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Laura Oppenheimer’s Wall Street Journal crossword, “Concessions”—Jim’s review
Theme answers are two-word candies you might find at a movie theater and whose first words are also titles of films. Wacky clues relate the star of each film with whatever the second word implies. The revealer is MOVIE CANDY (60a, [Best part of going to the theater…and a hint to the starred clues]).
Note that this is a debut puzzle from a constructor whose first and last names are both film titles. I wonder if that had anything to do with the creation of this puzzle.
Wall St Journal crossword solution · “Concessions” · Laura Oppenheimer · Wed., 3.19.25
- 17a. [*Jake Gyllenhaal and Rebecca Ferguson in space…act frugally?] LIFE SAVERS.
- 26a. [*Helen Mirren as a retired MI6 assassin…makes short-form videos?] RED VINES.
- 36a. [*Pregnant Arnold…makes coins?] JUNIOR MINTS.
- 49a. [*Sean Penn as an activist city supervisor…has some failures?] MILK DUDS.
Fun theme! It didn’t take too long to cotton on to the fact that the answers are the names of candies, so that helped in filling in those entries. But I have to say that I did have trouble trying to make sense of the clues as written. Are they supposed to be descriptions of fictitious movies? Perhaps sequels? If so, I think it would help if the clues said as much. For example, [Sequel in which Arnold gets pregnant again and starts a money-making operation?]. Not as succinct as the actual clue but more understandable…at least for me.
Fill highlight has to be SILENT BS. During the solve it made sense as the plural form of the silent letter B, but I’m now choosing to interpret it as actual silent bulls**t, because that’s much funnier — and it’s a lot less worrisome than bulls**t that is emanating some sort of sound.
Elsewhere, other goodies include JEALOUSY, “SO I HEAR“, and SHOGUN. On the tougher side: CAICOS, QUARTO, and ELISHA Cuthbert.
Hiroyuki Sanada of “SHOGUN”
Clue of note: 18d. [2024 Emmy winner for Outstanding Drama Series]. SHOGUN. Yay for this show which I quite enjoyed. Not only did it win that Emmy, but it won in 17 other categories as well, setting the record for most wins of a single season of a TV show. I love actor (and producer) Hiroyuki Sanada and I’ll watch anything he’s in.
Nice debut puzzle. 3.25 stars.
Evan Park & Jeffrey Martinovic’s New York Times crossword–Amy’s recap
NY Times crossword solution, 3/19/25 – no. 0319
This puzzle’s got diagonal symmetry across the NW-to-SE axis. The theme is described by 10d and 59a, STARBURST and SUPERNOVA. The bursting/expanding star starts in a rebus square, where RE{ST AR}EA and LO{ST AR}TS meet. The next step, the S T A and R all have their own squares, bunched together. Then the S T A R letters are spaced out a little. The bottom corner has S T A R spaced out by two squares. This is lovely! Cool theme, executed neatly.
Fave fill: MAKE IT POP really pops. This and HAD A BLAST are also thematic, aren’t they? They’re clued without reference to the popping, blasting star, though.
There are some awkward entries squeezed into this busy grid: “OH ME,” “I RULE,” SNAP IN, and maybe ENDS IT. The latter is clued [50D
Puts the game away, so to speak] and I don’t know that I’m picking up the meaning it’s putting out. Is ENDS IT a sports usage? Is “puts the game away” some other sort of usage?
3.75 stars from me.
Hanh Huynh’s AV Club Classic crossword, “Back in Black”–Amy’s recap
AV Club Classic crossword solution, 3/19/25 – “Back in Black”
I’m glad I wasn’t watching the clock with this puzzle, because too much of it didn’t make sense as I went through it. Eventually I realized that the theme centers on those three solo black squares, where “Back in Black” means you put an ASS in those boxes so that the clues above and to the left make sense after being joined to the ASS and the following entry, regardless of the following entry being a legit stand-alone answer.
- 20a. [Special chess move] clues EN PASSANT, not just ENP.
- 22a. [Arouse enthusiasm], IMPASSION, not IMP. This one mired me. Does AMP work without UP? If so, why is our Italian city then ASTA rather than ASTI?
- 57a. [Holiday activity], CHRISTMAS SHOPPING, not CHRISTM.
- The crossings give us ATLAS STONE, [Boulder used in strongman competitions]. Did not know it; haven’t watched a strongman competition in maybe 25 years. Also the VEGAS STRIP, [Popular stretch in the Mojave Desert, familiarly], and SAFE PASSAGE, [Protected travel]. Oof! With SAFEx as the apparent space for that latter clue, and not knowing the crossing song “Apt.“, [Rosé/Bruno Mars hit based on a Korean drinking game], I had to go back and study the entire theme to make this out. Good thing I’m not heading towards an ACPT puzzle 5.
- The little revealer bailed me out: 73a. [Initialism describing actions to avoid future repercussions … and what three blocks in this puzzle do], CYA, cover your ass. Such subtly covered asses!
Some nice fill here, like HEARTTHROB.
Four well-challenged stars from me.
Tara Holland’s LA Times crossword, – Gareth’s summary
Tara Holland’s theme trope choice is not one of my favourites, but if you are going to go down this route, then do it the way they did it today. Today, five answers are clued as [Mole]. All of them are concise and not padded: BEAUTYMARK, SLEEPERAGENT, UNITOFSUBSTANCE, MEXICANSAUCE and GARDENPEST.
The theme itself is quite “busy”, so there aren’t a lot of splashy longer down answers. Among the shorter entries, is [Acrylic fiber], ORLON still used? Also, I also don’t live in an area with many COBB salads, certainly not enough to refer to them slangily as COBBS. Am I alone?
Gareth
Emily Biegas and Sala Wanetick’s Universal crossword, “Versatile Individual” — pannonica’s write-up
Universal • 3/19/25 • Wed • “Versatile Individual” • Biegas, Wanetick • solution • 20250319
Straightforward theme with a straightforward title. The revealer is a tiny bit more relaxed.
- 55aR [Folks with several professions … and an apt description of the starred clues’ answers?] MULTI-HYPHENATES.
- 17a. [*One who wears many hats, so to speak] JACK-OF-ALL-TRADES.
- 26a. [*One who works in the courtroom] ATTORNEY-AT-LAW.
- 42a. [*Noblewoman’s personal assistant] LADY-IN-WAITING.
The first of the theme answers does double duty, I’d say—fulfilling both parts of the revealer—but that isn’t a requirement here.
- 1d [AG’s domain] DOJ. Does the clue implicitly duplicate part of the theme answer at 26-across?
- 3d [Emitted, as pheromones] SECRETED. That’s one way.
- 14d [Bring down] LOWER.
- 43d [“Yippee!”] WOO HOO. My only mis-fill, as I tried HOORAY off of the double-O.
- 31a [Unexpected sports loss] UPSET. Also an unexpected sports win. I think I’d have clued it as [Unexpected sports outcome]
- 39a [Painter’s primer] GESSO. etymology: Italian, literally, gypsum, from Latin gypsum.
- 60a [Get out of bed] ARISE.
Sometimes it’s just like that.
Emily Biegas’s USA Today Crossword, “Plot Twist” — Emily’s write-up
Did you see that coming?!
USA Today, March 19, 2025, “Plot Twist” by Emily Biegas
Theme: each themer contains a scrambled –PLOT– within it
Themers:
- 20a. [Insignificant in the grand scheme of things], SMALLPOTATOES
- 35a. [“Customer satisfaction is our goal!”], WEAIMTOPLEASE
- 52a. [Antagonists in George Orwell’s “1984”], THOUGHTPOLICE
What do SMALLPOTATOES, WEAIMTOPLEASE, and THOUGHTPOLICE have in common? Today’s theme! I enjoyed that each “plot” is jumbled differently in each themer. Also, a little theme bonus is that the –PLOT– progresses with each consecutive themer. Nice!
Favorite fill: RAISEHELL, BECOOL, CLAMUP, and ILOSTIT
Stumpers: THREEPEAT (needed crossings), TRAP (cluing didn’t quite get me there), and ELECTRIC (also needed crossings)
A fun puzzle though it took me a bit longer to solve. Nothing was too tricky but a few cluings held me up though everything was fairly crossed. Loved the overall fresh fill and lengthy bonus fill. A wide variety of topics and phrases as well. How’d you all do?
4.0 stars
~Emily
NYT: Cute, but it didn’t register when I completed the solve.
I paused at the circled center square of the NW area, but quickly realized that STAR would make sense across and down. But putting an S in gave me no confirmation.
Maybe I just have a typo somewhere, but I guess I don’t have the patience to figure out whether it’s me or the software, alas.
Same here. The app didn’t register. I had the patience to compare side by side with the solution here and couldn’t find an error.
Good puzzle, though, with clean fill and relatively few names. Felt like I was on record time for the first half then slowed down quite a bit.
Isn’t Sacramento the most populous California inland city?
Sacramento: 526,384
Fresno: 545,716
Awesome AVCX – I had it half figured out, but was amazed when all six complete ASSes appeared, as described by Amy.
In his Wordplay Notes, one of today’s NYT co-constructors remarks, “I’ve solved fewer puzzles than I’ve now published,” made all the more pithy by this being his debut. But, seriously, how many constructors would be able to say that? What’s that old Saul Bellow quote, “A writer is a reader turned to emulation”?; I’d bet that most constructors are solvers turned to emulation: You have that beautiful epiphany where you realize, “I wanna MAKE one these things!” A minor storyline in “Elf” involves the family dad, a publishing house CEO or whatever, having put out a book with a pivotal page or paragraph missing, and I remember when he’s confronted with the fact, early in the movie, he responds with a Trumpian disregard or rationalization, until the film’s resolution whereat Christmas Spirit forces the man to care about people’s opinions of his company’s product, to be concerned with customer feedback, as it were; when I started perusing crossword blogs–it’s addictive as hell, so if you haven’t started, don’t!–that was the first time I was exposed to solvers’ opinions and feedback. And I had to reckon with thought processes like, How important should this be to me? And when Rex or Amy would scowl at entries like OH ME or I RULE, it was very eye-opening for me; and it *changed* the way I made puzzles, it affected my constructor mind set. Prior to the internet puzzlemaking for me was about 1) a cool theme, and 2) hope Compiler can fill this grid; but crossword bloggers and commentors made me start caring about Filling A Grid In Well, and that became a meaningful part of the process. So… somewhere between the two extremes of, for example, the “Elf” dad’s absence of consideration for the subject and, say, just some wild, earnest ethos of NEEDING my grid to be Berry Clean, I, the constructor, position myself. When Rex destroyed a puzzle of mine I considered starting a blog about crossword blogs, where I could freely comment on his commentary; but when I stopped trying to disregard or minimize or lash out at what he was saying and started to, rather, consider it, I, of course, was better for it. But I think I could also understand that maybe a constructor just doesn’t want to put all that on his or her plate, too. Hmmm. So much of it is SO subjective, but worth thinking about, nonetheless.