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
Erik Agard’s USA Today Crossword, “Opening Hours” — Emily’s write-up
One of my new faves! Give it a solve and see if you agree.
USA Today, February 13, 2025, “Opening Hours” by Erik Agard
Theme: the first part (aka “opening) of each themer can be appended with —HOUR to make a new phrase
Themers:
- 17a. [“Need it soon!” request], RUSHORDER
- 37a. [“Celebrating you! <3”], HAPPYBIRTHDAY
- 61a. [Guy who’s in favor], GOLDENBOY
A wonderful themer set today! They also relate so well to each other. It starts with a RUSHORDER to make it in time before HAPPYBIRTHDAY ends for celebrating the GOLDENBOY. With the theme, we get RUSH HOUR, HAPPY HOUR, and GOLDEN HOUR.
Favorite fill: SPRITES, BABA, HABENERO, CAYENNE, GOODIDEA and ENTIRETY
Stumpers: HEAP (only “mess” came to mind) and SNEERS (though of “scowls” first)
Loved the grid design! Great overall fill and delightful lengthy bonus fill. Cluing was excellent as well and I had a smooth flow with solving today’s puzzle. Nicely done, Erik!
4.75 stars
~Emily
Kevin Christian & Drew Schmenner’s LA Times crossword – Gareth’s summary
Yesterday we had “shows” with years in them, today we have films with states in them. The revealer was a tad dull – just STATEBARS, as in STATE bar associations… The songs themselves:
- [Katy Perry…], CALIFORNIAGURLS. Not to be confused with September Gurls…
- [Stevie Ray Vaughan…], TEXASFLOOD
- […Elvis Presley], BLUEHAWAII
- […Ray Charles], GEORGIAONMYMIND
A few peculiarly non-specific long answers: RAREGEM, IVOTENO, INAPILE…
Finished on OBVI/AVEENO, because I forgot it wasn’t AVEENa, and OBVI wasn’t obvi a thing, obvi.
Gareth
Brendan Emmett Quigley’s Crossword #1757 “Love Letters” — Eric’s review
A very basic theme today, but one that I didn’t pick up on until after I’d filled in the grid (which happens to me a lot when filling the grid is easy). Two common phrases and a well-known name have the Latin for love — AMOR — inserted, with appropriate clues:
- 20A [Jill Stein without scruples?] AMORAL GREEN It took me a bit to remember who Ms Stein is; she was the Green Party candidate for President in 2021, 2016 and 2024.
- 39A [Agitating in an unchanging way?] STATIC CLAMORING This is my favorite of the theme answers, probably because AMOR seems better hidden.
- 52A [Hayley Williams’s band is upset?] PARAMORE DOWN
Three theme answers seems a bit light, and while there’s nothing wrong with the longest down answers, they’re not particularly exciting:
- 4D [Hunter’s covering] CAMO VEST
- 41D [Like shows suitable for most of the family] RATED TV-G
Other notable things:
- 24A [Orchestra section] REEDS Isn’t this typically referred to as the wind section? When an orchestra includes a saxophone, it’s usually placed in the brass section.
- 44A [Wojcicki who cofounded 23andMe] ANNE I’ve heard of the company, but not the founders.
- 48A [Joe who appeared in four Scorsese movies] PESCI Let’s see if I can get them off the top of my head: Goodfellas (my favorite Scorcese movie), Raging Bull . . . . The others are Casino and The Irishman (both of which I thought it likely that Pesci was in, but which I wasn’t sure of).
- 62A [Protection in space?] OZONE Nice clue; I didn’t see it until I’d filled in the gimme of 54D AZUL.
- 65A [Where the severed employees work on “Severance”] LUMON We just started watching Severance last night. I liked the little twist at the end of the premiere.
- 1D [Weapon in “Ripley”] OAR I’m embarrassed that this wasn’t a gimme; I’ve read The Talented Mr. Ripley and seen Pleine Soleil, the Anthony Minghella version of The Talented Mr. Ripley, and Ripley, and the murder of Dickie Greenleaf is central to the plot.
- 22D [Muse of crosswords?] ERATO Amusing clue, based on the frequency with which ERATO appears in crosswords vis-à-vis Terpsichore or Melpomene.
- 28D [Poor quality content generated on ChatGPT, e.g.] AI SLOP I hadn’t heard this term before, but I like it.
- 30D [Cuts some lines from a movie?] DE-AGES Another clue I like; the technique was famously used with Robert DeNiro, Joe Pesci and Al Pacino in The Irishman.
- 59D [Sam’s Club rival] BJ’S That’s a chain that hasn’t made it as far west as where I’ve lived. The J was my last letter because the more or less unknown-to-me band Babymetal could just as easily be a K-pop band.
Jonathan Raksin’s Fireball Crossword, “Drawing Power” – Jenni’s write-up
It’s late, I’m behind (or ahead, or whatever – I’m in New Zealand) and I don’t understand the theme. Each of the theme answers has one or two FE strings added. Not sure what that has to do with the title.
Here’s Peter’s grid with the FEs highlighted.
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.
“…but has become commonplace.”
Hah, maybe in your world, Martin.
There are three different brands of pickled ginger in our fridge right now. I don’t know why; all three were purchased by my wife, who is much more involved in seeking out new recipes than I am.
But what I do know is that all three are clearly labelled “Sushi Ginger”. None, as far as a cursory inspection can determine, are labelled GARI, so in spite of consuming a lot of Asian food, both at home and in restaurants, I had absolutely no idea what this was.
I thought the non-theme fill was harder than the Thursday “trick”, which I find disappointing.
As “gari” is informal, it’s labeled sushi ginger in English or su shoga in Japanese. But 2 million hits attest to it being fairly common in sushiworld.
BTW, the word is a descriptor of a particularly crispy crunch in Japanese. Nobody describes textures like the Japanese. Poripori, baribari, garigari, nobinobi and zakuzaku are some ways of describing different kinds of cruchiness. Pickled ginger is garigari.
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.
LAT Gareth I believe you mean songs with states in them, not films.
WSJ not a fan of 20A. Seems to contrived
NYT: I confess I do not understand THE IRONY as an answer, which is just a noun with the definite article in front of it. Which I guess occurs relatively often but it’s not really a phrase in and of itself.
Also not a big fan of the theme. I wish there was a way to guess the theme entries that didn’t necessitate getting the crosses, like putting clues for the metals in parentheses or something like that.
Big “meh” from me
I think you have to imagine “the irony” as a spoken expression, as in “Oh, the irony.”
Hi Jenni-
This is Jon, the constructor of the Fireball puzzle. For the theme, there are four “Magnet Schools” (Columbia, Rice, Duke, Temple) that “draw” the iron (FE) out of their row mate answer. So DISCOFEVER —> DISCOVER, INTERFERED —> INTERRED etc. the final one is a double loss, from FEELSAFE —> ELSA.
Sorry Jon, I missed your post
FB – The theme is MAGNET SCHOOLS. The four schools in the grid attract iron, represented by its chemical symbol Fe. Where doe this iron come from? It came from adjacent across entries.
Columbia attracted FE from DEAFEN, leaving DEAN. The FE at one pole of RICE came from DISCO FEVER leaving DISCOVER. DUKE took the FE from INTERFERED and we are left with INTERRED. Finally, TEMPLE took two atoms of iron from FEEL SAFE and ELSA remained.
I enjoyed this theme and think it compares favorably with Thursday’s NYT.
The clue for 21a is Big jerk. I don’t know if the answer YANK refers to a strong tug or a Brit’s idea of a huge wanker.
Thank you PJ! In the current climate, that clue could certainly refer to either :)