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Jesse Cohn’s New York Times crossword—Amy’s recap
NY Times crossword solution, 4/12/25 – no. 0412
Two “Jesse” bylines in two days? Unexpected.
Fave fill: MONTESSORI, WONDER WOMAN, “I MEAN, COME ON,” FALSE ALARM, STEVE CARELL, MOLCAJETES ([29D. [Mortars for grinding Mexican spices], and for mixing guacamole), COMIC RELIEF.
Least favorite: “HE’S OUT” (is this actually what a baseball umpire shouts? I wouldn’t know).
Favorite clue: 42A. [Pool shooters], JETS. Water jets in a swimming pool, not cue sticks on a pool table. Tricky clue, with that J intersecting with MOLCAJETES to challenge those who don’t know their kitchenwares.
3.75 stars from me. Good night!
David Stern and Ella Dershowitz’s Wall Street Journal crossword, “Career Centers” — pannonica’s write-up
WSJ • 4/12/25 • Sat • “Career Centers” • Stern, Dershowitz • solution • 20250412
My write-ups are going to be abbreviated this morning, as I have travel and appointments on the agenda.
Circled squares in the same row combine to form units of time. As we progress downward through the grid, those units grow incrementally larger.
Additionally, the entry separating, or parting, the the split times are job titles, although they are clued elsewise.
- 18a. [Handbag seller since 1941] COACH (second).
- 31a. [Really mispronounce, say] BUTCHER (minute).
- 51a. [Drink slowly] NURSE (hour).
- 69aR [Many a side hustle, and a description of seven of this puzzle’s answers, in a way] PART-TIME JOB (day).
- 86a. [Light on the range] PILOT (week).
- 109a. [Neat and tidy] ORDERLY (month).
- 126a. [“Confessions” singer] USHER (year).
96a [Like a complex performance] LAYERED.
- 36d [Home device that doubles as a vehicle for cats] ROOMBA. Affords me the opportunity to once again share one of the greatest videos of all time. It’s metaphorical value is unsurpassed.
- 46d [Sentence shortene, of a sort] EDITOR. 95a [Sentence shortener, of a sort] PAROLE.
- 65d [Popular fabric dye brand] RIT. Unfamiliar to me. I don’t dye clothes, and was just a child whenever I last did tie-dye.
- 88d [Like a wooden jigsaw puzzle] LASER-CUT. The obsolescent name won’t be changing anytime soon, though.
- 49a [Song sung by Disney’s Dwarfs] HEIGH HO.
- 56a [Company added to the Dow in 1979 after dropping out four decades earlier] IBM. Hmm, 1939–1979 seems like prime years for the corporation.
- 67a [Give a post more comments than likes, in internet slang] RATIO. To be ratioed is not a good thing. Sometimes it indicates that you’re the ‘main character of the day’, also unenviable.
- 77a [Yellowfin, at the sushi restaurant] AHI. attn: Martin H.
- 122a [Person who puts up with you] GUEST. Cute.
Matthew Sewell’s Newsday crossword, Saturday Stumper — pannonica’s write-up
Newsday • 4/12/25 • Saturday Stumper • Sewell • solution • 20250412
Pretty tough crossword, but I had extra motivation to finish quickly.
Last section completed: upper left, with the vague 17a [Course force] LPGA and 2d [Author who flunked out of the USMA] EA POE (tough abbrev!).
Another notable, difficult crossing: 48a [Out online] DOX and 45d [Out draw] EX-STAR.
Long answers: 20a [Partial submissions] LOADED QUESTIONS, 24a [Manifesto motif] CLASS STRUGGLE, 44a [Country music subgenre] Y’ALLTERNATIVE, 52a [In great difficulty] AGAINST THE ROPES.
- 38d [Smallest Asian nation by area] MALDIVES. Even with several crossings, it wasn’t easy to see/remember this one.
- 33a [Pakistan and China share it] K-TWO, the mountain, which is usually rendered as K2. With just the K and W in place, I considered KIWI, aka Chinese gooseberry, thinking perhaps its origin was disputed between the two nations.
- 11d [Reminiscent of] AS IN, not AKIN. 29d [Not dissimilar from] LIKE.
- 41a [One of the first potato farmers] INCA.
Hoang-Kim Vu’s Los Angeles Times crossword — Stella’s write-up
Los Angeles Times 4/12/25 by Hoang-Kim Vu
This puzzle didn’t have especially high highs or low lows for me. A few notables:
- 1A [Having the wrong profile, in a way] is CATFISHING, i.e., pretending to be someone else on the Internet. Pretty clever clue.
- 17A [Class of talking heads and pundits] is CHATTERATI. I had never heard this portmanteau and was surprised to find it has a dictionary definition. On the other hand, it gets only about 15K Google hits, so I don’t feel like such an ignoramus for not having known it.
- 34A [Spanish pronoun] is ESA. I wish more people were familiar with the use of ESO and ESA as cheers for dancers who’ve just done a beautiful move. I heard it used a number of times back when my husband and I were still learning tango and going to milongas to practice.
- 63A [Feature of some Gothic facades?] is PIERCED LIP. Heh.
- 69A [Parts of overdue explanations?] is LATE PASSES. I thought this clue was a bit of a stretch, even with a question mark. A LATE PASS isn’t really an explanation, it’s more of a get-out-of-penalty card, regardless of explanation.
- 6D [Cartoondom’s “Princess of Power”] is SHE-RA. Always here for quality Gen X content. (I own a SHE-RA shirt that I sometimes wear to lift weights. Appropriate, right?)
- 22D [Key ingredient in pastel de nata] is EGG. Pasteis de nata are pretty delicious.
- 24D [Card with pre-assembly information] sounds like something you’d get with an Ikea flat-pack, but the “assembly” refers to a social event like a wedding and the answer is SAVE THE DATE.
This was one of my favorite Saturdays in a while. I felt like it had a good flow to it and a lot of conversational language without much trivia.
NYT: It did its Saturday job, made me feel stuck and clueless in every corner, and then a glimpse, a stretch, a stab leading to a breakthrough.
Northwest was the last to fall.
I MEAN COME ON felt…timely.
Zero progress on the NYT until I gave myself hints for Diana and that Mexican utensil. With that help, I completed it in a typical Saturday time. It’s not plausible to object to misdirection in a Sat NYT xword, but there sure seemed to be a lot of misdirection in this one.
I could’ve sworn the term was *petty* larceny but Wikipedia proves me wrong. Now that I think about it, I’m not sure I’ve ever seen it written down, just heard it in cop shows and such
I had PETTY as well, and it slowed me down. I think it’s Petty Theft, vs PETIT vs. GRAND Larceny.
From a quick google (Google Ai):
“Petty larceny” and “petit larceny” are essentially the same thing, referring to a type of property crime involving the theft of property with a relatively low value. The term “petit larceny” is sometimes considered the more formal or legalistic term, while “petty larceny” is more common in everyday usage.
In the Stumper, 26-A, five letters, “Protagonist of French literature (in Guinness’ longest novel)” is just wrong.
Charles Swann is not the protagonist of In Search of Lost Time (aka Remembrance of Things Past). The protagonist is the novel’s narrator, who invites us to assume that his name is Marcel. Albertine addresses the narrator by that name in a letter.
Anyway, it ain’t Swann.
Swann is not the narrator, but is the protagonist I would think.
He’s not. The story of the novel is the story of how its narrator becomes a writer. Swann is important, but he’s not the protagonist.
Complex works have multiple protagonists. This Sunday’s WaPo clues Fring of Breaking Bad as a protagonist. He’s clearly not the only one, or even the main one.
Spoiler aside, my clue said he’s an antagonist (though yes, he’s not the only one).
Okay, I read it wrong, but I stand by my point about multiple protagonists. And what spoiler? I just cited the clue. Badly.
No, you didn’t read it wrong — I get the Stumper in my local paper and it was clued “protagonist.” Perhaps they corected it online?
Martin and I were referring to my Sunday puzzle when talking about the antagonist, not the Stumper.
Martin – you gave away a WaPo answer in a thread about the Stumper. I haven’t finished the WaPo today, but now I can’t un-see this answer.
Apparently, citing a clue is seen as a spoiler by some solvers, so I’ll avoid it in the future, especially in other threads. I still don’t see it as giving away an answer but I apologize.
Nothing to apologize for, Martin. You didn’t reveal the answer.
On the original question, I agree that a complex saga can have more than one protagonist, and Swann qualifies. But he’s not the protagonist (nor does the clue imply that he is).
Sorry, Martin. My mistake. I jumped to conclusions not having finished the WaPo puzzle. Now that I have, I see that your post did not have any spoilers. I apologize.
NYT: An umpire is more likely to say YOU’RE OUT
I started with “yer out” which is the usual way they say it, so I wasn’t happy with ‘hes out” . Ump might say “hes out” if a coach contests a ruling, I guess
Yes, but an announcer often says HE’S OUT.
Would that be considered a “Base ruling” ?
NYT – Is ATE really slang for doing amazingly? I think of it as doing poorly, like “He ate it on that jump.” I’m gonna go out in my yard now and yell at some kids. Back in my day…
Yes, it’s similar to how people use “cooked” to mean “did something really impressive.” This short article has more.
NYT-In his interview with Marc Maron, James CAAN told a very funny story about being hazed by John Wayne during the El Dorado shoot. Too lengthy to tell here but recommend digging up the interview.
NYT: This felt tough during the solve, with large white areas all over the place. But little by little they got filled. Never heard of MOLCAJETE or the TRU hotel chain; no idea why SKA is “sublime” (but I confess I’ve never knowingly heard ska). Not crazy about nuclear energy, since the distribution of nuclear fuel (and storage of spent fuel) present big risks, even without TMIs or Chernobyls.
But as U. Utah Phillips has said: It was good th0ugh!
There’s a band called Sublime.
LAT: I’m not sure why PASTRYCHEFS are “those who can provide the latest dish”? I was misdirected into thinking it was going to be some kind of gossip (wrong) but while I get that chefs provide dishes, I’m not getting why a pastry chef would have the latest.
Also, I’m too late to comment on yesterday’s LAT but I was bothered by CALLTHESHALLOTS having ALL in call as well as shallot.
latest dish as in at the end of the meal
Huh, OK, I’ll buy that I guess. I think of pastry chefs as making breakfast items but they do desserts as well. Thanks!
RE WSJ: Right in the middle of an atoll, surrounded by the coral reef and the chain of islands that comprise the atoll – Bikini Atoll included – is a big fat lagoon. If you told any Marshallese that they cant’s swim in the atoll, but only around the atoll, they would look at you really funny, laugh and say: Kwe dribelle bwebwe.
And if you told them you wanted to swim around the atoll, they would shake their heads, walk away, and begin planning your ilomej.
Stumper: can someone explain “Partial submissions” for LOADED QUESTIONS? How are those partial, or submissions?
And I’m just now getting “Out draw” for EX-STAR. Amazing hard clue.
Not sure, but I think it has to do with an online form before you hit the Submit button, You’ve loaded many question fields but the submission is incomplete. Anyway, it’s all I could come up with.
I think it’s more that partial in this context means “biased.” A loaded question is biased on the part of the person asking it since it’s designed to incriminate the person responding to it.
I went back and forth on that. I didn’t like the “submissions” part, but it’s probably right.
I was wondering, too, and I like that — “partial” as “biased.”
In yesterday’s review of the LAT puzzle, for clue 33D “Let your __ flag fly” and the answer was “freak”, @pannonica included a link to the CSN&Y song “Almost Cut My Hair”.
And that song evoked this song by Rick James, “Super Freak”. (Let’s all get our kink-on!)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QYHxGBH6o4M
As usual, pannonica is on target. I didn’t think it too bad, except for that upper left.
WSJ has an obscure actor crossed by three obscure singers UGH!
Who?