Adrian Johnson’s New York Times crossword—Amy’s recap
NY Times crossword solution, 1/31/25 – no. 0131
My solving time suggests hardish Saturday (or early “Joel covering for Will” Friday), but it didn’t feel all that tough. I just entered a few too many answers in the wrong squares, slowed myself down.
Starting 1-Across with SRS didn’t bode well, but there was a lot of good stuff to offset that. Fave fill: “THAT’S A WRAP,” SMART PILLS, TO BE HONEST, BARNYARD, MARRIED MAN ([He’s taken!]), “I DON’T BUY IT,” EMPTY STARE, SPIN DOCTOR, RAP BATTLES.
Fave clues:
- 26D. [It’s followed by an extra point], “ALSO …” The clue screamed sports!
- 19A. [Number of countries whose names both start and end with “A”], NINE. Let’s see: Algeria Albania Austria Australia Argentina Azerbaijan Armenia … Angola … and Antigua and Barbuda. I like geography trivia and rote learning, so sue me.
- 37A. [Hinduism’s “king of fruits”], MANGO. I had myself convinced I was looking for a Hindu deity rather than a fruit. Whoops.
- 54A. [Focus group?], CAMERA CREW.
- 57A. [Wanders around a terminal, for short?], TSA. They might wand air travelers with a metal detector.
I’ve never liked 8d. “SO THERE!” The clue is [“Deal with it!”], and a high school classmate once signed my yearbook with the phrase. At that time, I hadn’t really encountered the phrase, and I still don’t know if she was being friendly or rude. The clue feels maybe a little off to me, but I am still not an expert on the phrase’s meaning. What’s your take?
Four stars from me.
Ricky J Sirois’ Los Angeles Times crossword — pannonica’s write-up
LAT • 1/31/25 • Fri • Sirois • solution • 20250131
Is there an echo in here? SORTA (52d [“More or less”]) The last word (two-letters, second is O) of the original phrases is repeated to wackify matters. This is more of an orthographic theme than a phonetic one, since pronunciations change, for half of the themers.
- 21a. [Dorothy’s musing before heading back to Kansas?] DO I HAVE TOTO.
- 33a. [All-clear before the big dance competition?] GOOD TO GO-GO.
- 42a. [Advice on how to prevent undue interest from influencers?] MAKE IT SO-SO.
- 53a. [Enthusiastic reply from a certain bird impersonator?] INDEED I DODO. Clue for this one doesn’t seem quite right. “Impersonator”? “I DODO”? It might make slightly more sense as “I do dodo”, but even that isn’t very good.
Anyway, I mostly enjoyed the theme.
- 1d [Ring leader?] CHAMP. Boxing, wrestling, whatever.
- 2d [Help in keeping things straight] RULER, but it could also be a clue for 17a [Suspect’s story] ALIBI.
- 8d [Mega- squared] TERA-. 20a [Memory unit, informally] MEG.
- 40d [Short stay] STOPOVER.
- 43d [Coffee order] ICED. Feels incomplete, but it’s certainly comprehensible.
- 54d [U.S. weather agency] NOAA, which provides the underlying data for almost all domestic weather forecasts, and which the current administration wants to destroy and replace with inferior private ventures.
- 13a [Dark matter?] HUMOR. Some humor is dark. That’s it.
- 63a [Say hello quietly] WAVE. Strangely my mind first went to WINK.
Jess Rucks’s Universal crossword, “Waterfalls”—Jim’s review
Theme answers are phrases that hide a body of water in them, all featured in the Down direction, hence the title. There’s no other revealer in the grid, but a theme-adjacent entry starts us off at 1a [“Waterfalls” R&B trio]: TLC. That’s a nice touch. (For my own well-being, I’m going to ignore the parenthetical square-counting tips in the clues.)
Universal crossword solution · “Waterfalls” · Jess Rucks · Fri., 1.31.25
- 3d. [Tribute group (In this answer, note letters 1-4)] COVER BAND.
- 4d. [Reciprocated (… letters 4-7)] RESPONDED IN KIND.
- 8d. [“Your secret’s safe with me!” (… letters 10-12)] “MY LIPS ARE SEALED.”
- 38d. [Sign of winter (… letters 6-9)] SNOWFLAKE.
Typically a hidden-word theme will have such words spanning more than one word in the entry, thus making it even more well-hidden. That’s not the case for any of these theme answers, seeing as they’re all embedded within longer words. But there’s a different feature here which I’m sure is by design and not by accident, and that is that the water words as a group seem to “fall” from the upper left of the grid to the bottom right. That’s another nice touch which I didn’t appreciate at first, but came to like as I took in the grid as a whole. And the theme entries themselves are all lively, especially those 15-letter grid-spanners.
In the fill, I loved SNAIL’S PACE and ELASTIGIRL (from The Incredibles). Did not know RASAM, and while its clue [South Indian soup hidden in “mascara sample”] led to the answer with only one crossing in place, it felt too randomly devised. But there aren’t a lot of choices to be had there sandwiched between two theme answers as it is.
Other clues of note:
- 40d. [Danson of “The Good Place”]. TED. Even more recent is A Man on the Inside which I quite enjoyed. Looking forward to season 2.
- 52d. [Packed house?]. IGLOO. Excellent clue.
Nice puzzle. 3.5 stars.
NYT: I found today’s puzzle to be Wednesday easy. I’m not a pro and still flew through it like nothing, which is to say something for someone who, for many, many years, couldn’t even begin to tackle Fridays and Saturdays.
I challenged myself now to go back in the archives to solve all those last week monsters I was too afraid to face (I’m now in 2014) and, man if they’re fu**ing hard!! Honestly, there’d been a couple where no amount of googling could take me to the finish line. So…yeah, I find late week puzzles nowadays to be, how shall I put it…not the challenge they used to be.
I have to agree with “Wednesday easy.” I was only slightly slowed down in the SW corner where I couldn’t believe MICE was going to be the answer at 46D, couldn’t come up with the anagram name at 50D, and couldn’t remember how to spell the Herminator’s last name. But still finished faster than either of the last two days.
NYT: Nice!!!
I enjoyed it and found it to be on the easier side. Entire areas flowed like an early week puzzle (e.g. NE). But the cluing was a bit trickier so a few false starts– I plunked down VALE for the clue “One might be full of tears”. And I only understood the clue for TSA after Amy explained it.
“Vale of tears” – I like it! I wish my errors were so poetic.
Same re: TSA clue. Overall, it was faster than my average, but I spent nearly half of my solve time just in the SW corner… not sure why it was so slow. Wasn’t sure if it was AMOEBAS or AMOEBAE; had DARE WE before CANT WE (since I didn’t know CELIA); MICE seemed very strange for “Cat’s scan” but… okay. I was also afraid that “tears” was going to mean “rips” instead of drops from your eyes. I think if I hadn’t hit that speed bump in the bottom corner, I would’ve ranked it around Wednesday-Thursday level too.
NYT: I was flying through but had trouble finishing the center 9 squares. Thought INS was correct, but had ASST instead of ALSO (thinking sports like Amy) and CANI instead of MAYI slowed me down.
And Amy, your country listing is a bit off. did you mean ARUBA at the end? And not sure why Azerbaijan is on there?!??
“Antigua and Barbuda” is the name of a Caribbean nation; Aruba is a Dutch territory.
Azerbaijan is an independent nation that decades ago was part of the Soviet Union. It’s on the Caspian Sea.
I think Mutman’s point is that Azerbaijan doesn’t end with an “a.” I think you may have missed Andorra.
D’oh! I got waylaid into just thinking of A countries (which also include Afghanistan).
We all stand corrected!
I managed to get to six I was confident in, so the answer had to be NINE and I gave up trying to identify the rest.
I wasn’t sure about Aruba. Considered both America and Antarctica, but decided neither one was right. No way I was coming up with Antigua and Barbuda.
I didn’t bother counting; I had _I_E and waiting to see if it was going to be FIVE or NINE…
NYT: On the fast side for me. SRS, THAT’S A WRAP, AUDIOPHILE, YODELER and EIN went in on the first pass with no crosses, so the top half fell pretty quickly when I turned to the Downs.
Long entries seemed to be pretty much in the language (but I didn’t know SMART PILLS).
I liked the playful cluing, but thought [Cat’s scan] for MICE was a stretch.
I thought the NYT was hard enough with all the names and HEPA. And I too was looking for a Hindu deity. (I also didn’t get the TSA wand joke and wavered on whether the VALET clue worked.) But quite a wonderful puzzle. Kept me thinking on the way to the finish.
WSJ Contest: Easy meta, but the whole theme is quite groanworthy.
Easy for you maybe, but not for me.
USAT: Huge “boo” to the editing for 17D: “AIM-era icebreaker question (Abbr.)
AIM here stands for “AOL Instant Messenger” and the AIM-era was the late 1990s to 2000s, when AIM was popular. And ASL in this context (usually written as “a/s/l?”)stands for “age / sex / location”.