Kathy Lowden’s Wall Street Journal crossword, “Sweet Nothings”—Jim’s review
In the timeless tradition of corny candy heart messages, today’s theme answers are words of affection from certain professionals employing groan-worthy puns (homophones and/or homonyms). Each entry has at least two such examples of wordplay.
Wall St Journal crossword solution · “Sweet Nothings” · Kathy Lowden · Thu., 2.13.25
- 20a. [Valentine message for a tennis pro?] LOVE, LET US COURT. A little awkward, but quaintly cute.
- 33a. [Valentine message for a forester?] I PINE FIR YEW. Ouch. This one hurt, but in a good way.
- 41a. [Valentine message for a greengrocer?] LETTUCE DATE. Short and sweet.
- 55a. [Valentine message for a zoologist?] DEER, I GOPHER EWE. Do you ever play metazooa? My daughter and I compete to see who can get the animal in the fewest guesses. Maybe I’ll try these animals tomorrow.
I enjoyed these for their sheer goofiness. At first I wanted the entries to be common, in-the-language phrases, but in retrospect, I think that’s an unnecessary requirement, and the theme works well as it is. If there was a nit I’d pick, it’s the duplication of the phrase “let us” (even though one is altered). But that’s a minor issue.
Plenty of long fill to enjoy aside from the theme: STONE AGE, NOVA SCOTIA, PRESS CORPS, UNIVERSITY, TYLER PERRY. Some uncommon entries slowed me down: GENERA and MISSA.
Clues of note
- 19d. [Queen Elizabeth’s Whisky, e.g.] CORGI. Note that the current King and Queen have Jack Russell Terriers.
- 26d. [Sub order]. “DIVE!” Simple and subtle misdirection. Very nice.
- 35d. [Name-dropping abbr.?]. ET AL. If you have to have ET AL in your grid, a good clue like this one can go a fair way in redeeming it.
3.5 stars.
Jem Burch’s New York Times crossword — Zachary David Levy’s write-up
Difficulty: Average (12m02s)
Jem Burch’s New York Times crossword, 2/13/25, 01213
Today’s theme: SCRAP METAL (Material in a junkyard pile … or a hint to answering this puzzle’s four asterisked clues)
- GROW IN, toss the GOLD
- THEY, toss the IRON
- LAOS, toss the TIN
- PEAL, toss the LEAD
About average Thursday solve, although the asterisks point you in the right direction. Thought we would be dropping something from the clues, but no, this time it’s all on the table. Wherever I look first, it’ll always be the other place! On a different note, I always appreciate a revealer that you can use to reverse engineer the theme entries, and it works like a charm today.
Cracking: WE ARE SO DEAD
Slacking: ARI and GARI and DARI, oh my
Sidetracking: IHOP, home of the Rooty Tooty Fresh N Fruity
NYT: OK, so names of metals are stuck in the middle of the logical clue answer to make new phrases?
But 50D [Catches red-handed] for NABS seems sloppy to me, because I do not believe that NABS carries any meaning of “red-handed” or “in the act” — none whatsoever.
(Which is why we often hear something like “He was nabbed in the act.”)
Since [Catches] by itself would have sufficed for a good clue for NABS, I am opposed to this unfounded clue-extending business, especially to something that misdefines the word.
I confess that I was also underwhelmed by the inclusion of DARI and GARI in this Thursday puzzle. These are not merely obscure to almost everyone, but they are *foreign* obscurities as well. Not my cup of tea.
I had no clue about DARI or GARI, and had to get them entirely through crosses.
The word gari is sushi chef slang for pickled ginger (su shoga). Its use by customers was somewhere between an affectation and rude, but has become commonplace. Other sushi chef slang is murasaki (“purple”) for soy sauce, namida (“tears”) for wasabi, shari (“bones”) for sushi rice, and agari for tea. Since tea is served at the end of the meal, if a chef says “agari” he might be signaling that a customer should understand it’s time to leave. This is the sort of peril in using sushi chef slang on the customer side of the counter. But “gari” is pretty safe nowdays.
I’m okay with NABS as clued. Most definitions agree with you, but the first one that comes up when you google “NAB definition” is Oxford’s “catch someone doing something wrong,” and there’s a later one down the page of “catch the person in the act of doing something wrong.” I personally think that when you say you nabbed someone, there can sometimes be an implication that there is some immediacy to it.
My personal nitpick with the puzzle is that GOLD is tacked onto the end of GROWIN rather than in the middle of it, like the other theme answers have things.
NYT: I found it very easy, and one of my fastest Thursdays at 13 minutes. It might be just me, though, since I knew CAPITA, MAZDA, MYLAR, and NEOPET, which might stump a few people but allowed me to blitz through the whole left hand side. Finally got some resistance with PENA crossing two long entries but that’s already the last part left of the puzzle.
The theme is okay but it is inherently limited; you can’t fit “potassium” in a theme entry and there are only so many short metal names.
Anyways, I wasn’t having as much crossword as I expected so I also did the WSJ.
WSJ: At first I found foothold in the center right, but I made a mistake and got INTRO instead of GETGO. It caused some conflict once I got into the top right corner. I had no choice but to use the check function and I saw it’s FIR YEW not FOR YEW.
That’s when I realized this puzzle would be **fun**.
Too bad the bottom right had LYLE crossing three names, so I didn’t finish it, but I still enjoy this WSJ more than the NYT today.