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Christina Iverson & Jacob McDermott’s New York Times crossword—Amy’s recap
NY Times crossword solution, 3/29/25 – no. 0329
My favorite clue socked me in the nose right from the start: 1A. [Underground venues for some heavy-metal bands?], IRON MINES. With a world of ORE clues, who knew there would be something fresh and surprising in the mining category? I had to piece the answer together via the crossings because the clue had me stymied.
Fave fill: COIN TOSS, TUXEDO CAT, “NO WORRIES,” TRINIDAD, ZERO SUGAR, CHEWING GUM, THE MONA LISA, playful SANDBOXES, BACK STORIES.
New to me: 16A. [Short Japanese sword], TANTO.
Quasi dupe: ACTOR and ACT UP. The latter is clued as [Political grp. dedicated to helping people who are H.I.V. positive], though, and that’s short for AIDS Coalition to Unleash Power. Works for me.
Least favorite entry is TEENTSY. Merriam-Webster is on my side with recognizing teensy but not TEENTSY. Wait, it’s a tie. Also not keen on [Encircled], ORBED. M-W recognizes ORB as a verb, but the [Encircled] sense is marked archaic.
3.75 stars from me.
Kunal Nabar’s Los Angeles Times crossword — Stella’s write-up
Los Angeles Times 3/29/25 by Kunal Nabar
Notables:
- 10A [Folder that may hold a missing email] is SPAM. Very relatable clue.
- 28A [Symbol an anxious texter may stare at] is DOTS. Also very relatable, and a clue that’s become viable for this entry in the last 15ish years.
- 51A [Ray Charles hit whose B-side was “Come Back Baby”] is I GOT A WOMAN. Confession: I love this song even though the lyrics are awful. After solving this puzzle I listened to the song again and was, like, “Wait, she gives him money and he’s all ‘she knows a woman’s place is…in her home’?!” To the lady in the lyrics: You can do better! (And it’s still going to be my favorite Ray Charles song — such is the power of a good bouncy tune.)
- 54A [Bit of extra time] was a satisfyingly deceptive clue for LEAP SECOND.
- 2D [Dance sequences, familiarly] is CHOREO. Loved seeing this shortening of “choreography,” which I hear quite often on the reality shows I like to consume. I’d love to see dance get the same kind of play in puzzles that baseball does, where it’s just as acceptable to throw around slang like CHOREO and BUNHEADS as it is to use CHIN MUSIC and HAIL MARYs.
- 8D [Places to watch Earthquakes and Hurricanes] is ARENAS. The above should not be taken to mean that I hate sportsball in puzzles, especially not when it generates a fun clue for a ubiquitous entry.
- 15D [Elif Batuman novel about a first-year college student] is THE IDIOT. I mean…I guess. Given that “Elif Batuman” with quotation marks gets fewer than 500K Google hits, I think it would have been much fairer to clue with regard to Dostoyevsky, even if as [21st-century novel by Elif Batuman, or 19th-century novel by Fyodor Dostoyevsky].
- 38D [Part of an ice cream brand’s pseudo-Scandinavian name] is HAAGEN. Not that I love a partial, but I do enjoy any time this silly marketing gimmick gets made fun of.
Joe Deeney’s Wall Street Journal crossword, “Breaking Bread” — pannonica’s write-up
WSJ • 3/29/25 • Sat • “Breaking Bread” • Deeney • solution • 20250329
Breadstuffs served up today. The theme answers are long down entries featuring circled squares, which spell out types or shapes of bread—I guess we can call them all ‘varieties’? Crucially, each letter string has a one-letter gap, and those spell out a little bonus reading left-to-right.
- 3d. [University whose mascot is Bully the Bulldog] MISSISSIPPI STATE (pita).
- 45d. [1995 swashbuckler that ranks among the biggest box office bombs ever] CUTTHROAT ISLAND (roti).
- 6d. [“Exhale (Shoop Shoop)” singer] WHITNEY HOUSTON (white).
- 69d. [Not well kept] IN BAD REPAIR (arepa).
- 10d. [Matter] CARRY WEIGHT (rye).
- 52d. [Humanitarian aid agency’s offering] RELIEF SERVICES (lefse).
- 14d. [What a plane’s transponders system is meant to prevent] MIDAIR COLLISION (roll).
- 41d. [Bible story that begins with “a mighty tempest in the sea”] JONAH AND THE WHALE (naan).
The letters, as you can see, spell out SANDWICH. This is a nicely conceived and well-executed theme.
- 1a [Overdo, as a part] HAM UP. This being a crossword, and me being a crossword solver, I naturally put in EMOTE here.
- 20a [Sister of Poseidon] HERA. 94a [Domain of Poseidon] OCEAN. And duping is avoided with ‘sea’ in the clue for 41-down (above).
- 26a [Purification process] DECONtamination, not DETOXification.
- 27a [Curry favor with] KISS UP TO. Curry, to go with your roti or naan.
- 40a [“Jeremy” band] PEARL JAM. Jam, to go with your lefse.
- 72a [Tempered by experience] WISER. One hopes.
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©Anil Varma
78a [African antelope] ORIBI. Ourebia ourebi. As I mentioned the other day, there are roughly 80 species (some sources say 78—the number of this clue) of antelope in Africa, so it doesn’t narrow things down too much. Given its letters, you’d think ORIBI would be more common in crosswords. I guess many people consider it to be old crosswordese and try to avoid it?
- 90a [Holiday whose celebrants might eat banh chung] TET. Bánh chưng is made from glutinous rice, mung beans, pork, and other ingredients. factette: bánh mì means ‘bread’.
- 125a [Walks on water?] PIERS. Question mark helped me to get this one right away. 105a [Pedestrian path] WALK. That clue could also work for 88a [Leisurely stroll] PASEO.
- 3d [Pot edible?] FONDUE, to go with your white bread, perhaps.
- 16d [Folded food] TACO. “Is a taco a sandwich?”
- 37d [Rice measurements?] GPAS. Grade point averages at Rice University.
- 72d [Master, as Texas hold ’em] WIN AT. meh.
- 89d [Bearer of purple berries] AÇAÍ PALM. Usually we see just one or the other four-letter entry in a grid.
- 99d [Periodically available sandwiches] MCRIBS, served on your roll.
- 100d [Sesame-based sauce] TAHINI, to go with your pita.
So. I managed to find pairings for each breadstuff save arepa. So for completion’s sake I’m going to invoke arepas de papa and cite 64d [Freezer aisle brand] ORE-IDA. Ta-da!
Anna Stiga’s Newsday crossword, Saturday Stumper — pannonica’s write-up
Newsday • 3/29/25 • Saturday Stumper • Stiga, Newman • solution • 20250329
Interesting solve sequence this time around. I got one across—[1a [Stranded swabbers] WET MOPS—right away, and then proceeded to complete that entire northwest section. After that, I dropped in some entries in the center, lower right, and lower left.
In the southeast, for some reason I landed on EROSE for 43a [Word from the Latin for “scrape”] rather than ERASE, which (a) makes more sense, and (b) clearly shares etymology with rash. Anyway, that led me to guess OLIVIA for 44d [Lara after Angelina] instead of ALICIA (Croft, Jolie, Vikander), and then something-VAN over at 61a [Sunmobile was the first one (1955)] SOLAR CAR.
Eventually I sorted it all out and moved on to completing the middle section, with its three long across entries. My Latin knowledge was more on-target for 32a [Drop collectors] PLUVIOMETERS, and 37a [Teddy Roosevelt established 150 of them] NATIONAL FORESTS—which the current president would see chopped to pieces because of imbecilic tariffs on Canadian timber—was rather easy to see. For a while I thought 40a [Feature of each of the nine Star Wars films] ENSEMBLE CAST might be something about their introductory text CRAWL, but enough crossings disabused me of that idea.
Down in the southwest, the twinned [Big name in brewing] clues at 38d and 39d gave me ANHEUSER and TSING TAO, although misspelling the former as ANHEISER cost me some time before sorting it out, seeing LUGES for 54a [Motorless, wheelless transportation] and polishing off that section.
Finally it was the upper right, where I had the tails of those long central acrosses, and also DR SEUSS (15d [He “stood between parents and children on rainy days,” said his Dartmouth doctorate citation]), which I’d correctly guessed early on, principally based on the ESSES (24a) that seemed likely for 21a, 32a, and 37a. Funnily, I didn’t think of RUNGS for 21a [Metaphor for personal progress] despite 27a [Brit’s ladder] STEPS having been filled in already. After finally getting 8d [Origin of many 2×4s] ASH (no on FIR, OAK, ELM)—confirmed with 17a [Shed of a sort] HANGAR—I had at 8-across [Fission mission ambition] A–OM– and could only see ATOMS. After quite some time I hit on A-BOMB and the rest of the northeast was a cinch.
- 16a [Finding Dory title character] BLUE TANG. 36d [Small square-finned swimmer] TETRA.
- 19a [Round for a course] STEAK. Round being a cut of beef.
- 22a [Caesars birthplace] RENO. Note absence of apostrophe.
- 31a [Sorority letter] TAU, symmetrically paired with 41a [Sorority letter] CHI.
- 47a [What the Thames Estuary borders] KENT. This being a crossword and me being a crossword solver, I naturally thought the answer was ETON.
- 49a [Faced left] DECAF. A confounding clue, until I realized it was of the the cryptic-style wordplay variety—a reversal.
- 53a [Epilogue writer of Malcolm’s autobiography] ALEX Haley, Malcolm X.
- 59a [Personal favor] ESTEEM. Ohh, the favorability kind of favor.
- 65a [Gallo brand name] ROSSI. This is about wine.
- 66a [Bugged] EATEN AT. Not sure if this is metaphorical or about actual insects. Either way, meh.
- 2d [Zony or zorse] EQUINE. Zebra-pony and zebra-horse hybrids, respectively.
- 3d [Less than half a day] TUE. All I can say is that I’m glad this came via crossings.
- 12d [Rousseau’s “big coward”] BRAGGART. I was thinking Henri Rousseau and some kind of ART rather than the philosopher Jean-Jacques Rousseau.
- 23d [Title character nickname in a 2023 blockbuster] OPPIE. Presumably this is Oppenheimer, which I have not seen (ref. 8a). In 2022 there was a documentary about the Mars rover Opportunity called Good Night Oppy.
- 28d [By which you’ll look at things differently] SLO-MO. Tough clue.
- 30d [Taken alone] PER SE, in and of itself.
- 33d [Spontaneous] UNBID. >side-eye< Much more common is unbidden. I tried RAPID first.
- 55d [Receives or takes out] SEES. An entering guest, or a date.
- 62d [Cleared out] RAN, not RID.
Relatively easy NYT with a couple of rough spots as noted above. Worked North to South, circling around some rare or unknown entries.
Stumper: What the heck does the clue for BEAR mean? Like, to keep and bear arms? But keep and bear mean different things in that phrase. And even if it meant that, what does the “right or left” part mean? Totally flummoxed by that clue.
Stumper spoiler: bear right, bear left, as in directions.
But then what’s the “keep” part? Like, keep right or left? I don’t think that means the same thing as bear right or left. Keep just means stay. Bear means turn a little.
Sure, keep/bear to the right or left as the path forks, or whatever. Works fine for me.
Can we start an ORCA category for reviews? Today’s WSJ write-up would surely be a nominee.
@pannonica is my favorite reviewer and she certainly deserves an ORCA award.
Stumper – I guess ‘Sorority letter’ doesn’t sound as much like green paint as ‘Greek letter’
NYT: This puzzle was fun to solve and felt good to complete.
It felt hard during the solve, but there seemed to be so many clues that really were not so difficult — like [Wrigley field?] — that immediately yielded many letters, that it ended up feeling more like an easy Friday puzzle than an average or tough Saturday one.
Solving pattern was to fill the left half before the right half was even half full. Had not known that ORBED is a word. (Which seems weird to me, since orb carries only the meaning of a spherical *shape* and not any sense of encircling.)
circle/circled
orb/orbed
Makes sense to me but I doubt orbed is in general use.
As Amy notes, this sense is tagged archaic in M-W. I prefer “poetic,” as used by other authorities. For instance, Wiktionary has 19th-century citations, including Tennyson’s In Memoriam.
Surprisingly, the first citation for the verb “orbit” is from 1943 according to M-W. Before that you had the poetic “orbed” or the boring “circled.”
I tried to insert “to me” after the word “since” but could not do it before the 5 minutes were up.
But to me, in current usage, orb refers not to a circle or circular motion but only to a spherical shape. (Of course it shares etymology with orbit, which most definitely does currently refer to circular motion.)
I got most of the Stumper but drew a blank in the NE section. I had DRSEUSS but went with ADMIT at 10D. I was looking for a person’s name at 12D. I wondered if 11D might be MAGNATES but couldn’t use it as a springboard for other answers.
I take issue with ASH as ‘origin of many 2x4s.’ Ash is not a widely available wood, in my experience, and is mostly used for furniture. You can probably find 2x4s if you hunt around, but I’ve never seen any.
White ash dimensional lumber is a enough of a thing for a Stumper.
I didn’t look through everything on that site, but on a brief search I don’t see any 2x4s.
Here’s some. 8/4 Ash is 2 by. And 4″ width. You’d use this stuff for furniture probably, and not framing, but for Stanley this is not bad.
As I said, I don’t doubt such things exist. It’s the ‘many 2x4s’ I object to.
Yes, upper right was the toughest for us (husband and me). For some reason, I blanked on “tau” and couldn’t think of Seward — didn’t remember him as being prominent enough to be a front runner. Had “urge” for a while for 26A. Etc., etc. :)
Stumper error? “Start of Joan of Arc’s century” (MDI). Joan of Arc lived from 1412-1431. MCD or MCDI would be correct. Yes, we call that the 15th century, so MD century maybe, but I don’t see how MDI is right.
If one accepts 15th century, stretching but this a Stumper, then the start of the century is MDI– the start of the 21st century was 2001.
if MMI is the start of the 21st century, MDI is the start of the 16th century.
Per the 21st century entry in Wikipedia:
“The 21st century is the current century in the Anno Domini or Common Era, in accordance with the Gregorian calendar. It began on 1 January 2001, and will end on 31 December 2100. It is the first century of the 3rd millennium.”
I was editing this, but ran out of time.
I see your point. I’m not going to defend MDI — I have no idea why simply referring to Joan of Arc caused a reference to Roman numerals, for instance. However, if one accepts 15th century and MD as a reference to that, then the start of the 15th century is MDI.
I personally wasn’t quibbling with it — I just saw it as a way to get 1501 in there, however ridiculously.
Ahh! Good one! I see now how the twisted logic would work. I’m sure Mr. Newman would say this is what he was thinking the whole time!
I still don’t buy it though. 1501 is the start of the 1500s, not the start of the 15th “century.”
The 15th “century” would begin with “MCD…”.
Totally understand and agree.
WSJ: @pannonica caught an extra bonus in the puzzle that totally escaped my attention. (The in-between letters spell out “sandwich”.)
Bonus point for constructor Joe Deeney!