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Zachary David Levy’s Wall Street Journal crossword, “What a Spread!”—Jim’s review
Theme answers are the second words from phrases whose first word is a synonym of “elongated.” These second words are elongated themselves by way of repeating one letter until each entry spans the grid.
Wall St Journal crossword solution · “What a Spread!” · Zachary David Levy · Thu., 4.3.25
- 17a. [Ride that might be a bit of a stretch?] LIIIIIIIIIIIIMO. Stretch limo.
- 33a. [Food that might be pulled off the shelves?] POOOOOOOOOOOORK. Pulled pork.
- 40a. [Offer that might be extended?] WAAAAAAAARRANTY. Extended warranty.
- 59a. [Garment that might run long?] UUUUUUUNDERWEAR. Long underwear.
Works for me. I’m not sure of the reasoning behind which letter gets repeated other than the fact that it’s probably a lot easier to work with multiple vowels and not consonants. But as it turns out, it’s the first vowel in each word that gets the treatment, so at least the puzzle is consistent in its approach. For funsies, read each entry as if you were the commentator of a fútbol match.
Four grid-spanning entries probably put some demands on the grid, even if most of the letters are vowels, so there aren’t a lot of long Down entries. “AM I NUTS?” is fun and Brian BOITANO is nice for those of us who watched the ’88 Winter Olympics. (Although if you don’t know him, the T (crossing T SLOT) could possibly be a difficult crossing.) I do like the RAVIOLI / ARSENIC pairing in the SE.
Clues of note:
- 1a. [Head of the tables?]. MAÎTRE D’. Good clue.
- 66a. [Element in some Christie mysteries]. ARSENIC. Per the internet, she used the poison to kill eight characters across four novels and four short stories.
Good puzzle. 3.75 stars.
Hanh Huynh’s New York Times crossword — Zachary David Levy’s write-up
Difficulty: Personal record (5m27s)
Hanh Huynh’s New York Times crossword, 4/3/2025, 0403
Today’s theme: * CROSSED (Ill-fated … or a hint to six squares in this puzzle)
- CO*
- THE *RY NIGHT
- RE * EA
- NON*TER
- CU*DS
- LO * TS
M*A*S*H is the showstopper here, despite it technically not involving wordplay itself (sharing the literal *s with the other vertical entries that cross the 6 “true” themers/rebus entries). Really nicely done, and centering the puzzle to boot.
Today, I learned that STAR CROSSED does not mean the same thing as “written in the stars”, but rather, the exact opposite — enacted despite a celestial veto. So I guess it was anything but STAR CROSSED when “Call Me the Breeze” played as I swooshed through 3-down, and continued in that vein to a PR Thursday.
Cracking: Q*BERT (I dare you to find a more quintessential “classic” arcade game that no one actually played)
Slacking: you can have EFT or EBT, but not both
Sidetracking: Abyssinia, Henry
Leo Tsai’s USA Today Crossword, “Now Presenting… (Freestyle)” — Emily’s write-up
Sit back and enjoy this puzzle!
USA Today, April 03, 2025, “Now Presenting… (Freestyle)” by Leo Tsai
Favorite fill: NEXTSLIDEPLEASE, AMITOOLATE, and TOEBEANS
Stumpers: OWLS (new to me), SLOE (needed crossings), and PSHAW (also needed crossings)
Loved today’s grid design and lengthy bonus fill—so many! Fun cluing and great overall fill too. A great freestyle. Nicely done!
4.5 stars
Brendan Emmett Quigley’s Crossword #1771 “Puzzlers Meetup” — Eric’s Review
Brendan Emmett Quigley’s Crossword #1771 “Puzzlers Meetup” — 4/3/25
Today’s grid has eight squares with circles, broken into pairs on four lines. By the time I’d filled in the second set of circles, the theme clicked. In honor of the American Crossword Puzzle Tournament starting tomorrow in Stamford, Connecticut, the circles all contain ACPT:
- 17A [Objets d’art]/19A [Bend below one’s sink] BRIC-A-BRAC/P-TRAP Today I learned that I’d long misunderstood the meaning of BRIC-A-BRAC, which I’d always thought of as fancy trim on an article of clothing or other thing made of cloth. But it actually means “miscellaneous objects and ornaments of little value.” The undersink bit of plumbing could have been a J-TRAP, so I left the first letter off until I got the theme.
- 32A [Ideal place to play street hockey]/34A [Drooping eyelid, medically] CUL DE SAC/PTOSIS The medical term looks vaguely familiar, but lots of medical terms look vaguely familiar.
- 40A [Circle of signs]/44A [Showman who supposedly said “There’s no such thing as bad publicity”] ZODIAC/P.T. BARNUM
- 62A [Composer Albéniz]/63A [Arctic chicken-like bird] ISAAC/PTARMIGAN I appreciate the high culture (or at least medium-high culture) of the clue to the 19th century Spanish composer; it’s always nice to have a gimme that makes me feel educated.
This isn’t a particularly exciting theme, but it’s timely and well-executed. There are only about 80 words beginning with PT in the lists on xwordinfo.com, and I don’t know that anyone really wants to see “ptomaine” in a crossword. Kudos to Brendan for picking the cream of a pretty sparse crop.
As promised, it’s of medium difficulty. Once the theme clicked, I jumped ahead and filled in the eight remaining circle squares without reading the clues, which probably sped things up a little.
I had a bit of trouble with the NE corner, trying VIGOR before POWER at 9A and then convincing myself that 12D [“That sounds bad, old chap”] had to be I SAY. EGAD doesn’t strike me as a particularly English exclamation; it’s just old-fashioned. (My dictionary says it goes back to the late 17th century and is an alteration of the earlier “A God.”) I didn’t know 16A [Fish served in kabayaki] UNAGI as clued, as I haven’t eaten much Japanese food. And I overthought things with 10D [Hamilton’s home] ONTARIO, expecting the clue to have something to do with the U.S. ten-dollar bill. Having looked at a map, I see that we once drove through Hamilton, Ontario, going from Québec to Niagara Falls.
Other things catching my eye:
- 50A [Some Lumon employees when off the severed floor in “Severance”] OUTIES I’m glad that the hours we spent watching Severance occasionally pay off (beyond the entertainment value). (If you find yourself subscribing to AppleTV+, be sure to watch Ted Lasso, which is one of the best series I’ve ever seen.)
- 65A [Oscar winner for “The King’s Speech”] Colin FIRTH I lost a few seconds here when I was momentarily unable to summon up his name. I wasn’t a fan of that movie; Firth’s performance is fine, but the story is just too feel-good inspiring for my tastes.
- 9D [“Boyhood” director Linklater] RICHARD An excellent movie, though the quintessential Linklater movie for me is Dazed and Confused, which might just be Matthew McConaughey’s best role.
- 13D [Jeans problems] RIPS Sometimes, though, they’re selling points.
- 26D [German cabbage] EUROS That slangy clue didn’t fool me at all.
- 41D [Cheaper tuition category] IN-STATE My husband and I met as freshmen at the University of Texas at Austin, a college I chose in part because the tuition was relatively affordable.
- 47D [Ropes on a boat] RIGGING I’m going to assume that Brendan knows that a boat has “lines,” not “ropes,” and chose the latter to make it a little easier on us.
It’s apparently not too late to sign up for the ACPT online tournament — see the link above. Good luck to all competing this weekend whether in person or online!
Kareem Ayas’s LA Times crossword, – Gareth’s summary
Another day with a very clever theme revealer. This one is in the centre mister Venter and it’s JOINHANDS, parsed as JOIN/H/AND/S. What happens, as indicated with circles, is that H and S occur progressively closer in four long across answers. That’s a pretty wide net, so it’s pleasing to see especially the opening two answers of HOMOERECTUS and VRHEADSET, both of which are truly stonking entries. TIGHTSPOT and GROWTHSPURT complete the set.
Due to the central nine, the puzzle has four corners with 3×7 stacks. In particular, the top-left and bottom-right have great entries – UPEARLY, PINCHME, comical POPEHAT and ALTOSAX.
Gareth
If you’ve never asked Alexa, “What would Brian Boitano do?,” give it a shot.
*RY*RYNIGHT — Which I thought was the name of the painting, also fits. I was so sure of it that even tho I couldn’t finish the puzzle up there, I was sure the revealer clue that referenced only 6 stars was incorrect.
:-(
That’s the Don McLean song (Vincent).
Oh, yeah. Good one. I loved Don McLean back in the day.
NYT: trouble in the NW because I thought the art was STARRY NIGHT, without the THE. But that finally fell.
Totally agree the M*A*S*H was a beautiful entry and perfect centerpiece. If you’ve seen the show come on (a couple hundred times like me), you know the entry cannot work without the *s.
Well done!
NYT was slower than usual for me. I thought the painting was just STARRYNIGHT, had no idea about Q*BERT, didn’t know there was an asterisk at the start of NSYNC, don’t know what an ‘egg tart’ is (I just call them custard pies, but maybe that’s not the same thing), thought EBT was EBC (for card), didn’t know that SUMOS was used for the people doing the sumoing.
Oh, and how does HRS mean ‘smash hits’?
Home Runs
oh, that kind of hit. Thx.
NYT: I swear I’ve seen the boy group stylized as N*SYNC before, so that cost me quite a few minutes of fumbling around in the NE corner.
For a brief moment, I thought it was ‘NSYNC, and it was going to be different punctuation marks :-)
Interestingly, my ipad literally autocompleted by putting the * into *NSYNC for me when I just typed the letters! Crazy.
NYT: While at all times I wished that this puzzle had a lot less pop culture than it does, ultimately I really enjoyed my gradual revelation of what the theme was, and then my slow comprehension of how to actually carry it out.
While I remember well sitting with my housemates and watching that final episode of MASH — especially the musicians playing the Mozart Clarinet Quintet — a favorite of mine — I had entirely forgotten the asterisks in the official spelling M*A*S*H, which distinctly slowed me down.
I also enjoyed the very fresh feeling of the clues and answers., as well as the innovativeness of the theme.
I didn’t like “paren”. Have never heard that used. Fun puzzle otherwise though.
I have, but when talking coding, rather than for a paren(thetical) remark as it’s used here.
+1
NYT was a great puzzle ! As for the M*A*S*H finale, I held with my college-age friends a “MASH Bash” and a whole bunch of us watched it in the finished basement of my family’s house. One of the most throat-catching final scenes, with the “Goodbye” in stones a beautiful nod to not just B.J. Hunnicut, but to the 11 years of viewers.
And you say that “no one actually played” Q*Bert ?? The reason it was my favorite game ever since it came out was that it was geometric, and not a bang-bang shooting game. I got addicted to it again a few years ago when I discovered it online, and using the arrows to do the jumping, it was an at-home drug that… I. Had. To. Stop. But oh the many years of enjoyment it brought, and I still see it in arcade bars!
https://www.retrogames.cc/arcade-games/q-bert-us-set-1.html
I meant the “Goodbye” was for Hawkeye, as B.J. Hunnicut put them out for him to see.
BEQ: Help please for 5A: “One on the horse” and the answer is “User”. How does this mean a “user” is “on the horse”? (Maybe a user is on his “high horse”? But I still don’t get it…)
‘Horse’ is hep slang for heroin.
When I saw that answer while solving, I made a mental note to include it in my review for this very reason.
So much for my short-term memory.
Thanks, pannonica.
Pannonica’s vocabulary is vast and her reviews and commentaries really make this website popular. (As does Eric H’s!)
FWIW, I’m a 70 year-old and now I remember that back in the ’70s that heroin was called “horse”.
TYVM to both of you!
I’m glad you remembered “horse.” I know heroin has made a comeback in recent years, but I don’t know if that nickname has.
I hope you (and other Fiend readers) continue to ask about things like this that the reviews don’t address. It’s difficult to anticipate all the questions. And it’s hard sometimes to keep the reviews from reaching TL;DR lengths.
If one of the Fiend reviewers doesn’t see your question, one of the readers will. Most of the time, somebody will have the correct answer!