Thursday, January 23, 2025

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Samantha Podos Nowak’s Wall Street Journal crossword, “Just Visiting”—Jim’s review

Theme answers are familiar phrases featuring the bigram BY, but the solver must mentally remove those letters to make sense of the clues. The revealer is DROPPING BY (62a, [Visiting, and a hint to making sense of 17-, 25-, 36- and 52-Across]).

• 17a. [Coordination needed when replacing a piece of carpet?] RUG(BY) MATCH.
• 25a. [Arcing throw over overnight lodging?] HOTEL LOB(BY).
• 36a. [Black-haired donkey?] DARK A(BY)SS.
• 52a. [Reward for a Halloween costume contest winner?] BOO(BY) PRIZE.

These are okay, but they don’t feel as natural as I’d like. A “hotel lob” doesn’t make a lot of sense and DARK ABYSS is about as green paintish as a phrase could get. “Rug match” comes closest in feeling like a real thing, and BOOBY PRIZE is just a fun phrase to have in a puzzle, so that’s a good one to end on.

The nine-letter central entry bisects the grid and takes away opportunities for long Down fill. Corner highlights include: ANGELOU and EROTICA.

Clues of note:

• 1a. [Black jack, sometimes]. SPADE. Good clue to start with that made me think for a second before plunking down the correct answer.
• 34d. [Tad’s dad]. ABE. Got me with this one. My mind went to The Simpsons and I went with NED. But nope, the Flanders boys are Todd and Rod.

Solid puzzle, but it just didn’t tickle me as I’d hoped. 3.25 stars.

Peter Gordon’s Fireball Crossword, “Themeless 174” – Jenni’s write-up

This is one of the harder FB themelesses in my recent memory. One long entry I didn’t know how to spell, one I’d never heard of, one clue that can charitably be called obscure, plus the usual entertaining misdirection we expect from Peter.

• The entry I didn’t know how to spell: 22a [Pink spread at a Greek restaurant] is TARAMASALATA.
• The one I’d never heard of: 47a [India’s national anthem] is JANAGANAMANA.The only reason I avoided the dreaded Natick is that I know the Brewers are in the NL (and here’s my ritual objection to the term NLERS, only seen in crosswords).
• The one that I will charitably call obscure: 5d [Gibus] is an OPERA HAT. I thought maybe it had something to do with the moon. Nope. That’s gibbous.
• Entertaining misdirection #1: 15a [Painkiller alternative] is a PINA COLAD.
• Entertaining misdirection #2: 65a [Very long flower] is the NILE.

What I didn’t know before I did this puzzle: see above. I also did not know Alessia CARA (and was smart enough to look her up because for all I knew she was CARA Alessia).

Natan Last and the J.A.S.A. Crossword Class’s New York Times crossword — Zachary David Levy’s write-up

Difficulty: Easy (6m58s)

Today’s theme: out, damn (s)pot.. also, POTHOLES (Obstacles for a driver … or what this puzzle’s circled squares represent)

• SEE S(POT) RUN with ROAD containing the POTHOLE
• NE(POT)ISM with BOULEVARD containing the POTHOLE
• MESO(POT)AMIA with AVENUE containing the POTHOLE
• MA (PO T)OFU with STREET containing the POTHOLE

Fun theme.  I suspect it will play on the easier side for a lot of people, as dropping those POTs in really opens up most of the puzzle, and the revealer isn’t clued too obliquely.  And MA PO TOFU is back for the second time in a month, having just made its NYTXW debut in December.  I approve on behalf of vegetarians everywhere.

Cracking: DELOUSE sitting right below BARFLY

Slacking: ECSEGAR, mostly because E.C. is such an unusual lead-in to a surname, and ECSEGAR looks so very awkward in sequence without the punctuation

Sidetracking: she’s a MANEATER

Zhouqin Burnikel’s LA Times crossword – Gareth’s theme summary

Zhouqin Burnikel’s puzzle today is all in the clues. Five phrases are clued as one-word [>X<words]. Some of these phrases match better than others. We have: [Keywords], OPENSESAME; [Safewords], JUSTINCASE; [Crosswords], ISAIDNO (quite loose that one); and going down [Catchwords], ROGERTHAT and [Watchwords], SWISSMADE. The last answer is the only one not a spoken-word phrase, FWIW.

Gareth

Brendan Emmett Quigley’s Crossword #1751 “Remixes” — Eric’s review

We get anagrams today, with answers that are sort of like the clues in a cryptic crossword:

• 17A [SIT] IT’S TRICKY
• 28A [THOUSAND] TWIST AND SHOUT
• 45A [MAHLER] HARLEM SHUFFLE
• 62A [NIGHT] WILD THING

These are all nice finds; I particularly like Mahler shuffled into HARLEM.

I got the first few theme answers from plugging in a few Down answers and relying on pattern recognition to fill in the rest of the letters, but when I hit HARLEM SHUFFLE, the anagram aspect was obvious.

Some other clue and answer pairs of note:

• 16A [Na Pali Coast State Park island] KAUAI I’d never heard of it, but the odds were pretty good it was somewhere in the Pacific Ocean. That narrows it down, right?

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

• 24A [Largest county in Northern Ireland] TYRONE Another learning opportunity for me. “Largest” here refers to area (1,261 square miles).
• 37A [Face for storytelling?] EMOJI I like that clue for some reason.
• 49A [Civil rights activist Cummings] ELIJAH He represented part of Baltimore in the US House of Representatives from 1996—2019.
• 13D [Enjoy a lollipop] LICK Personally, I’ve always been a sucker for a good lollipop.
• 32D [Dirty martini ingredient] OLIVE JUICE I don’t drink martinis, and I thought the liquid that makes one “dirty” was the brine in which the olives are packed, which doesn’t sound like “olive juice” to me.
• 61D [Stapedectomy doc.] ENT “Stapedectomy” is surgical removal of the stapes bone and replacement of it with a prosthesis, which apparently can improve some types of hearing loss.

This went fairly quickly, though I ended with two crossings that I sort of guessed at: The first was 40A [Dairy-free cheese brand] DAIYA, which I’ve never heard of, and 22D [Informal inquiry] DIDJA, which I would probably spelled DID YA. The second was 64A [Like a sticky situation] NO-WIN and 54D [Condition that might lead to decreased muscle mass] LOW T. NO-WIN shouldn’t have been a problem, but I had trouble parsing LOW T as “low testosterone, informally.” When I put in the A and the W, I was pleasantly surprised to see both were correct.

Rafael Musa’s USA Today Crossword, “A Purr-fect Puzzle” — Emily’s write-up

Meow!

Theme: the themer set form a phrase together

Themers:

• 30a. [With 31- and 34-Across, meme about the universe presenting people with kitties], CAT
• 31a. [See 30-Across], DISTRIBUTION
• 34a. [See 30-Across], SYSTEM

This type of theme is new to me today! The three themers in this set form the phrase CAT DISTRIBUTION SYSTEM which the name for when a cat in need of a home appears to someone and becomes theirs. Know Your Meme explains the origin though you could also watch it in action with musician and crocheter Holly Auna and her cat Tilly.

Favorite fill: COBWEB, ENROUTE, NANOBOT, and GAI

Stumpers: ARTEMIS (needed crossings), PUMA (first thought of “jaguar”), and IMITATE (misdirected by cluing to think about duplicating)

What a delight of a puzzle! The constructed themer set was fun and the rest of the fill was enjoyable as well. It would have been nice to have a bit more to the themer or related bonus fill—I’m sure the cats wouldn’t be happy with a dog BONE in their puzzle—but none the less it was a smooth solve and I loved the grid. The lengthy bonus fill was impressive to fit in a well. Nicely done!

4.25 stars

~Emily

Though our sassy cat Jasmine was adopted from a humane society, she had been wandering the streets and scavenging trash bins so it almost feels like she was distributed to us. Though she is older now, she still directs the house and its schedule, mustering her mean stink eye especially when she pushily demands her treats.