Sunday, February 23, 2025

Orcas!

Tune in to Ben Bass’s Twitch channel Monday night at 8:00 Central for the Orcas award presentation! So many incredible crosswords were published last year, and we want to honor the best of them.

Daniel Grinberg and Rafael Musa’s New York Times crossword, “In the Rearview”—Dave’s recap

NY Times Crossword solution – Sunday, February 23, 2025

I really enjoyed this collaboration–phrases which have a synonym of “backwards” are reinterpreted with the other word in that phrase cluing a word appearing in another phrase literally backwards. Perhaps easier to see with the examples from the grid:

• 23A: [What a tight deadline might require] – QUICK TURNAROUND leading to 30A: [Question leaving a grocery store, perhaps] with RAPID appearing backwards in WHERE DID I PARK ?
• 46a: [Tolerate misbehavior] – LOOK THE OTHER WAY leading to 56A: [Source of some public funding] with GLARE appearing backwards in FEDERAL GRANT – let’s hope there are still some of these left in the current administration!
• 67A: [Totally the wrong way] – ASS BACKWARDS leading to 79A: [It’d be my pleasure] with BOOTY appearing backwards in I’M HAPPY TO OBLIGE
• 91A: [Completely change one’s position] – REVERSE COURSE leading to 104A: [Gift-wrapping supplies] with PATH appearing backwards in SCOTCH TAPE ROLLS – I have a vague recollection from my French classes that the French word for tape (as a verb) is “scotcher” based on this

Nice tight theme set, my only quibble is that LOOK/GLARE and COURSE/PATH aren’t as synonymous as the others, but certainly close enough and perhaps needed to be able to appear in phrases backwards. Having the backwards word towards the end of these phrases was another nice touch.

I thought the fill was also very smooth–QUEER BAIT (I guess based on “click bait”) was inferable but new to me (and I’m in their target audience); I learned that Scarlett Johansson, Rami Malek and Vin Diesel are all TWINs and that ELEVENTY (clued as [110, facetiously]) is a thing! Hope you all have a nice ME DAY today and see you next week!

Evan Birnholz’ Washington Post crossword, “Backup Plan”—Matt’s recap

Evan Birnholz’ Washington Post solution “Backup Plans,” 2/23/2025

Evan follows up last week’s unconventional grid and subtle (to me, at least) theme with something a bit more arresting today: Most of the top-row squares are unnumbered and don’t have down clues. So what’s going on? It’s not as daunting as it seems at first glance.

The grid looks normal, and other than the first row, numbering looks normal, so I pressed on and found some typical-enough looking theme entries, including a revealer-ish:

• 46a [Pulitzer Prize-winning musical by Michael R. Jackson, and an alternate title for this puzzle] A STRANGE LOOP
• 60a [How a team making a dramatic turnaround can go … and a hint for how you must enter 15 answers in this puzzle] FROM THE BOTTOM TO THE TOP
• 81a [Changing to a lower gear, and an alternate title for this puzzle] DOWNSHIFTING

Making our way to the bottom, most of the last down clues don’t fit: [Made level] is seemingly only EVE. They are cut off such that they’re all valid entries which is neat, but the clues only work if they’re continued off the bottom and down from the top, as 60a tells us. All the second halves of these entries are valid-looking entries on their own up top, as well.

I’m a big fan of themes and puzzles that play with topography in the grid. They can sometimes be frustrating until the breakthrough, but this was well-done, in that things were relatively normal for most of the grid, giving solvers a chance to make progress rather than stall. 

Bob Weisz and John Kugelman’s Universal Sunday crossword, “Playoff Games”—Jim’s review

Theme answers are familiar phrases that are competitions of a sort and each one gets a clue of the form [x off?] where x is a punny reference to the competition.

Universal Sunday crossword solution · “Playoff Games” · Bob Weisz and John Kugelman · 2.23.25

• 22a. [Flick off?] ACADEMY AWARDS.
• 27a. [Drift off?] STREET RACE.
• 44a. [Hold off?] WRESTLING MATCH.
• 62a. [Hand off?] POKER TOURNAMENT.
• 84a. [Spin off?] WHEEL OF FORTUNE.
• 98a. [Blow off?] PRIZE FIGHT.
• 109a. [Pick off?] DUELING BANJOS.

I had a difficult time making sense of the theme clues during the solve. I could see how the first word would relate to the entry, but I wasn’t sure what to do with the “off”. Eventually I decided they’re meant to be interpreted just like in the terms “playoff” or “runoff”. In retrospect, the clues make perfect sense, but at the time it was a struggle. Perhaps if each clue was hyphenated (for example, [Drift-off?]) I would have caught on quicker. That’s not to say I didn’t enjoy the theme or the puzzle; I was just slow to catch on. If I was to pick nits, I’d say “Flick off” isn’t as strong a phrase as the others. I wonder if the constructors considered something like [Run off?] for BOSTON MARATHON (though it doesn’t fit symmetrically). Too bad CROSSWORD PUZZLE TOURNAMENT is too long; it would make a good answer to [Square off?].

Loved the long fill today: RED AS A BEET, MEANS BUSINESS, FROZEN FOUR, THE ZOOMIES, RETRONYM, “GOOD EYE“, BRAZIERS, the new-to-me term SEQUELITIS, und Hans GRUBER. That’s a boatload of strong fill in a themed puzzle. Thankfully, the short fill doesn’t seem to pay much of a price, either.

Clues of note:

• 26a. [Black Ops video game franchise, for short]. COD. Call of Duty, if you were wondering.
• 29a. [Term such as “brick-and-mortar store” or “meatspace”]. RETRONYM. I had to look up “meatspace”. It refers to the real world where we all live, as opposed to cyberspace. Making sure it’s in my word list now…
• 12d. [European city unified with Buda in 1873]. PEST. This clue could’ve gone the straight route and no one would’ve batted an eye, but now we’re all just a little bit smarter for it (unless you already knew this fact, of course).
• 20d. [First name on the most expensive basketball card ever sold]. STEPH. His autographed rookie card was sold for $5.9M in 2021.
• 41d. [World Sake Day’s mo.]. OCT. Specifically, October 1. Close enough to my birthday that I can make a week of it.
• 48d. [Referee in Nintendo’s Punch-Out!!]. MARIO. Fun clue. He sports what looks like a white tuxedo, but he still has the traditional red hat and mustache.

Good puzzle. 3.75 stars.