stars from me. I rarely dip below four stars for Natan, but this one didn’t captivate me.

Brendan Emmett Quigley’s Crossword #1750 — Eric’s review

Brendan Emmett Quigley’s Crossword #1750 — 1/20/25

Brendan’s offering a nice, not-so-hard themeless for Martin Luther King Day. There’s a lot to like here:

• 1A [Engages in omphaloskepsis] NAVEL-GAZES It’s rare for 1A to be a gimme for me, especially when it’s a 10-letter word.
• 17A [Absolutely never] NOT ON A DARE It’s been a long time since anyone has dared me to do something — and I’m fine with that.
• 18A [Villain with more lines than the play’s title character] IAGO A few years ago, I decided to read the “major” plays by Shakespeare that I hadn’t already read or seen. Othello was as far as I got. But there’s still time for the others.
• 20A [Element found mainly in England] ALUMINIUM Nice clue to the British spelling.
• 33A [Where a lot of questions are asked] ALEX TREBEK STAGE I haven’t regularly watched Jeopardy! since Art Fleming was the host, but this was easy enough to suss out.
• 38A [Tries escaping] TAKES IT ON THE LAM I tried . . . ON THE RUN first.
• 39A [British Virgin Islands currency] AMERICAN DOLLARS I didn’t remember this, but what’s that S doing there?
• 48A [Luxury Tax neighbor] PARK PLACE I played enough games of Monopoly when I was a kid to last me a long time.
• 55A [Food to be eaten in the field?] IRON RATION I vaguely recognized this term; it’s the forerunner of the MRE that dates back to before WWI. Sounds tasty!
• 10D [“Can’t complain, really”] SEEMS OK TO ME
• 11D [TV show with the theme song “Baba O’Riley”] CSI NY A song deserving of the term “classic,” though I didn’t know about the TV connection. Fun fact that I learned from crossword puzzles: The instrumental intro is played on an electric organ, not a synthesizer.
• 21D [Class you might read 52-Down] IRISH LIT C’mon, Brendan, grammar matters! Where’s the “in which”?
• 23D [Cross wielder?] BOXER Kind of a misdirecting clue, which I like.
• 36D [[The rest of those who worked on this project, but weren’t important enough to make the top four]] ET AL Fun clue for an often-seen answer.
• 43D [Go behind a Senator perhaps] SKATE I briefly forgot that the baseball team of that name is long gone (50+ years now) and, not being a hockey fan, didn’t immediately think of the Ottawa Senators.
• 44D [Cli-fi, e.g.] GENRE That’s climate fiction. Maybe it’s because I had just seen a link to a Wirecutter report on the best “The Best Vibrators,” but “climate” is not what I thought “cli” was short for.
• 52D [“The Magician” author Tóibín] COLM A friend loaned us his novel The Master, but I don’t remember if I read it. I definitely saw and enjoyed the film adaptation of Brooklyn.