Gary Larson’s Wall Street Journal crossword, “O Rings”—Jim’s review
Theme answers are familiar English words that feature an O which has been repurposed as the Irish “of”. This causes a reparsing of the entry into three words and ensuing crossword wackiness.
Wall St Journal crossword solution · “O Rings” · Gary Larson · Thu., 3.13.25
- 16a. [Free trial at an Irish streaming service?] COMP O’ SITE.
- 20a. [Starting point for measuring the width of an Irish airplane?] END O’ WING.
- 38a. [Irish study in the youngest Kennedy brother’s house?] DEN O’ TED.
- 55a. [Treasury agent Eliot’s favorite Irish pub?] BAR O’ NESS.
- 60a. [Irish domicile on the boardwalk?] HOME O’ PATH.
Not counted as a theme answer but coulda been one: 42d LEGO SET -> LEG O’ SET [Egyptian god’s limb, to an Irish historian?]. (Oof. Had to get Irish in there somehow.)
For me, this whole theme was an “oof.” The entries and some of the clues felt pretty tortured, especially that last one. And the whole thing borders on stereotyping and making fun of a single nationality, which doesn’t sit right. YMMV, of course, but this one wasn’t for me.
I did love PIEHOLE and FAUX PAS in the fill as well as “ALL IS WELL” and SLIDE RULE. I haven’t seen the ELOI in a grid in quite a while, but they make a return today. As does SST, which I could do without until we see another one take to the skies.
Clues of note:
- 45a. [Audition tapes]. DEMOS. Reparse this as DEM O’S and it could have been clued as a theme revealer.
- 21d. [Obeli, in printed matter]. DAGGERS. These guys: †††
2.75 stars.
Rich Proulx and Simeon Seigel’s New York Times crossword — Zachary David Levy’s write-up
Difficulty: Tricky (11h54s)
Rich Proulx and Simeon Seigel’s New York Times crossword, 3/13/25, 0313
Today’s theme: DOUBLE DIP (Commit a party foul, in a way … or what five answers do in this puzzle?)
- SIMUL(C)A(S)TED
- MOP(H)E(A)DS
- F(I)RE(L)IGHT
- CA(P)PI(S)TOL
- CAR(S)E(A)TS
Was wondering what we were doing with all those triangles, and now I know — they double dipped the chips! Figured it out in due course. Could not parse TIPINS for the longest time, and had trouble getting a toehold in the isolated NE/SW corners, but otherwise played like an average Thurs.
Cracking: ATOMIC DOG
Slacking: a little too much texting slang — TBH, IRL, OTOH
Sidetracking: just dip it once and end it
Paul Coulter’s Fireball Crossword, “Chain Letters” – Jenni’s write-up
I finished the puzzle correctly and had to stare at it for quite some time to figure out what was going on and didn’t get the whole thing until I wrote this. It looks very Scrabbly (it’s probably a pangram – I didn’t try to figure that out) and the theme answers don’t look like they make sense. Each one contains a string of consecutive letters.
Fireball, March 12, 2025, Paul Coulter, “Chain Letters,” solution grid
- 23a [Voyeur] is PEEPINGHIJKLM. Clearly that’s supposed to be PEEPING TOM and the string takes us from G to M, replacing TO.
- 47a [Longest member of the weasel family] is GIANOPQRSTTER. GIANT OTTER – the string replaces the TO between N and T
- 55a [Big name in aftermarket car parts] is AUVWXYZONE. AUTO ZONE.
Very fun! I loved the layers to figuring it out.
What I didn’t know before I did this puzzle: that the novel “The HAJ” starts with “Call me Ishmael.”
Brendan Emmett Quigley’s Crossword #1765 “Switching Sides” — Eric’s review
Brendan Emmett Quigley’s Crossword #1765 “Switching Sides” — 3/13/225
Today’s theme: Anagrams! Two 14-letter phrases and two 12’s, appropriately wacky (with one exception):
- 20A [Come up with what to call the final Beatles record?] BETITLE “LET IT BE” I’m sure BETITLE is in the dictionary, but is it a word anyone has used in the last three centuries?
- 25A [Weak guy who delivers cold blocks?] ANEMIC ICEMAN
- 42A [Angel’s motto?] SERAPH PHRASE Crossword clues using “angel” in the sense of a backer of a Broadway show are so common that I didn’t think of heavenly beings at first.
- 47A [Hardliners about stamps?] POSTAGE GESTAPO I watched “Hogan’s Heroes” a lot when I was in elementary school. Maybe that was enough Nazi jokes to last me a lifetime. I’d have preferred something else for that last theme answer, and with this sort of theme, there’s always something else.
The puzzle went pretty quickly for me, though I lost a minute or so finding my typo in 9D MONEYMEN [Angel investors]. (Ha! I was primed to think of that sort of “angel.”) Of course, the thing about anagrams like this is that once you have half the answer, it’s not too hard to figure out the other half.
Other stuff of note:
- 1A [Band that called itself a Mac command to make a delta symbol] ALT-J I must have read somewhere that the band took its name from a computer command, so this was a nice gimme to start the puzzle. I’ve been a Mac user for decades, but I don’t think I’ve ever had reason to use a delta. (And now that I’m looking for it, I can’t even find an “alt” key on my Mac keyboard. Maybe this is really a PC command? Option-J gives me ∆.)
- 15A [“The game of unspeakable fun” board game] TABOO The game sounds vaguely familiar; the marketing slogan not at all.
- 24A [Irish dramatist who co-founded the Abbey Theatre] YEATS I never know whether a clue like this is going to be William Butler Yeats or John Keats, but having just learned (relearned?) that Keats was English, maybe I’ll do better at separating the two.
- 38A [Made sure the levels were right] EQED As in “equalized.”
- 44A [Wiliness] GUILE I don’t see this word often enough.
- 54A [Costar of the “Morning Latte” skits] Cheri OTERI. I assume those skits were part of Saturday Night Live after I stopped watching it.
- 11D [Adam of “Severance”] SCOTT We’ve been watching Severance for the last month or or so. I recently solved another puzzle and blanked on the lead actor’s name, but today it was a gimme.
- 37D [Precedes] FOREGOES That’s an archaic meaning; we usually mean “go without” when we say “forgo.”
- 38D [They grow out of a canal] EAR HAIRS I dread the day when I can no longer see the damn things and get rid of them before they’re embarrassingly long.
- 42D [Stringed instruments played sitting down] SITARS My first thought here was “pedal steels.”
Catherine Cetta’s LA Times crossword – Gareth’s summary
Catherine Cetta’s puzzle today features one true theme answer: ONASIDENOTE. There are eight solfege notes, and they’re arranged four, four in parts of answers circled on either side. I’m not sure the order, TI/DO/SOL/LA/MI/FA/DO/RE, is significant.
The left-right symmetry design created an interesting pattern of medium length answers today, including TSTORMS, OVERLORD, IMTOAST and ROSEBUD, which helped offset the lack of true theme answers.
Others:
- [Classic pet name], FIDO. One of our rescue dachshunds came with that name… I didn’t think I’d ever be a Fido owner!
- [Wyoming’s second most popular city], CASPER. I was convinced that it was JASPER… Joretta Scott King isn’t a person though…
Gareth
NYT: Kinda cute. And I definitely liked that the visible entries for the theme entries were also words.
But I’ve never seen the past tense of SIMULCAST be anything other than SIMULCAST. And the triangle and circle squares seemed to mean precisely the same thing, so I’m puzzled over why two different symbols were needed. For that matter I’m puzzled at why plain, ordinary circles — instead of these special shapes — would not have sufficed, since the shapes of a triangle and circle per se seemed to have nothing to do with the theme. Or did I miss what the connection is?
Triangles spell “Chips” and circles spell “Salsa”?
hah just saw this after writing my own comment. yup. v cute.
Funny. I kinda figured the triangles were the chips and the circles were the bowl of dip. For some reason, I never looked at the letters!
Nice puzzle!
I think the O stands for a bowl.
yeah wondering the same thing. nice thursday took a little sussing out then the revealer led to the aha.
WAIT I HAVE IT. the triangle letters in order C. H. I. P. S. and the circle letters. S. A. L. S. A.
verrry cute!
and love that the dipping answers are valid entries without the dips: CARETS / CAR SEATS, CAPITOL / CAP PISTOL, etc.
I completely missed the purpose of the triangles and circles, which made the puzzle even more puzzling. And SIMULCAST fit the clue just right, while SIMULCASTED is flat-out wrong, IMO.
I also object to OCCAM. The philosopher in question is William of Ockham, that being the village where he was born. How and why it turned into Occam I don’t know. Occam’s Razor is the principle of simplicity, but that doesn’t mean that you can refer to the man himself as Occam.
Thanks — I had a funny feeling about that clue, maybe because I’d never heard of a philosopher named Occam (or for that matter, Ockham). But did not think it through as you did.
Surely if you don’t like it, take it up with the English language, not the puzzle. And then it would seem that the outrage comes hundreds of years too late. (There are too many nits like this here, if you ask me.)
Of course, you’re perfectly welcome to spell it Ockham. Suit yourself, and it’s given in dictionaries as an alternative spelling.
I know Occam is the usual spelling — I was just wondering how come. The village of Ockham still exists, so spelled. But my main objection is that the clue/answer refers to the philosopher himself as Occam, which seems wrong to me.
As for nit-picking, I spent much of my career as an editor, so nit-picking was my thing, and I was good at it.
Do you interpret “Occam’s razor” as a reference to the village? If it’s named for a location, I understand your point. If, on the other hand, it’s named for a person, you’ve lost me.
Bear in mind, too, that in his time spelling was all over the map. A single name may have appeared many ways in different places or, for that matter, occasionally in a single document. As an editor and no doubt anal, I’m glad we’ve cleaned up such practices, but still.
a quick lil wiki search leads me to: it comes from latin, with his name being Gulielmus Occamus, and the principle being novacula Occami
Thanks, anna, that’s enlightening.
I take ‘Occam’s Razor’, in English, as a shorthand for William of Ockham’s Principle of Parsimony, or whatever you like to call it. But, to me, that doesn’t sanction using Occam alone to refer to the man himself.
I will admit this is nit-pickery of perhaps an excessive degree.
SIMULCASTED sure surprised me, as I’d never use it, although I didn’t feel confident from my ear to object. Decided the entry was probably fine.
But, oddly enough, MW has it without so much as a reference to SIMULCAST as past, not even as a variant.
And I guess that’s relevant to the nits that come up so often that bother me. Grateful as I am that you two take a lot of care to get things right, I can only plead: don’t rely on your ear alone and the denounce everything else as patently unacceptable.
Anyone care to explain the Fireball gimmick? Looks to me like themeless with randomly inserted strings of (6 or 7) consecutive letters in some across entries for no reason. I don’t get it.
Sorry — not random. Replacing “TO” — but it isn’t “A to Z” so I still must be missing something.
Ok nevermind — it is “A to Z” (or really “X to Y” where the X and Y are the stopping and starting points and the consecutive letters replace “TO”.) Pretty clever actually, now that I see it.
That was exactly the thought process I went to as I solved the puzzle and then wrote the review. Clever indeed!
BTW, Jenny, it was guaranteed to be a pangram before I worked on the fill, since the letter strings were designed to span the alphabet in consecutive chunks starting with N(a to f)LAG. Peter gets all the credit for this feature. My original submission was nothing like the final product. In fact, two of the four theme answers had backward strings, i.e. SETSRQPBOX – Device enabling a television to receive signals?
Great puzzle, Paul. Super tough, but with a great aha when I got finally saw it having worked the crosses to to GIANOP[QN]?S?TER on 47A.
NYT – Although I entered DOUBLE DIP rather early on, I didn’t grasp the theme until I saw CAPITOL and then realized it was CAP PISTOL.
It was quite nice; I had SIMULCAST in, after taking out AAS for the batteries… It was CARSEATS that finally made it click for me. Pretty cute, although my brain had trouble reading the entries and so it was hard for me to get FIRE LIGHT to go in… I guess I should’ve been helped by the shortened FREIGHT. And spelling out CHIPS and SALSA… that feels almost good enough to be an Evan meta :-) Very nice Thursday.
Another easy WSJ meta this week. Give it a shot.
LAT: I didn’t do this puzzle, but if the solfege syllables are read from the bottom of the puzzle to top, rather than the top-to-bottom order set out in the review, they are in the order of the scale.
Nice catch!
Occam? This all reminds me of Leonardo da Vinci. Usually we speak of him as da Vinci. Vinci was the town he was from.
Interesting coincidence with solfege-related themes in both LAT and Uni, both going in vastly different directions. Not sure I get the “ironic” part of the 17A clue in the latter. And just as I type that, I realize–SIT versus WALK. Aha.
Amazing Fireball puzzle Paul!